SB live cards have 5.1 analog, some of the newer MB's have 7.1 digital. So in that sense the MB may be better. Also on the aspect of processing power, sound cards with an APU (like SBL's EMU10K1) can offer 5% decease in CPU load by off-loading the sound from the CPU. However that isn’t always the case, as in my MB, which has a more robust audio setup and was shown to be within a few % of a SBL (which I use anyway because it has a Joystick Port and my MB doesn’t). Also the latest Realtek chips support EAX 2.0, SBL only supports 1.0.