Quote Originally Posted by Zucker2k View Post
Onboard sound WILL steal cpu cycles, so I'd say it depends on the game you're playing - ie. if it's a cpu hogging game then get a gamers sound card like the xfi which has its own processor to process the audio; plus you get full EAX 4.0 if its supported by the game.
The X-fi is a great sounding card. I always prefer a nice quality card to onboard audio. Yes it uses less CPU cycles (not really noticeable these days with these nice CPU's), but I don't think Creative's current Vista driver supports EAX 4.0 yet. Regardless, the card sounds crystal clear. I recommend picking one up.