Welcome to the forum.
We need to know the exact model of your i7 cpu.
1.1 Nehalem microarchitecture
1.1.1 "Bloomfield" (45 nm)
1.1.2 "Lynnfield" (45 nm)
1.2 Westmere microarchitecture
1.2.1 "Gulftown" (32 nm)
1.3 Sandy Bridge microarchitecture
1.3.1 "Sandy Bridge" (32 nm)
1.3.2 "Sandy Bridge-E" (32 nm)
1.4 Ivy Bridge microarchitecture
1.4.1 "Ivy Bridge" (22 nm)
1.4.2 "Ivy Bridge-E" (22 nm)
1.5 Haswell microarchitecture
1.5.1 "Haswell-DT" (quad-core, 22 nm)
1.5.2 "Haswell-H" (MCP, quad-core, 22 nm)
If you want to do "serious" audio recording or audio processing, you should check into building a DAW (digital audio workstation).
On-board audio does not provide the ultimate in audio processing and you probably should consider installing a high end audio card.