Sound card choice advice needed

A friend just gave me a Dell Dimension 2400. It's old, but my current machine is much older. According to the Dell website, it has an Analog Devices 198x Integrated Audio sound processor, which I can't find much info about online. I also happen to have an old Creative Soundblaster Live card (the Dell OEM version) I could put in this machine. I'm not all that knowledgeable about such things, and I'm wondering which would be better from the following two perspectives:

1) Managing general sound tasks (like system sounds and YouTube videos and the like) while reducing the demands on general system resources. Doesn't the Soundblaster have it's own chip and memory, thereby freeing up the main processor and memory for other tasks?

2) Handling more demanding sound tasks like recording and audio mixing in Audacity and Band-in-a-Box. I don't do complicated recordings (I just record a few guitar and vocal tracks a track at a time). But I also record on a friend's digital recording studio and bring the tracks home to mix. I need reasonably good sound quality on these.

All help is greatly appreciated.

 

I would decide what kind of speaker system I wanted to power with my sound card. if you are going to setup a 5.1 surround sound speaker system then soundblaster would be an option to consider. turtle beach also makes some very good sound cards for the budget minded. logitech X540 speaker system is a good value and decent sound. decide on your budget and go for it, the best speakers coupled with a good sound card.