Which of my sound cards is better?

I would say the onboard might be better but .....


If you get that card working fine under Win7, only you can decide if it actually sounds better or not.
Alot will depend on your speakers as well, and how much of a Audiophile you are.


The Sound card may actually have more clarity.

A lot of onboard audio these days is getting quite decent, but I find mine to sound muddy in comparison to my X-Fi.


I think officially, its the just Xtreme Gamer and up thats officially supported on Win7. Could be wrong on that.

The quality of the audio is based on the bit rate of the source; the higher the bit rate, the better the quality. However, much of what you hear is determined by your output: the speakers. 8 channel audio won't mean squat if you've only got 2 speakers.

If you game I'd use the card. Agreed, onboard audio chips are a lot better these days but they're just never as good as dedicated cards.

Fumz said:

The quality of the audio is based on the bit rate of the source; the higher the bit rate, the better the quality.

Very good point.
A poorly encoded, very low bitrate MP3, for example, is going to sound horrid regardless what setup you have.