AC97 is a very outdated standard, hence the name! 97!!! Almost all professional sound cards are not following the standard anymore.
hahaha... obviously .. what to do .. .. my SB live is not a 5.1 capable soundcard .. but my AC97 is. .ahhaha .. LOL .. anyway .. i'm pretty lazy to switch soundcards.. .. actually i can take this SB Live for my pc.. and put a SB PRO pnp (isa) on this PC .. hahaha -this is my family pc-
Although I have 5.1 onboard, I still bought a Audigy 2 ZS 'cause that way it's not using my CPU as much and it has THX and all that good stuff to go along with my THX speakers.
There are onboard sound which uses VIA Envy 24 chipset, so it could be better than dedicated sound card.
What's so good about that chip? On a side note, does this MB (mine) have a good onboard audio setup? ASUS "P4P800-E Deluxe" i865PE Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU
Your motherboard comes with Realtek ALC650. Feature wise, nothing extraordinary. But it's 8-channel support, isn't it? Well, the reason why I said Envy24 is good because many good dedicated sound card are based on the same chipset, like Chaintech AV-710, M-Audio Revolution 7.1, TerraTec DMX 6-Fire LT. Of course, the sound quality of the card depends heavily on the components used.
Yeah, but I bought a sound card anyway. Question though - I have an optical out on my motherboard. Can I use that to hook up to my Logitech Z-680's? I'm not using the onboard audio, so I dunno...
Some of you may not know this so I will announce. I got a 5.1 speaker system with a 1200 Watt PMPO. The on-board sound was in NO comparison to the SB Live!. I got a boost from the sub so much that I can feel the base. Before, I could hear it, but not ever feel it no matter what. I was eventually going to get a SB Audigy2 ZS, and now I can wait longer!
Yeah, those Audigy 2's ROCK! I have one and love it to death. Great configuration abilities and stuff. I should have gotten the special one with the 5" bay thing so that it had optical out (I have a ZS). Wonder if I can buy that seperately... (Optical out is for my 500W RMS (1000W Peak) Z-680's - they have an optical in.)
DOS sound 1031982, does this mean you got the SB Live's dos sound emulation to work correctly on the A7N8X Deluxe? I've got an A7N8X-X and it wont allow any kind of sound emulation in dos, because of a lack of support for PCI NMI requests.
No, I have no need as I am going to build an older system to run my older games. Or I will get a laptop. Something running at most 500MHz with 128 MB RAM.
don't we just love unbalanced sound cards. i'm still sticking with my SB Live now. it can really push ur speakers to the max.
the best is still to use the configuration that suits your taste. what may seem to be the best as recommended by audiophiles may not be what that suits your taste i budget. as for me i'm truly satisfied with my Inspire 4400 + SB Live 5.1 DE. the only step to take next is to hook up my rear speakers (not used for 2 years). strangely......i've not tested the onboard sound of my EP-8RDA+
well.. it all depends on the on board sound, if ur onboard sound is Azalia or Envy24,soundstorm or other types which similiar level.. its very good already
afaik, nothing beats the Creative line of cards when ti comes to gaming AGain, this depends on your priorities. Audiophiles would be well served by the EMU 404, or so I hear
i though maudio was for audiophiles, the prices surely do reflect that. i heard that creative had sucky drivers, load your system down
haha try this use a good sound system, blast one song test bass with both ac97 and sb live im sure u will know the difference trust me on this plus u can have the audigy hacked drivers. just google it. but its large. 100 plus megs that comes with some audigy apps. and yes the sound quality after modding is better albiet
