Need advice on Sound for a new Gaming Rig

[Jumpin Jack]

I'm building a new Rig for COD4 and the recommend spec are:
OS: XP or Vista
Processor: 2.6ghz Pentium IV or equivalent (3.2ghz recommended for Vista)
RAM: 1024mb (1536mb recommended for Vista)
Video Card: DirectX 9-compliant Shader 3.0 card with 128 MB of DDR Video Memory (256 MB recommended) AGP 8x or PCI-Express x16
Sound Card: 16-bit DirectX 9-compliant sound card
DirectX9 for XP and 10 for Vista, 8 gigs HD space + 600mb for swap file.
Supported chipsets:
Nvidia Geforce 6/7/8 series
ATi X800 or higher

My old PC just had Creative Sound Blaster live 5.1 + Creative Inspire 5.1 5200. So what is best at the moment for a gaming rig. Is the M/B on-board sound good enough (Asus P5KC) or should I run a sound card as well?

Thks!

 

[Jumpin Jack]

OK.. no one has an opinion? I replaced the M/B with a Abit IP35 Pro and the on-board sound is not that great so I need a decent sound card?

So what is best at the moment for a gaming rig .

 

[TTP]

Well there's no response because it's been addressed ad nauseum on this forum already. Just do a search. The 2 top cards are the Creative X-Fi platinum or Auzentech Prelude.

 

[trowakage]

From your sig, it looks like your setup is powerful enough to not take much of a hit from non-accelerated sound cards like your on board (since your rig can dedicate an ENTIRE core to just the sound ).

So what you should be looking for is sound quality, which points you to cards using the Via Envy24HT, such as the Chaintech AV-710, to get true 24 bit support (which Creative cards pretend to have)

 

[Jumpin Jack]

From your sig, it looks like your setup is powerful enough to not take much of a hit from non-accelerated sound cards like your on board (since your rig can dedicate an ENTIRE core to just the sound ).

So what you should be looking for is sound quality, which points you to cards using the Via Envy24HT, such as the Chaintech AV-710, to get true 24 bit support (which Creative cards pretend to have)

trowakage, Thanks for that, I appreciate that info and your time.