Motherboard Audio Chipsets

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Is there a page somewhere that compares the different integrated audio
chipsets that many motherboards are now including?

I'm about to build a new PC with a microATX motherboard. Audio quality
is an important factor but I have a limited number of PCI slots so I'm
looking for something on-board.

How do these rate?

ADI AD1980
C-Media CMI9739A
Realtek ALC655
AC97 Codec

Are there ones that I should be looking for?

Thank you for your time,
~Lauren

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Wed, 25 May 2005 19:55:48 GMT, "dawg" <don't look@worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

>Check this out. USB audio. Don't know if there are others.
>http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audioadvantage/producthome.asp

It's my understanding that USB audio uses quite a few cpu cycles.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Thu, 26 May 2005 12:26:28 -0700, Fisher <fisher@no_email.here>
wrote:

>I don't know about the other's so much but C-Media is pretty decent. I
>have that on my Asus mb and used it for a while and had no issues and
>the sound quality was ok. AC97 is just a standard and not a sound
>chipset although some mb's list their mb as having AC97 for sound.
>C-Media is also AC97. I think Realtek is supposed to be ok. My Abit
>mb has Realtek ALC650 but I have never tried it out.


Just to complicate things further, the chip is only one relatively
small part of the equation. I've got two systems, both with AC97
sound using C-Media CODECs. The first is an ASRock K7S41GX using a
CMI9739 chip. The second is a Chaintech 7NJL6 using a CMI7961A. The
difference in specs between these two chips is quite small, but the
difference in sound quality is very noticeable. The Chaintech board
has a much cleaner sound, sufficiently better that it's pretty obvious
with my only average-quality computer speakers.

Unfortunately audio is one of those tricky analog things where
subtleties in design can affect performance much more than
specifications.

> The only onboard
>sound solution that can match an add-on card like an Audigy2 is the
>Soundstorm that came on mb's with the Nforce2 chipset.

Virtually none of the nForce2 chipsets use the Soundstorm audio. My
above-mentioned Chaintech board certainly does not. Most of the
nForce1 boards used Soundstorm, but it was mostly dropped for the
nForce2.

> But I think all
>onboard sound these days is fairly decent for music, mp3's, internet
>radio etc. It's when you get into 3D audio in games that they may fall
>a bit short. I prefer to use add-on cards myself and have Audigy2 on
>one PC and Santa Cruz on the other. It all depends on what your PC
>usage is. I'm a gamer and is why I use add-on cards.

I find the integrated audio on my Chaintech board to be quite
sufficient for light-use, but I purchased a PCI sound card for the
ASRock board.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Thu, 26 May 2005 22:38:21 -0400, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:


>Virtually none of the nForce2 chipsets use the Soundstorm audio. My
>above-mentioned Chaintech board certainly does not. Most of the
>nForce1 boards used Soundstorm, but it was mostly dropped for the
>nForce2.

Here's a list showing all the motherboards that use Soundstorm. If I
was going for onboard sound and had AMD I would buy one of those but
of course not if I wanted an Nforce4 mb as none of those have it.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/motherboards.html

NVIDIA SoundStorm

For the most powerful integrated audio solution available today, look
for NVIDIA nForce(TM) and NVIDIA nForce2 systems featuring NVIDIA
SoundStorm™ audio.