I have a question directly for Tom’s hardware guide and to all who know ANYTHING about this:
Short:
Integrated audio. Realtek chips. I’d imagine that 95% of world computer population is using one integrated audio solution or another. Why are there no reviews of them? Is no one really interested?
Long:
We have thermal paste reviews for crying out loud. How many % of computer users are interested in that? And how many do you think care if their new motherboard will be better if they got one with better integrated audio. 99% motherboards today (say intel p35/ p45) are so similar you’d need a magnifying glass to tell them apart. All overclock well, all support everything, and some have more stuff than no one cares about, so they cost more…
But the difference between one 100$ motherboard and one costing 1000$, when you are an average user, you simply don’t care about the rest of the crap built in. But I’d like to know more about my integrated audio. I’m going to need that. I wont care if I have 16 usb ports or 8, since I’m only going to be using 2. I don’t care if I can attach 32 hdd drives or 16, I’m going to be using one- maybe two. How about PCIE 1 or 2? Can any of the current graphic cards utilize PCIE 2 bandwidth? No. So why the bleep should I care if it has PCIE 1 or 2!?
Single GPU is enough. All games (save crisis) play extremely smooth on most newer graphic cards with all IQ turned to max on 22” monitor. Most play well on 24” monitor. What % of population has more than 24” monitor? Ok, all 2000 of them is going to need sli/crossfire, what about the rest of us, counting millions?
So with that out of the way, we know most users won’t be able to tell the difference between 100$ and 1000$ motherboard, save for the price. What they might find interesting is audio built in them. Does the 1000$ motherboard have better audio? Is it worth 900$? How about discrete audio cards cards? Are they worse than this 900$ audio integrated?
If you ever tried newer realtek chips, you'd know that they are good. Very good actually. But how good? Which one is better? How do they compare to Creative and other discrete cards? How do they perform in games, etc…
So, how come there are no reviews? Is there some great conspiracy against audio reviews? Does no one really care? I mean, I haven’t been able to find not one site on the whole wide internet with reviews on the matter. To be fair, I found one old German site, it was useful, but the info there is 2 years old- and I cant find it again. And besides, there are new audio chips out.
Personally, I want to know how much realtek ALC 889a (expensiveier gigabyte boards) is better than ALC 888 (low end gigabyte boards), and how does ALC 1200 (new Asus p45 boards) compare to these.
Difference between these alone will probably make up my mind when purchasing my next motherboard. I had ASUS P5K-E. It had the worst integrated crap - azalia something. My old low-end AC ‘97 was better than this - not to mention the better ac 97 variants. Crackling noise, horrible driver implementation. And not one word in the reviews about it. And don’t tell me that all integrated realtek stuff do it- because they don’t. Most of them (like 99%) work at least decent, more much better than just decent. Heck, that low-end AC 97 is almost decent. And I have some variants of it that actually are pretty decent for everyday use.
I’d appreciate any insight into this mystery.
Thank you
Short:
Integrated audio. Realtek chips. I’d imagine that 95% of world computer population is using one integrated audio solution or another. Why are there no reviews of them? Is no one really interested?
Long:
We have thermal paste reviews for crying out loud. How many % of computer users are interested in that? And how many do you think care if their new motherboard will be better if they got one with better integrated audio. 99% motherboards today (say intel p35/ p45) are so similar you’d need a magnifying glass to tell them apart. All overclock well, all support everything, and some have more stuff than no one cares about, so they cost more…
But the difference between one 100$ motherboard and one costing 1000$, when you are an average user, you simply don’t care about the rest of the crap built in. But I’d like to know more about my integrated audio. I’m going to need that. I wont care if I have 16 usb ports or 8, since I’m only going to be using 2. I don’t care if I can attach 32 hdd drives or 16, I’m going to be using one- maybe two. How about PCIE 1 or 2? Can any of the current graphic cards utilize PCIE 2 bandwidth? No. So why the bleep should I care if it has PCIE 1 or 2!?
Single GPU is enough. All games (save crisis) play extremely smooth on most newer graphic cards with all IQ turned to max on 22” monitor. Most play well on 24” monitor. What % of population has more than 24” monitor? Ok, all 2000 of them is going to need sli/crossfire, what about the rest of us, counting millions?
So with that out of the way, we know most users won’t be able to tell the difference between 100$ and 1000$ motherboard, save for the price. What they might find interesting is audio built in them. Does the 1000$ motherboard have better audio? Is it worth 900$? How about discrete audio cards cards? Are they worse than this 900$ audio integrated?
If you ever tried newer realtek chips, you'd know that they are good. Very good actually. But how good? Which one is better? How do they compare to Creative and other discrete cards? How do they perform in games, etc…
So, how come there are no reviews? Is there some great conspiracy against audio reviews? Does no one really care? I mean, I haven’t been able to find not one site on the whole wide internet with reviews on the matter. To be fair, I found one old German site, it was useful, but the info there is 2 years old- and I cant find it again. And besides, there are new audio chips out.
Personally, I want to know how much realtek ALC 889a (expensiveier gigabyte boards) is better than ALC 888 (low end gigabyte boards), and how does ALC 1200 (new Asus p45 boards) compare to these.
Difference between these alone will probably make up my mind when purchasing my next motherboard. I had ASUS P5K-E. It had the worst integrated crap - azalia something. My old low-end AC ‘97 was better than this - not to mention the better ac 97 variants. Crackling noise, horrible driver implementation. And not one word in the reviews about it. And don’t tell me that all integrated realtek stuff do it- because they don’t. Most of them (like 99%) work at least decent, more much better than just decent. Heck, that low-end AC 97 is almost decent. And I have some variants of it that actually are pretty decent for everyday use.
I’d appreciate any insight into this mystery.
Thank you