Aftermarket Sound card worth it?

[humanage]

I have a P67A-GD55 motherboard with integrated audio, and I also have $35 creative speakers(bought them at Wal*Mart). What difference will it make if I get an X-Fi Titanium sound card and Corsair SP2500 speakers? I already have a great system(1080p display, GTX 570, 2500K @5GHz), will this make it any better?

 

[Ubrales]

Yes it will make it better; marginally better. In my case, I returned the Creative X-Fi card and reverted to on-board sound. I ca't tell the difference. Maybe my ears are going bad. What did you say?

 

[Petrofsky]

I have a P67A-GD55 motherboard with integrated audio, and I also have $35 creative speakers(bought them at Wal*Mart). What difference will it make if I get an X-Fi Titanium sound card and Corsair SP2500 speakers? I already have a great system(1080p display, GTX 570, 2500K @5GHz), will this make it any better?

The speakers make all the difference. The SB card is a rip-off if you're using dedicated speakers. Take the $150 you would have wasted on SB's overpriced distortion engine and get better speakers. You want 5.1, by the way.

 

[davcon]

I wouldn't buy a Creative card directly but an improved version like the Auzentech Forte.
http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=35596&promoid=1302&vpn=AZTXFF7105551&manufacture=AuzenTech
Matched with the Corsair or any high quality 2.1 system would be ideal imo.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It really depends on what your system config is. Really, really, modern CPUs are more than powerful enough to handle sound processing. It really only matters what your connections are. My K9A2 Platinum has 8.1 Surround from RealTek and my Phenom II X4 940 is more than capable of handling it. I worked at a Radio Station in Lennoxville, Quebec for a little while and their broadcasting computers were using socket-939 Semprons!

Long story short, digital audio has become so common that sound cards rarely, if ever, make a difference. Some say that a sound card will take some of the CPUs workload for gaming sound but let's face it, the bottleneck in 99% of games is the video card. CPUs are all generally overpowered for games.