It can be confusing when buying a new motherboard or sound card to know what is good or just plain average, with all the marketing slogans being thrown at you here and there.
Basically, the No.1 feature you have to look for is the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).
Anything beyond 120dB is high-end, anything below 100dB is entry-level.
And if you're into recording audio, be it streamed music or from the line-in, you should not only look at the SNR of the DAC, but also the SNR of the ADC. Here you don't want anything below 96dB if you don't want muffled sound, as CDs boast a 96dB SNR.
If the ADC SNR is not mentionned, substract 10dB from the DAC SNR as a rule of thumb.
Usually, you can find the SNR by googling the soundchip name.
Many motherboards use the ALC887 audiochip, which has a 97dB SNR for the DAC and 90dB SNR for the ADC, so not recommended if you care even a bit about high audio quality.
Better options are for example the ALC1200 (SNR~110dB) or the ALC1220 (SNR~120dB)
