Is this for any "serious" audio work, or just gaming?
If the former, as an audio engineer myself, I highly (and I mean highly) recommend getting a discrete audio card; the difference is profound when going from even the best onboard audio to an "average" discrete card, and from the ALC898 to either (my person favorite) the Creative Titanium HD or Asus Xonar Essence STX, it's a whole different world.
The reaosn I favor the TiHD to the STX is that the former uses CMSS3D, which is binaural audio for virtualized "surround" sound; that means that the audio can be "set" to be coming from anywhere in a 360 degree radius, as well as at any elevation from 0 to 90 degrees above you. There can be up to 128 different, completely unique directional "voices" at once!
With the STX, instead of CMSS3D, you have Dolby Headphone. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, the way it goes about making "surround" audio is different. Instead of virtualizing sounds to any point in space, it actually virtually mimics a 5.1 or 7.1 SPEAKER configuration, so everything sounds like it's coming from 6-8 discrete speakers, instead of being truly directional.
That said, for film use, the STX is a tiny bit better, while for gaming and recording the Ti HD has proven itself superior to me, using everything from $20 headphones to my Grado PS1000's and GS1000's, or misc un-named speakers to Sonus Faber Cremona Auditor custom editions, the sound card has never been a "bottleneck" to me. This is for both listening to, and recording, music, as well as editing and mastering records (24-bit/192khz originals for the extra bit depth while editing).
If you have a decent pair of headphones or speakers, a dedicated card is truly worthwhile!
