I am building a win7 spi 64 bit pc. My spects support this.

Can anyone recomment a good sound card for Skyrim. Has anyone had any bad experiences with on.

Sound is the area I know least about so any guidance would be appreciated

External (eg, not on-board) sound cards are becoming less and less common/less choice from what I can tell. I have yet to hear any on-board sound that satisfies me, but I suppose most people really don't need/care about it these days unless their mobo doesn't come with onboard. Anyway, SoundBlaster still probably the best known. It's what I've always bought and I've been happy with them for gaming, watching movies on my PC, that sort of thing.

My Soundblaster Xi-FI Xtreme works just fine with Skyrim. However it has an issue re: recording internal audio in Vista/Win7. That is, your Fraps program will record sound of the games just fine (I do it all the time) but if you wanted to record sound from a website or DVD as it plays by pressing 'record' via some program (what you hear) that might not work. Xi-Fi Xtreme/Titanium are both like this, but other Xi-FI's and the Audigy's are not.

There's probably other brands that work just fine too, like Asus, but I don't have experience with those. I personally don't like Real-Tek much, tho - drivers & support. I'd stay away from those, at least the cheaper ones.

I have a Soundblaster Xi-FI Xtreme and i wished i had a dedicated sound card years ago, and i love it, i mostly play my dvd's through my pc, and the sound is amazing with a 5.1 system and if i can be bothered i can hook another connection up to my stereo and get 7.1.

If your using a True Digital connection like Toslink/coax/fiber/hdmi... doesn't matter what sound car you have.

Realtek Onboard is by far the best audio solution available in that department due to it's simplistic and just works implementation.

Add in cards.... well that's mostly for those still using anolog connections in which realtek or no onboard audio solution has any real DACs but sound cards do. Up to you mostly... driver issues and well when it comes to windows vista/7.... zero hardware acceleration so if someone so much as mentions performance advantages... sorry but there is a performance reduction

Everything has a DAC. Otherwise you'd just hear white noise. We can't listen to pure digital signals.

Onboard sound is better than people think, and it's been getting better. Some computers, depending on the components used, will have a lot of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_interference which will increase the noise of onboard chips especially. Cheap sound cards might also be affected, but good ones are shielded and will prevent most or all of it. Outboard options, like external DACs, will be immune.

The real reason a gamer is going to want a sound card is for surround sound emulation with headphones, which works wonderfully. Creative sound cards or anything which uses their technology are generally regarded as the best for this, with ALchemy for Vista and 7. There are sound cards which use Dolby Headphone too, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132010. Which works best is usually up to the individual, because they both use slightly different http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function standards and one might fit a person's head better.

If you want a cheap solution, the ASUS Xonar DG is $30 and has Dolby Headphone. Temporarily out of stock on Amazon though.

I've always been happy with my Creative sound cards.

I dislike on-board as I've never had any that comes close to sounding as good as my stand alone cards. All the on-boards had an issue with one thing or another. (Games/MP3s/something.) Games sounded tinny for example, and not on just one chipset/mobo! My Creative cards have always just worked, and sounded much better.

Plus, for the longest while I was using 6.1. It just doesn't work well in my new place so I'm using 3.1 now.

I've used the Creative Audigy, X-Gamer, and I am currently using a Titanium. I'd recommend any one of them.

I never use onboard crap "sound cards". Has always been usin Creative sound cards and that's good for me.

Yeah, that's been my experience as well, with a large variety of on-board mobo's from a variety of years. They've all been awful or problematic for software in one way or another.