Ray I think you are misleading in your assumptions.....
YES.... A basic inbuilt bog standard soundcard that generally come as standard in most PCs is OK for general audio and computer use......
BUT..... is not OK for serious gaming or for any form of serious audio production other than simple recordings. For serious audio recording a multi channel input/output audio/midi interface is needed and most standard internals cannot handle this.

Apart from latency and the quality of sound there are many reasons why a basic internal card cannot do the job.
There are tons of online blogs and articles that explain why. Here is just one
http://www.songwriting-software.com/sound-audio.html