Looking for a sound card

Those speaker aren't good enough for you to notice a difference between your integrated and dedicated soundcards. Most integrated are 7.1, some of the cheaper motherboards come with only 5.1

yea the Z 5300e are ok speakers but enzo is right you will not notice a difference between onboard and a high end card. Only benefits you will see is in gaming if you go to a dedicated card say an x fi or a xonar which will process eax via the card instead of software now if you are using an older computer more then 4 or 5 years old then the onboard is not as good as the ones on newer boards so i would suggest an ASUS xonar. The HT omega is pointless unless you are using studio grade speakers costing a couple grand atleast.

Oh alright. Its a shame my speakers suck XD I always thought they were pretty good lol. Well either way I would like to get a sound card. I looked up the xonar on newegg and there are 2 version the D1 and the DX...whats the difference? They cost the same. Also I noticed this sound card for around the same price range http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... I have read lots of reviews where people complain about drivers for creative cards. Is this still the case?

+1^

They are. It's just that the integrated sound on motherboards these days are so much better than they used to be. To the point where in most cases, the user will not benefit from purchasing a dedicated sound card.

That is quite debatable.

Even with the exceptionally low quality Logitech LS21's on the woman's PC, we could hear massively better sound quality when changing from onboard sound to an old Creative X-Fi.
We both heard even better sound quality when I put the old Xonar Dx in the rig.
Keep in mind, she has a set of tin ears and these speakers are really low quality.
Similar boosts in sound quality where heard on my main system between the old X-Fi and Dx on a set of x-540's.

Just because you can not hear it does not mean there are no increases in sound quality or that there is no benefit.
Everyone has different ears, some of us really can hear the difference...

I think I will go with the Xonar card then guys   thanks a lot for the help! Hopefully I do hear a difference and if not oh well its gonna look nice in my case haha.

Best answer selected by aodknifer.

I hav altec lancing 2.1 speakers of model mx5021 for this which card is better for $100.