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Originally Posted by jcw122  Honestly, I simply participated because I was really bored, and I enjoy doing polls on forums, haha. The main forum page showed this thread, and I saw it was a poll.
But seriously, the next computer I build (which won't be til I'm out of college) will most likely include a soundcard in the $50-150 range depending on my overall price range, as well as what kind of soundcard would do well for headphones. It would be for both music and gaming. I'll also add that I would not use an X-fi unless the problems I have read about so often (cards failing) have since been resolved.
Sokolov, I also didn't think about usability for future builds. That's an interesting point, considering most components can't normally transfer to new builds, but I know that soundcards would be a great thing to transfer between builds. I'll keep that in mind.
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Yeah dropping 150$ + on a soundcard can be hard and almost seem downright crazy depending on what you are used to spending, but when you think that you can now get them in PCIE (can be used in any slot 1x to 16x), or PCI which is still widely used and the technology doesn't move very fast, and most of it is updated through drivers, the value becomes much more of an investment... a rarity in computers.
An external dac will obviously sound better, but one thing I wonder about for gaming is latency. Such it won't be much, but if you are using sound as an edge, a few milli seconds might cost a frag
. Plus, you can always use coax out to an external dac at a later point in time, and if I am not mistaken, it will still beat dirty on board. Plus, for Bang/Buck/gaming its really hard to beat the STX or ST.
Trust me, when you go from ~80 SNR to 124 you never look back
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