Looking for a replacement soundcard for onboard audio?

I've looked all over for win7x64 drivers on my motherboard card without any luck.

I'm not too concerned with the analog portion of the soundcard, as long as it works without noticeable problems, supports at least 5.1 channels, and has a half-decent a/d conversion.  Sometimes, I'll want to hook something up quickly, or want to test something out on mainstream hardware, or fiddle around with multi-channel audio, or something else but I do most of my listening on a separate DAC and amplifier.

The most important thing I'm looking for is in the audio chipset and it's drivers (I don't know which ones are good).  It must have a clean and unobtrusive user interface and have robust drivers, yet still be full-featured.

Now, I don't know if this is specific to each soundcard, or if it's just marketing (like pc-speakers that come advertised as "mac/windows compatible"), but It would be nice if the soundcard was flexible in terms of API support, with support for codecs such as those from dolby and dts, and flexibility in terms of s/pdif output resolution and sampling rate.

With that in mind, I'd like for it to be as inexpensive as possible.  A black pcb and name-brand wouldn't hurt either =P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hybrys 

What's your motherboard?  Let me give it a try finding the drivers for you.

 

Other than that, the Xonar line's more value based cards might be exactly what you're looking for.

I'm using a ip35-e which uses a Realtek ALC888 chipset.  I have found a couple drivers online, but none of them have actually worked.

Thanks, I'll see what I can find from the xonar line

Thanks.  I've tried the one on the realtek site before with no success, but it seems there is a new version out.

I'm on summer break right now without my desktop, but I'll try it when I get back home.