Best sound card that will not slow down pci lane?

If you are using the sound card for gaming, then i would go with creative. But for recording purposes.... that's a whole different story. I then would recommend M-AUDIO DELTA series or a firewire based ROLAND FA-101. For performance, i have tested my M-AUDIO DELTA 1010 in comparison to the FA-101 and i would say that the ROLAND wins but the DELTA has 8x8 inputs/outputs and has wordclock for eliminating latency between devices that are compatible with it. It totally depends on what you are trying to do. Some of the new Creative cards use PCI-E which is a very fast interface but obviously lacks I/O for recording purposes. The ROLAND is a very nice sounding external component capable of recording 192k/24bit.

I too need some help here. I'm using the Gigabyte P55-UD3L mobo that came with a Realtek HD system. But i do find mt 8 years old Dell pc that came with a Sound Blaster sounds better. Am i not doing something i should to enable the HD quality? And, as far as i know, my ATI 4850 also came with a good sound system. How do i make use of it realy?

going to be using it for music while playing poker.....heh....some gaming once in awhile

The Best soundcard as in no budget and best sound quality?  
What are you going to be outputting to, stereo speakers, 5.1/7.1 computer speakers, headphones or a receiver (if receiver please specify method of output)?

My general recommendation would be to avoid Creative cards at all costs.
They have subpar sound quality, terrible drivers and near nonexistent support.
Look instead to ASUS' Xonar Line, HT|Omega or Auzentech for a quality card.

Please post your budget and speaker setup so we can better recommend specific cards.

@ lafanzy

Unfortunately onboard sound has generally inferior sound compared to a dedicated soundcard.
While your 4850 does have an onboard CODEC, it can only output to HDMI receivers and is not necessarily better sounding than your current CODEC.

Do you have a budget for a better sound card?
What would you be hooking it up to?

(Assuming Vista/Win7 for below post)
If you're using digital out, any integrated soundcard will sound the same. The ATI HDMI will sound exactly the same to since it's also digital.

The only way a digital out will sound different is if you have an OpenAL sound card that does hardware based sound transformations. (This only really applies to game)

Now, if you're talking about analog, then you get something. Quality of DACs/ADCs vary a lot.