Obviously you sound like your looking for some good audio quality here, and I maybe way off, but honestly to me, any MB crappy audio chipsets CANNOT really beat a good old "quality" separate "Sound Card" period. Especially, these stoopid audio MB-chips that tout "HD" audio like you can only get that, or even hear it with thier respective MB's. ?
It's basically like comparing Graphics Video-cards with "onboard" MB-graphics-chips. ? -yipee!
The trouble lately, is that the "really" good Audio cards are almost as much $$$ as the freekin' MB's today ?!