Comment Why was it logical before now? (Score 1) 502
Sound cards were popular for a few reasons:
1. Many motherboards back then didn't have sound
2. Those that did required more CPU processing time which resulted in lower gaming multimedia performance, instead let an better optimized chipset dot he work
3. MIDI files were popular for games and music and the better the sound card the better the pre-recorded instrument library to play the mid music
4. Early 2000 onboard sound is good enough for most users but for encoding / decoding you need more horse power which you could get from sound cards
Today there is still a need for sound boards but usually for specialized applications. Your day to day user or gamer gets all the features he needs a decent onboard sound implementation. Buy a cheap board and get a cheap sound chipset (in most cases)