I'm still suprised when I meet gamers with great hi-fi's , but haven't thought to hook up their PC through them and still play games through tiny desktop speakers.
I use the onboard sound for my headset for Ventrilo, and my HT Omega Striker for everything else through my speakers.
Anyone running headsets through on-board sound, or a sound card without support for a headphone amp isnt' exactly hearing the "proper" sound as designed by the manufacturer. Keep in mind that on-board sound cards, and less expensive sound cards are designed to operate at an impedence of 8 ohms which is common for standard PC/home audio speakers. Higher end speakers will use 4 ohm impedence (and require additional power as wattage requirements increase as impedence goes down), but there are also high-end 6 ohm and 8 ohm speakers as well. Headphones on the other hand are 16 ohm, which means they require less power but have a higher impedenece. As a result dedicated sound cards with a "headphone amp" or similar will provide the necessary 16 ohm impedence usually through a dedicated 1/4" port on the card. I might be nit-picking, but personally I hear the difference mostly due to the combination of headphones (Sennhesier HD 565) and the fact that I only listen to uncompressed (FLAC) audio files. But there is a noticeable difference in response from the headphones when they operated at their rated impedence.
Hence why I said I only use it for Ventrilo. I'm not exactly concerned if people in chat are coming through at full fidelity. Also, I'm using the ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, which has the decent onboard audio chip: SupremeFX X-Fi 8-Ch audio with EAX Advanced HD 4.0 support.
I think on-board can vary quite a lot. Scored by sound quality based on my own experience; My laptop (2006): 2/10 Creative card in my old desktop (1998): 3/10 My desktop on-board (2008): 5/10 Asus Xonar DX: 7/10 Standalone DAC I'm using now (2010): 8/10 High-end card in studio PC (1996): 9/10 On-board can be good, but it can also be terrible. The same goes for dedicated sound cards, which can often be just as bad or worse if they're ultra-budget ones or really old!
I know this thread is dead, but for posterity I thought I'd finish it off with a pic of the final decision. I'm happy with the on-board sound at the moment, but will definitely purchase a soundcard in the near future.
good choice you made there, ive used them in the past and was amazed at the sound quality given by them, compared to some mid range bookshelf hifi speakers, they can be better.
