"A few years ago, an addon sound card was mandatory for almost every pre-built or do-it-yourself (DIY) PC. Either the onboard solution was garbage, or more likely, your motherboard didn't have one. Over the past couple years, motherboard manufacturers began to add more onboard peripherals, including sound. Today, it is unthinkable to omit this feature, and in most cases, the onboard sound isn't too bad. For the most part, I am fine with many of today's solutions, although these onboard chips are not perfect in every scenario, which we've covered in our motherboard reviews.

Sometimes, we'll need to go old school, and in these cases, there is no replacing a good sound card. There is such a thing as good and bad sound cards though, and like most of the cases in the past, some money needs to be spent for a quality card. Though Creative Labs still dominates the consumer mindset when it comes to sound, VIA has been gaining momentum with their Envy24PT, which we covered briefly last year. Unless you're lucky enough to have a motherboard with an onboard Envy24PT, you'll still need to spend some dough picking up a standalone card featuring the Envy24PT."

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