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| Thread ID: 51556 | 2004-11-24 01:24:00 | Confusion about on-board sound cards | Caesius (3758) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 295637 | 2004-11-24 01:24:00 | Hi all. I'm looking to buy this motherboard: www.anandtech.com I need some help from a hardware guru; under the section "Onboard Audio" is has listed "ADI AD1980 SoundMax 5.1 codec" - what does this mean? Is it an on-board sound card? What is a codec? Please gurus: enlighten me. Cheers, Ben. |
Caesius (3758) | ||
| 295638 | 2004-11-24 01:28:00 | Yes it has onboard audio with up to 5.1 channel support... CoDec = Compressor/Decompressor - don't know why they put that down... |
HadO (796) | ||
| 295639 | 2004-11-24 01:34:00 | The "ADI AD1980 SoundMax 5.1" is the chip used, its the equivilant of a soundcard but intergrated into the motherboard. Its a pretty obscure chip and not particularly common, i woudn't expect particularly good quality sound with it. Especially since its an ASUS motherboard based on the KT600 chipset, ASUS always use wacky sound chips and the KT600 is budget orientated chipset. Out of interest why are you buying old technology? Socket 754 is now relitively cheap and offers far better performance and AMD will continue to make CPU for it. Socket A is being phased out, the fastest CPU is the AthlonXP 3200+. |
Pete O'Neil (250) | ||
| 295640 | 2004-11-24 03:17:00 | Me = student = no money = cheap and nasty equipment I've just splashed out on a $50 1.1GHz Duron thus I need a socket A mainboard. |
Caesius (3758) | ||
| 295641 | 2004-11-24 03:40:00 | You wont have any problems with that one then - it's a good board. | HadO (796) | ||
| 295642 | 2004-11-24 06:28:00 | The onboard sound isn't necessarily a bad thing... unless you're an audiophile, the output is really adequate for gaming and casual music listening. In my case I gave up my oldish Soundblaster card in favour of the onboard sound that my current mobo has, because the difference wasn't perceptible |
Greg S (201) | ||
| 295643 | 2004-11-24 09:18:00 | Will I be able to simply insert another sound card if need be? Does having on-board sound mean you can't buy your own sound card? | Caesius (3758) | ||
| 295644 | 2004-11-24 09:22:00 | You can add your own soundcard - if you have a spare PCI slot. Just remember to go into the BIOS settings (press DEL when booting up) & disable the onboard sound. | dana.c (2547) | ||
| 295645 | 2004-11-24 09:24:00 | Yes on that board you can disable the onboard sound and slam in a PCI sound card... If you go for another board I would definately check that out before hand - I don't think there would be many (if any) modern ones that you cant... |
HadO (796) | ||
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