I still think that as with a stand alone video card, you're still best off with a stand alone sound card if you're after ultimate performance, but you can certainly get by with everything on the motherboard or even more integrated, even if you do play games, edit video or edit sound. The performance levels are still quite high, particularly if all other parts are well made. Certainly things like recording audio are best done with a USB microphone, MIDI interfaces are best served through USB, etc. Video editing is handled through firewire, etc. A lot of the analog interfaces of the past have really become nice-to-have's rather than needs, offloading a lot of functionality to interfaces rather than on-board processes.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[My collection - www.billandchristina.com/vgamecomp/vgamecomp.htm]
[www.MythCore.com]