The bargain cards are not better than onboard sound, and often worse. Inexpensive cards do not offload any processing and do not improve the generated audio. Offloading audio processing is less important than it used to be, as there are very few games that actually push modern CPUs to the point that they have not enough cycles to handle the audio. Your biggest concerns shoulde be whether it produces quality sound, has drivers that aren't bug infested, and has the particular interfaces you need in your setup.

HT|Omega "Striker", ASUS "Xonar", and M-Audio "Audiophile" cards are all in your price range. You can spend a lot more for high-end M-Audio, HT|Omega, or Auzentech gear. I hesitate to make specific recommendations, because perceived sound quality is so personal.

Avoid anything from Creative Labs and anything Fatal1ty whored his name for.

[url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url] So are you saying this ASUS "Xonar" card isn't as good as on board sound and doesn't offload processing (which is what I thought the whole point of a sound card was, boy am I even more confused now LOL)??? http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Channel-Sound-Card-XONAR_DG/dp/B0045JHJSS

Because this is listed $27 with a $10 rebate making it $17. Hard to find more of a bargain card that.

I guess I'm confused as to whether you were recommending those brands that you said were in my price range or whether you were listing them as examples to avoid????

The "Xonar DX" is the good one. The "Xonar DG" is no competition for it. Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, I would favor HT|Omega and M-Audio cards over ASUS.

The real advantage to a discrete sound card is better fidelity. Higher bit resolution, higher sample rate, better D/A converters, and better analog components all contribute to better sound.

There's a lot of confusion, some of it due to people who remember the old days, some of it due to sound card manufacturers, about hardware acceleration and whether it is even supported in Windows.

Microsoft discontinued support for hardware-accelerated DirectSound all the way back in Vista. The only ways to get hardware-accelerated sound on Windows are:

* Run applications that use OpenAL. Some games do, but many games do not.

* Use Creative Labs' ALchemy kludge. This intercepts DirectSound calls and converts them into OpenAL calls. This works with Creative Labs cards and many compatible cards.

There's a list of known OpenAL and ALchemy-compatible games at http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx

Oh man, now I'm confused again. It seems when I read what you just wrote compared to what the poster above just wrote, it feels like I'm getting opposite answers. But that's probably because I'm misunderstanding something, perhaps the terminology, I dunno.

I'm gonna stop right there though. This isn't even my thread, and now I'm more confused than when I started, so that's usually not a good sign that things are going in the direction I'd hoped.

THanks to all who tried to help. Trust me, I'm pretty sure the problem is me, cause I just don't know a lot about these strange, yet wonderful machines. I appreciate all of you that tried to help.

LOL, perhaps I'll flip a coin when I build my next one as to whether or not to put in a sound card, and if it's heads, I'll pick which one randomly. Probably be as good as trying to make a decision myself in my confused state. LOL

Thanks again guys.

Can you cite a source that shows hardware offload actually works in DirectSound? Microsoft killed it off as of Vista. That means that unless you run OpenAL applications or use Creative ALchemy, your CPU is doing all the work no matter what features are available on the sound card.

This +1
I was generally speaking and didn't think of vista/windows 7 lol :).I havent got a new sound card for a longtime (although was eying an Asus Xonar DX a while back.)

Easy answer: don't put a dedicated sound card in at first. Leave it for later; put one in if you are unsatisfied with the built-in sound.

It won't help performance with TW2, which is not anything close to CPU-bound. It won't help performance with games in general, unless you have a deficient CPU to begin with.

The main reasons to get one are to get better sound and to take advantage of features (such as mixers) that come with, or can be connected to, the card.

Sounds like a good plan.

Well, it would seem Digital Storm no longer has the P67 motherboards you suggested, so now I have to go with Z68 types. I hope I can get around the problems TW2 has with Lucid Virtu that you mentioned easily.

If you run into trouble, just uninstall it. Or if you are not using the Steam edition (so you can avoid patching), don't update to patch 2.1.

Oh right, forgot about that. Too much time around Open AL games, XP boxes, and Vista with ALchemy.

In that case, I'll stick to the relative principle since future proofing based on OpenAL would be misguided (unless you're into FOSS software which is usually an Open AL variant). An expensive card will improve your output up to audiophile level which will drastically improve your sound, but a full set up is going to cost you. A mid level card will improve your output/sound somewhat, but won't touch performance in 90% of Windows games in Vista/7. A cheap card won't do anything except perhaps sound worse than onboard, depending on mobo/card of course. They're still nice to have, just not as necessary in newer boxes.

Unless ALchemy. :D

You know what guys, i'm starting to consider kavazovangel's suggestion of getting a laptop, though I have some concerns and questions.

1. I hear laptops tend to overheat and break, is this a common problem?

2. Would this be a decent laptop capable of running The Witcher 2 at a good frame rate on higher settings and would it be a good choice in general?
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/laptoploadx17.asp?id=568651

3. I've heard certain games have trouble running on laptop graphics cards. Would I have any trouble running my GOG games old and new on a laptop?

Depends very much on the laptop! Generally, packing everything into a tight laptop chassis means heat management is more of a challenge. I had an old Dell XPS laptop that died when the graphics card cooked itself, but I've also been playing games on my (work) HP EliteBook just fine for 2 years now. It does help if you are pro-active with blowing out the cooling fans every so often so they don't get clogged with dust.

I would have thought the laptop you've linked would be able to run TW2 - generally it looks a decent spec. Don't 100% know TW2's requirements or how good that graphics card is though.

If you're getting a laptop as a desktop replacement - I personally don't think it's worth it: you can get a much brawnier desktop rig for the same money.
One of the biggest problems with a laptop is it's limited upgradeability - with a desktop, popping in a new Geforce a few years down the line can basically postpone buying a new machine for a while. You can also add and swap out stuff like hard drives, sound cards etc. easily, and you may get great deals for components during online sales.

I've owned a DS desktop system and a Vigor gaming (RIP) desktop replacement laptop
for 3 years now. Well the desktop feels fine and runs Witcher 2 like a champ after a Geforce GTX580 injection recently, while the laptop has fallen behind the current laptop configs alot and there is not much I can do about it.

My advice would be: spec a close to barebones rig (the chassis you like, decent mobo, 1 fast HDD with the OS, RAM (quantity optional, can add more later), cooling solution, graphics card (you may also skip it and add one yourself later if you believe you can get a better deal online), cheapest optical drive) with Digital storm, let them stably overclock the processor. Then customize with the rest of your budget. This way you get a rock solid overclocked rig without paying through the nose for peripheral components (HDD's, optical drives, soundcards etc.)

Finally, I'd say Origin is a bigger ripoff than DS, while the relative benefits are not clear. DS was good for me during three years, then again, their build quality was good so I only had minor issues (soundcard mysteriously stopped being recognized, then it went away by itself, plus i asked them some questions regarding upgrade compatibility). Maingear may have something to offer with their patented liquid cooling system for the Shift rig that allows for ridiculous overclocks on the CPU, but I've not tested it and don't know anyone who owns one.

Yeah, the more I think about a laptop the less it makes sense to get one considering I would like to make the move from console to PC as my primary platform and a laptop would limit my options. I mainly threw the idea out there to get some opinions and weigh my options.