Sound Card

[Treewyrm]

Well, first of all - what do you need it for? Do you want to have better sound quality for music listening, watching movies or playing games? Do you need hardware EAX for older games? Current dedicated soundcards are quite different, and each has own specific strengths and quirks.

Do you want soundcard just for your 5.1 speaker system or do you plan to purchase high quality headphones later?

For your current setup Xonar DS is alright. For internal dedicated soundcard the choice today is mainly between Asus Xonar/Essence series and Creative Labs Sound Blaster. So far I've used Xonar D2X, Essence STX and Titanium X-Fi HD (current). If you can push your budget a little higher my personal recommendation would be Xonar D2X and I would avoid using mostly-software garbage like Creative Recon3D.