That motherboard uses Realtek's ALC650 controller for audio with an 18 bit ADC and a 20 bit DAC while the Soundblaster uses 16 bit all the way. I don't know if that makes any real world difference though. I'm using the Delta2-ILSR that has the same chip but use an Audigy 2 for sound and have never tried out the integrated sound. My question though is: the motherboard came with Nvidia's Soundstorm drivers, so do you use these drivers or Realtek's AC '97 codec?