Sound Card Compatibility

Like many others it seems, I'm looking at Dragon Naturally Speaking v. 9 voice recognition software to help with some transcription work I'm doing. Their website states the minimum specs include a Creative® Labs Sound Blaster® 16 or equivalent sound card supporting 16-bit recording

I've checked out the reviews on Amazon and they have some conflicting info:

For example, one says:

Quote:
First off, caveat emptor. You need a good sound card. Nuance is not very helpful here. Their website/docs simply state you need a Sound Blaster 16. I don't know if it's occurred to them you can't purchase a Sound Blaster 16 card anymore (nor would you want to), and they should just bite the bullet and present a list of cards that work well (like they do for microphones). I bought a Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeMusic which seems to work. Second, you need a hefty machine. For me this is a 2.4 GHz dual processor XP workstation with a gig of RAM. The box says you can get by with 512 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor, I'm not sure I believe this.

...

Once you have the right hardware in place the software seems to work fairly well. This review was dictated using the software. However, I'm not giving them five stars because they still seem to suffer from poor software engineering. As an example, take the set up and training process. I was waiting for a new sound card to arrive and thought I would try using my onboard sound card built into my Dell. The setup process did claim that the sound quality was insufficient. Unfortunately, navigating out of the process was impossible leaving me stuck at the "welcome to general training" screen. When the new sound card arrived, Dragon was still stuck looking at the on board sound system and had no UI to allow me to use the new sound card. My only solution was to disable the onboard sound system which luckily forced Dragon back into configuration mode where I could reselect my microphone parameters.

Another one says:

Quote:
While I do own a hefty system, dual processors and a few gigabytes of RAM, unlike the other reviewer I've had a very positive experience using only the motherboard's onboard sound.

So, here are my questions followed by the text in my PC's Sys Info file:

1.  Do I or don't I need an additional internal sound card to get the software to work on the Dell Dimension E310? 

2.  If I use just the motherboard's sound in my PC (assuming it is compatible), will I have the problems mentioned in one of the reviews with installing the software because it won't find any extra sound card hardware?

3.  I understand the Soundblaster 16 isn't made anymore.  I checked out the Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Card and the product description says it is a 24 bit system. The Dragon Naturally Speaking system specs call for a 16 bit sound card. Will this work?  If so, how do I step it down to a 16 bit card for the DNS software?

This is the sys info for my Dell Dimension E310 computer:

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Dell DV051
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 9 GenuineIntel ~3059 Mhz
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 9 GenuineIntel ~3059 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A04, 4/4/2006
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 471.12 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB

This is the component - onboard sound device info that came with the Dell:

Name SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC
Manufacturer SigmaTel
Status OK
PNP Device ID HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8384&DEV_7690&SUBSYS_102801C4&REV_1022\4&2434F4F0&0&0201

Name Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device
Manufacturer Microsoft
Status OK