Cheap Sound Cards
Today's computers mostly come with integrated sound cards.
Back in the days, integrated sound cards were performing poorly and generally were not recommended.
Today's integrated sound cards do the job very well, and even have support for 7.1 speakers. However, one thing to remember about integrated sound card is that it will use your CPU resources, which will somewhat degrade gameplay experience, if your CPU is hardly coping with the game's system requirements.
Buying a sound card as a separate part, will generally give you somewhat better sound (of course, depending on how much money you spend) and somewhat better game play experience. You can always get a good sound card for around $50. As an example, in time of this writing, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 is in that price range, and is much better than any integrated sound card out there. So if you are extremely tight on money get an integrated sound card (which comes with your motherboard) with the support for at least 5.1 speakers. If you have extra $50 to spend on your configuration, get a sound card in that price range.
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