Should I but a soundcard?

Hi I have recently bought a Sennheiser HD 555 headphone currently I hook it up to the onboard soundcard of my sabertooth p67 motherboard, I have a PCI x1 slot available, all others are occupied, should I buy a soundcard? if yes what are good soundcards for my use? I listen to music and play games and watch movies most of the time.

I noticed a mistake in the title but it says you cant edit after I edit the title sry for the mistake guys

The sabertooth has fairly good 7.1 sound support personally I wouldnt bother with a sound card.
Currently using the sabertooth mobo also, spent a good few hours contemplating a sound card for the razer tiamats (whenever they get released) and decided that its not even worth £50 when all it will do is change where I plug the cables in.

I wouldn't worry about it. For the average user listening to things such as music, games, movies, etc you probably won't notice a large enough distinction in quality that will be worth the price you pay for a decent card. I know I don't.

I'm tired of the "you won't hear a difference" talk thats going on in these boards, I really am. With a decent set of headphones/speakers [which the 555's are], a soundcard will make a major difference.

Best all around bet is the ASUS Xonar DX, which currently goes for about $70 or so.

^+1 it's a ridiculous statement "you won't hear a difference"!
I guess you won't see a difference between onboard video and a discrete gpu either when gaming!
Stupid statement !
If you have good headphones and/or speakers you'll definitely hear a difference.

In my mind, the threshold for sound adequacy for the average person has been reached with onboard audio.

The expanding market in terms of HD and improved display graphics continues to expand. I agree forking out top dollar for the newest card on the market may seem futile, but some like the best, and in doing so they provide, in some sense, a form of future proofing against games that come out with better resolution and more demanding graphics before they upgrade their entire system.

The onboard audio vs soundcard and onboard video vs video card arguments are not apples to apples in this case. I think most would agree they would play a game with average sound and great video before they would play a game with average video and great sound.

The marked future proofing improvement of spending $100+ dollars on a GPU vs a soundcard make this a no brainer for any gamer as audio quality with onboard audio is more than adequate for most users.

The bottom line is that the marginal improvements in graphics beat out marginal improvements in sound any day. Video is more important that audio. In choosing a gaming system that contains onboard audio + GPU or onboard video + soundcard, I, and many others, would taking the GPU and onboard audio hands down. For gaming the cost of upgrading to a soundcard is just a misuse of money as you could have spent it elsewhere in your system to get better performance instead of the marginal upgrade in sound quality.

In the build forums here, it is rare to see someone suggesting $70 dedicated to getting a soundcard to anyone on any kind of budget gaming PC.

Asus,Auzentech,and HT Omega offer high quality products with good drivers.
I run 2 different Auzentech cards on Win7 platforms = drivers have been excellent and trouble free!

Solid choice!
ASUS Xonar DX 7.1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6829132006
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=2 [...] cture=ASUS