Soundblaster X-Fi or onboard audio?

I have the same soundcard as you do and I'm planning to buy the same system as yours, give or take (P6T + I7 with 6Gb ram and so on). Also I'm a big fan of music, that was the main reason for me giving 125€ for that soundcard 3 years ago. Although recent boards bring near over-the-top soundcards it will always be an on-board chip so as little as it might be you'll probably have a gain in performance if your sound is processed by an external (non-board) chip as is a PCI soundcard.

And bear in mind that the X-Fi is still the current standard in Creative soundcards. In terms of specs I don't know which has a better sound but in a personal opinion I'd stay with the X-Fi because it's just amzing for someone that spends hours listening to music on a PC (as I or you do), so for me it's worth keeping the X-Fi in spite of it probably isn't PCI-E but plain PCI!

In the end it's all about a small difference in bus which is faster on PCI-E as it should be. But yes in a soundcard I don't think you'll find many performance issues for being "old" PCI instead of PCI-E.

Cheers, Júlio

Sure, the soundboard is just a part of the equation. But as to what was asked and given my personal experience (I use an X-Fi Extreme Music for over three years now) almost any, if not all, onboard sound chips will probably fall a bit short to it. Even if that's not noticed in playback as this soundcard gives you more than just playback, you can turn your PC into a recording/editing machine for audio samples, be it pro or amateur stuff! It's fact that an onboard chip requires some CPU effort to work (since it's onboard), and that the same chip in a PCI or PCI-E card will release the CPU from the effort of processing the audio engine. Ok we already have I7s running a gazilion operations and that shouldn't be noticeable, at least for playback, but what if you're working on music samples?! IMO it's always better to have a separate card/chip than an onboard one, no matter how good an onboard chip can perform. As I said before it will probably fall short every time. And as to having either an onboard X-Fi chip or a separate PCI/PCI-E X-Fi chip for me it's always better the second. Of course money could be an issue but that wasn't what was asked.

Oh and BTW, equalization is different for every person in the world, some like it sharper, some with more hiss, some with more emphasis on graves or high notes...So equalization always depends on who's listening! In terms of better performance it's more the output device that influences the sound. In this case some good speakers. Alternatively you can have the best speakers in the world and a not-so-good onboard sound chip and your sound will still be far from perfect!