Cheap Good Audio Card

[taimuraly]

I have a P4 3.06Ghz and would like help in adding a sound card. Having a dedicated audio card has its advantages and the most important being the CPU has less work to do. This will help me gain a few of the CPU's power and thus improve gaming somewhat :suspiciou. Don't play games on the PC much any more but when I do its games like CnC, AoE, Team Fortress, Battlefield and so would like to juice the CPU to the max :evil:. Don't want to the card to be more than 45 US dollars and only will be using 2 speakers so it can be any.1 I don't care. Any recommendations will be truly appreciated.

Also is there any truth to that when having a dedicated sound card one can hear more and further than compared to an on-board sound card.

 

[ucould2]

so less 'cluttered' kitchen more 'defined' sounds

To create true definition with two speakers is not really going to happen (that's not saying that stereo is poohfar) you can buy cheap 'depth of sound' by adding a small SUB woofer http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch_v3.asp?scriteria=5012462 :approve:
I bought a second hand card there are quite a few still out there Creative Sound BlasterLive for the same reason that you stated and coupled with the sub woofer have a better listening pleasure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live!. It was never intended to be as good as my Micro HiFi (it has only two speakers by the way) but with the small money spent I believe it is good enough. :slurp:

 

[Slux773]

Audio cards are a waste of money. Pretty much all motherboards have an onboard integrated card that works just fine, sound quality is more based on your headset / speakers.