[gormster]

My sound card cost fifty dollars. It was the cheapest one I could get with onboard MIDI. I have absolutely zero problem with it other than Cubase doesn't recognise it as surround, which is not really a huge deal.

I know you can reduce your CPU load and etc. by getting a more expensive sound card, but just get a better CPU. Or a mac, if you're going to be exclusively using it for music-making. I've never used one for that purpose but I hear that they are good at it.

I've got a P4 2.2GHz, and 768MB RAM. My PC only struggles in the densest part of a Reason song that has got to have more than a hundred devices. Possible much more, I haven't counted them all and a lot of them are in Combinators. If you've got a good amount of RAM (1.5-2GB) and a decent processor (c. 3GHz) then you don't need to worry about a fancy sound card, and both the RAM and processor can be used for things other than music.

Short n Sweet: Don't bother.