You have to take the 'Its a crap game media player sound card' assault with a grain of salt ;-)
As for a sound card goes - the fact is that an onboard sound card is not SO bad... somebody mentioned the quality of converters... well this really holds not argument anymore... most converters you find in 'Pro Audio Interfaces' are the same as you would find on an onboard sound card. Some offer slightly better converters - but the margin is very nil few db at best. The preamps on an onboard interface might not be the best as yes they are designed for simple mics for online chat etc. But most onboard cards will have a decent line input if you have an external pre-amp, or some cards have even a digital input if you have a pre-amp with a digital output - this would provide an excellent quality recording - yes even on a ACL888 (Realtek HD) onboard sound card.
As for drivers... I think we need to get the terms right here... too much confusion due to incorrect terms being used which are supposed to simplify things - in which they do not. Somebody mentioned ASIO drivers and WDM drivers... well this is not a true statement. WDM is a driver model (format) designed my Microsoft for device vendors - these drivers are what one would call Kernel Mode drivers... this 'driver' is what allows Windows itself to talk to the hardware. ASIO is in fact NOT a driver - it is an API (Application Programming Interface), an API's job is to provide an Interface or a connection from the audio application (Sonar, Acid, Windows Media Player, WinAmp whatever) to the actual driver (again the WDM format Kernel Mode driver that talks to the device). ASIO provides a path that allows for a robust, low latency to the WDM driver. Not all vendors (i.e onboard sound card vendors) will supply an ASIO API for their driver... but yes an ASIO API would be optimal. ASIO2ALL is such an API that can be used on virtually any WDM (again kernel mode) driver. Other APIs such WDM/KS and MME are alternative ways for the application to talk to the WDM driver. I could go into WDM/KS and MME more but that's off topic ;-) (I should point out that technically WDM/KS can also provide a low latency path the driver as it bypasses Windows' KMixer - which produces about 20-30ms of latency).
In a nutshell (sorry I tend to ramble with geek speak) onboard sound cards are not 'EVIL' as most will make them out to be... if you are doing mostly MIDI with softsynths and rendering to a file audio file - then the quality of the converters and Pre Amps will be irrelevant. If you are recording (guitar, vocals etc) then maybe look at a good external preamp, honestly a good (perhaps tad pricey) preamp will give you far better results than say an averaged priced 'Pro Audio Interface'. I would recommend getting the ASIO4ALL API (which is free) and using that to lower the onboard card's latency.
In a few years (if Microsoft has it's way) WDM drivers will be gone and replaced with Microsoft's UAA - which means all cards/interfaces will need to work directly with Windows with no 3rd party drivers - which when poorly written, cause stability issues with Windows itself (again WDM drivers are Kernel mode drivers). Then everything will change!
Cheers,
Chris