No matter how powerful a PC is, onboard audio just does not cut it, even if it's HD.

The thing is Creative has always had horrible drivers and bad hardware. Intel's Azalia has been better from technical stand point for a while now.

The only thing a creative labs card gets you over integrated is possibly marginally better sound quality due to sometimes using better quality components than onboard. But no intelligent gamer would be willing to sacrifice system stability, especially with SLI, for this.

I can't wait for CL to get out of the PC sound card business.

My Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 sounds a lot better than Creative Labs sound cards. Software is excellent in both Windows and Linux. Creative Labs cards lag or drift when video and audio is syncing together.

When will Creative Labs learn having the best specs does not always provide the best sound quality.

I am one of the 1%

Bit the Audigy 2 was the last card i got from them till the start supporting DD-Live.
It is strage that a company like Creative dosend support this.
(rummer is that its because of a deal whit the record studio's)

I got two 24-bit Live! cheap sound cards. Why? My modern mobo didn't have a 4-pin header for a TV card sound out. This was an easy solution and the sound quality is comparable to the Intel HD audio in my opinion.

The other sound card went on a board without the 5.1 jacks so I could use a 5.1 setup. The extra speakers in the Logitech speaker set gave a better stereo effect, but the overall audio quality was unchanged.

So, $30 sound card is a fine investment where it's needed. What's so wrong with that?

I defy anyone to hear a difference between intel and creative while playing games :)

I used to run creative in all my systems, required less cpu to operate and they seemed fine for me. however, its been a long time since i've done video editing so im guessing they've gone down hill?

Creative Labs shouldn't be allowed to exist.