Hello, I am a budget gamer... and a music freak . My new board that I ordered has Realtek ALC888 audio... a bit better then my older ALC883, but I am wondering if there is really any step-up from that, to a sound card $30-$60, with a good pair of $100 headphones. If there is really a difference, is there any cards that I should be looking at?

Thanks.

There is no difference, save it and spend the money on speakers or headphone instead.

^ id agree with dagger, if the ALC883 was enough for you in the past you wont notice the difference.

I gave up along time ago on adding a sound card to my system. The on-board stuff has come on along way from the old AC97 sound (although that was good for the time).
 
The kicker came when Creative started to shun 3 week old hardware and drop all support of new cards when their next overpriced hardware came along, this was the semi push I needed as . The rest of the push came when their driver support totally failed and they blamed everything else for driver crashes, eventually telling me to run a nice new dual core set-up in single core mode to use their hardware as their drivers crashed on multi core systems....
 
If you still want better sound than the on-board then get a D>A converter and hook up your on-board digital output to the D>A converter.

As an audiophile I can promise you there's a difference between even an old Soundblaster Live! and even new onboard sound chips.

For one, there's noise isolation you'll get with the soundcard.  Its audio processor is not sitting on a motherboard sharing its PCB with all the other motherboard components, and is therefore, not subject to the same electrical interference that on board sound solutions face.

Secondly, you can't find an on board solution (unless you have a board with a  SoundBlaster built into it) that comes close to the S/N ratio of discreet  audio cards.  In fact, you may have a hard time even finding the technical specs of an on board sound chip (perhaps because they're so bad??).

If you care about your computer's audio do one of two things.

1) Get a dedicated sound card.  It doesn't have to be the very best but just about anything you get will likely sound better than onboard sound.

2) If you have a motherboard with S/PDIF output use the output to connect to a receiver so that the audio processing is not being done by the motherboard's, IMO, inadequate sound chip.

Yes, if you using $50 speakers it may be hard to tell how bad the on board sound is, but if you step up to even the cheap-fi Logitech Z-5500 (fine for gaming and some personal music listening) that I use with their laser beam-like satellites (there's like no dispersion and bass that may kill the bacteria on your walls, but that is neither tight nor accurate) you'll hear a difference.

Get a soundcard.

Although, I have a creative 5.1 card, or had anyway.  Good luck getting it to work in Vista.  Also, my new board has HD sound outputs.  I doubt a 5 year old card will do better.  I've got a cheap pair of headphones(10 bucks) that cover your ears, and the sound is great actually.  Nice bass, good effects.  I recommend try out your onboard sound with a good set of speakers/headphones, then if not satisfied go to a soundcard.  

I guess that's just makes all around sense, try what you have and see if you like it.  My point is that I believe very few onboard solutions are going to compete with an Audigy, X-Fi, or Xonar.  If you're really serious about HD sound would you be seriously considering using an onboard solution?

Loosely like being serious about gaming but wanting to use a GeForce FX5200...woefully inadequate for the enthusiast.  

You can find onboard solutions with S/N ratios that come close to that of discrete audio cards (and even exceed them in some cases).  You just have to do a little research, which means going to review sites and downloading product spec sheets.  Realtek spec sheets are detailed and readily available on Realtek's website.
 
"Serious about gaming." Please. My onboard audio kit cured the problems I was having with my Audigy 2 ZS, including game crashes.

That's a Creative driver issue likely.  ...and we all know that Creative isn't the best with their drivers, especially where Vista is concerned.  My point is not that onboard sound doesn't work, as your above post seems to suggest I wrote.  My point is that today's discreet sound cards spec above today's onboard audio solutions.  Yes, a SoundBlaster Live! isn't going to offer 7.1 audio and there aren't not drivers for Vista.  That's Creative for ya.  They don't want to support that 8-year-old sound card on Vista...damned them!  ...but we're comparing today's onboard solutions to today's discreet solutions, eh?  Are the Realtek onboard solutions besting 109db S/N ratio while being able to offload any audio processing from the CPU (not an issue, really, with today's dual and quad cores, but not irrelevant either).  Are they offering any positional audio past EAX 3?  I know onboard sound has come a long way but, again, I've not read or heard anything that makes me beleive an ALC883 is equal to an Xonar or X-Fi.  

You say that the noise isolation is better with a discrete card but I actually get quite bad noise from my PCIE socket with my X-fi. Its a nasty scratching noise.  

 
I've heard of the Snap-Crackle-N-Pop issue that some people have had with their X-Fi cards.  It's been nearly 2 years and I'm surprised that people are still having the issue.  One theory, and this was back in 2006, was to change the physical slot the card was in, that worked for some, didn't work for others.  I have 3 X-Fi in 3 computers and have been lucky, I guess, no Snap-Crackle-N-Pop on any of them.
 
It made it hard to recommend the otherwise quite nice X-Fi, and Creative FINALLY did the Vista drivers some justice.  
 
Since I've been writing in this thread I've read some reviews of the ALC883 which say its nice and it beat a Diamond discreet card.  That's saying something.  I'm hard headed, so I'm not entirely convinced, but I might have to have a listen....

Creative is greedy and pathetic. Realtek offer full Vista driver support for their old onboard that's more than half a decade old. Even though few people still use. If even one of their comsumers still use an old model, they'll support it. And Creative drop support for their two week old expensive soundcard.

At the moment, I am willing to believe anything from Realtek. They've been proven to be honorable through their deeds. Unless they pull a fast one, their words are good enough for me. If they say it beat a Diamond discreet card, than that's what it is.

i became very anti-creative-sound card when i lost a driver disk and called for some help, back when they didnt have driver downloads on their site.  They told me that i could pay to have one shipped to me, i was like you have got to be kidding me, 12.00 bucks for a freaking driver.  So now i am on-board till it dies.

I actually prefer an add-on sound card over on-board. I can tell  the difference. The on-board solution sounds a bit flat to me and less noise/distortion coming through the speakers.
 
If you are not sure then simply try out the on-board sound. If you think it sucks then buy an add-on card.

It's placebo effect. You should have someone switch addon and onboard and have you hear some sounds without knowing which one is which.

I'm quite tempted to try a discrete card over the onboard to see if I can notice any difference. The only problem being I only have a PCI-E x1 slot left on my board!

 
Dagger, that is not placebo effect, but we've have this discussion.  If you're using a contemporary add-on card many will agree that there is an audible difference between that an on-board sound.  Maybe there's no difference between onboard sound and say a...SoundBlaster PCI or SoundBlaster Live!  ...I'll concede that.  ...but onboard and X-Fi or onboard and Xonar are not the same things.  109-118db S/N ratio is something onboard sound does not yet offer.

Firmly in Halcyon's camp here - If you have speakers and/or headphones which are capable of producing accurate sound, the difference between onboard and a decent card is clearly audible.   And if you are the kind of person who cares about such things, it's very worth your while to at least go with a good sound card (X-Fi or better) through a set of decent headphones.
 

Yes the add on cards have a hotter output so you think that it's better....But if you were to set them up 2 identicle machines a) being on board HD audio b) being creative card...  
set the levels the same using a test tone...then run a hd audio file through them you won't notice a differance....
back in the old ac97 days yes there was a big differance but today, no way!
Hell, you pure digital outs on most HD onboard....Digital is Digital!
nough said...peace!