What sound card should I get(or is onboard enough)?

[Prodigious]

I am getting a new pc soon(should be here on friday to be exact). It's a Dell xps studio, so obviously I don't know the exact motherboard model, and therefore what onboard audio it uses. It's an i7 920 system with 6 gigs of ram and an HD 4850. So I'm not overly concerned about losing a few clock cycles here and there for processing surround sound in games via the onboard sound.

However, I have no clue about the audio quality of most recent mobos/chipsets. I've been out of the loop for a while. Up until now I have been using xp, and have loved my x-fi soundcard. However, Vista banished eax(except through emulation/backwards compatability with older games), which I assume negates most of creative's edge with their soundcards.

So first of all, for audio quality and performance is it really worth upgrading to a sound card(I am using logitech z5500s, so I will benefit from improved audio quality), compared to average onboard sound these days? And if so, what would you guys recommend? It has to be pci-e, hopefully be $150 or under, and preferably not require an external power connector(I have no idea what kind of spare connections the dell psu has. Although Im sure there's a few spare molex connectors that could be fitted with an adapter for pci-e). I prefer audio quality over performance as I doubt most games I play will be cpu limited with the gfx card I will be using.

Ty for your help!

[thideras]

I noticed a difference going from onboard to my Auzentech Prelude. I also have a set of the z5500's.

Would I suggest it? Depends how much you want to drop.

[Prodigious]

Hmm well I just looked at the new Auzentech Forte. It seems like the best of both worlds. Newegg has it for $150, which is probably my limit for a soundcard right now(I'm past the days of dropping 250 bucks for a new sound card and 600 bucks for a gfx card etc). It uses the pci-e native x-fi chip with support for all the same stuff like eax5 and onboard xram(which has never seemed useful to me tbh). And of course being that it's from auzentech, the sound quality will probably be slightly better than creative's in-house cards. As a nice bonus it's a low profile card, which is nice since the studio xps is a super cramped minitower.

I might just buy this one. Too bad I can't find any reviews or info on the sound quality and driver support for this card.

[thideras]

I picked up my card for just over 100 shipped. Not sure what the Forte is going for.