This sound card any good?

Actually... could he just use onboard sound fine with those 5.1 speakers? He could later upgrade to a sound card, if/when he upgrades his speakers.
 
i use onboard with my 5.1. sounds great. sound card are only NEEDED if you do sound production. for ur average gamer, i think onboard is sufficient.
 
Well he's just going to be listening to music/light gaming. No sound production. I have some creative sound card and really can't tell the difference between it and onboard sound, but I've heard people can...
 
Oh, there are diffrences, althought the newer onboard audio has improved quite a bit.

I remember when I made the switch from an old Turtle Beach MontegoBay 2 card to the Audigy 1, WOW. And the Turtle Beach was better then my onboard audio.

Anyways, if he does'nt mind the onboard audio to begin with, leave well enough alone :)

A sound card, specifically form creative, may improve his gaming perfomrance slightly be taking some work off the CPU. In some games it can be as much as a 30FPS diffrence between 150fps and 180fps but that's at low resolution.... so kind of pointless.

Usually you can only start to tell diffrences when you get into higher audio setups (go figgure), and im not sure how good the Logitech X-530's are myself. So a diffrence may in fact not be noticed.

Getting a creative based card can also allow for newer versions of EAX. I'm not sure if you or your friend see that as being important.

Sound cards are usually accompanied by more software aspects, where you can controle things like the bass and treble, add sound effects, master graphic equalizers, etc. Some onboard audio solutions do not have these settings. My dad has some cheap altech lansing 2.1 setup, where the sub woofer does not have a volume adjustment, nor does the onboard audio, and boy the bass is way to loud.
~Hope this helps
 
I decided I'm going to get him a sound card so he doesn't have to open the case when he gets a new sound system. The Turtle Beach sound card was $50 on newegg, but I also saw a creative labs sound card for $50. It has a higher sample rate, so I guess it's better.
 
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