I have a Dell XPS 430 and never gave sound much of a thought aside from the occasional niggling problem. Sound cards used to be a big deal. Is native hardware sound so good that there is no longer any point to buying a sound card like Sound Blaster to slide into a slot?

Unless you are doing digital recording that needs to be of a high quality and you have a particularly old motherboard, then the native sound on most motherboards is good enough these days I find.I've got one or two pretty good soundcards kicking around, because I sometimes DI musical instruments and microphones into my computer to record stuff, but I didn't even bother putting a soundcard in the slot the last time I rebuilt my main computer, because the motherboard's native sound is more than capable of getting a clean signal, and it provides perfectly okay sound for games, sims and musical playback.I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating really, if you are happy with the motherboard's native sound and it causes no problems, then that's all you need to know.Al

kind of a tricky questions... for me I'm a complete audiophile.. and would never consider an SB as good quality, and definitely onboard is horrendous. Those chips costs less than you'd think , and really are only there for functionality nothing else. You want quality sound you can pay for it... for me that means optical/coax out on everything. So I only ever need one sound card ever and thats apart of the home amplifier.