Really depends on the quality, noise floor, and hiss of your on-board sound-card. I've had motherboard where I tried the on-board card, didn't take me long to p

Really depends on the quality, noise floor, and hiss of your on-board sound-card. I've had motherboard where I tried the on-board card, didn't take me long to put in my old PCI card again. Also depends on how "hard" your audio equipment to feed. You don't go hanging big speakers directly to your PC kind-of-thing.