If you want something that is better than the usual motherboard sound, you could look at the Soundblaster sound cards.
It's not great but it's definitely better than the onboard sound probably is.
I recently replaced a SB card that failed after ~7 years. The specific card I bought was a Audigy RX model# 1550 for about $60. The minimum OS is WinXP.
For home-recording use: it can record and play at higher bit-rates and with much less buffering than the typical mobo sound can. It is the only SB card left that has hardware support for Soundfonts (if that is your thing) and it can use the Smart Recorder software to record any audio the PC plays, despite whatever copy-protection the media player has.
That said--it isn't really a MIDI/home-recording card. It is mainly for gaming and home-theater. Creative has kinda given up on home-recording market. The old card had a gameport that you could attach a MIDI pigtail to, that gave you a MIDI-in and a MIDI-out port. None of the current Creative cards seem to have that now.
Also I will say: I mainly edit existing sound files on the PC; I don't use the PC for actual recording. You can do MIDI recording okay on a PC if you have the MIDI interface but for audio it is much cheaper and easier to just use a stand-alone recorder,,, in my own experience.