What's with onboard and 3D sound?

[xonic]

I keep on reading from various places and postings that on board sound doesn't do 3D positional audio. I've never used on board sound before but I find it hard to imagine.... I would think 3D audo is the very basic of the current 5.1, or 7.1 on board chips should be able to do.

I searched this forum but didn't find the info.

Could somebody explain, or point to a source? thx

 

[mike99]

Games use EAX, so you need sound hardware that supports it, higher version number better results.

Mike.

 

[Aintry]

I'm using onboard sound (Realtek) and it definitely supports multi-position audio.

 

[mike99]

But does it support EAX?

Mike.

 

[Aintry]

My ALC860 codec supports EAX, but it's EAX 1.0 and 2.0, according to my documents. IOW, no EAX 5.0 support. All the other docs I have on Realtek drivers show EAX 1.0 and 2.0 support exclusively.

 

[chookman]

EAX v4 and v5 are only supported by X-fi products, and emulation in ASUS Xonar.

EAX is only used in a number of games anywhos