OnBoard Audio Feedback

**saaya** · 03-01-2009, 08:49 PM

Bit-tech.net compared our Sonar XiFi to the P6T and Gigabyte onboard audio and it was rated very good and excellent in the two frequency ranges they tested, while the others were rated very good and very good. So there is barely any difference, but there IS a difference and the Sonar XiFi and other integrated sound options sure have come a long way from rough distorted clicking noise with barely any base

but many of you want the best of the best or already invested in a very nice soundcard some time ago and just dont want to give it up for onboard sound.
So how important is our onboard sound to you, should we continue to spend a lot of efforts on it or should we treat it as a basic feature, or maybe even remove it to reduce costs?

Thanks for voting! Every vote gets you +5 karma points

**INFRNL** · 03-01-2009, 09:00 PM

What happened to my post. Anyways. I use the sonar card and think its a great option. This is a much better option than true on-board audio; so if someone wants to use something different they can and not have to worry about audio ports in the I/O panel!

**saaya** · 03-01-2009, 09:23 PM

well editing polls isnt possible apparently, and i forgot 2 options to i created a new poll and deleted the old one.
when i checked there were no replies, sorry... your reply must have been between me checking and then deleting the thread

yeah, it gives us more space for the audio solution, more space for the main pcb, and it gives us more space in the IO panel to add usb ports

**Serpentarius** · 03-01-2009, 09:37 PM

i wonder .. when will it be the day where sound cards is overclockable?

**saaya** · 03-02-2009, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by Serpentarius

i wonder .. when will it be the day where sound cards is overclockable?

i think audio solutions are some of the few examples where you want the clocks to be spot on and not higher, lower or fluctuating at all

but audio processor clockspeed hmmmm im not sure if stuff is synced to work properly at the default clockspeed, so ocing might mess the sound up similar to overclocking game consoles where the in-game-time is increased, or the game stutters or ocing has other weird side effects.... but ill check!

**saaya** · 03-02-2009, 01:06 AM

just talked to the engineers, its possible, but the southbridge decodes the raw audio data from the cpu and then sends it to the codec, so youd have to change the clocks of both at the same time. and even then there wouldnt really be a benefit of it, the sample rate would probably increase, but sample rates arent really what limits audio quality atm, clean power, clean ground and shielding from signalling noises are the biggest limiting factors... outside the codec

our audio engineer is an audiophile and built some crazy stuff at home to listen to his classic music collection in best quality

so he does know a lot about audio solutions, and he said the fact that our solution and the giga and asus solutions are so close to each other shows that its mostly the codec holding things back. holding it back from the theoretical optimum though that is... hes very proud of the Sonar XiFi

I asked if NICs could be overclocked and he said yes, but it would mess up the protocol most likely and wouldnt speed things up but slow them down.
another thing you could overclock is the SATA reference clock which does improve performance, but... we all know most controllers freak out at even 10% ocs

then theres the pci bus, same as SATA, pciE, same as SATA, and then there is usb, that doesnt like ocing at all... and thats pretty much it

you can adust the pwm clockspeeds but thats a bit risky and would actually only really make sense on boards with a weak pwm, but since highend boards have way overpowered pwms, overclocking them is pretty pointless... well, a few board makers have added that option now, i curious if it really makes a difference or not.

**zanzabar** · 03-02-2009, 01:10 AM

can u guys get nics with cashe on them in the boards, and maybe use an intel nic instead of the broadcom or marvel, the broadcom dont get along with hyperV

**BenchZowner** · 03-02-2009, 02:47 AM

I'm using a PCI / PCI-Express sound card, but most of the users out there use the on-board SPUs, so keep a basic SPU on-board.
Oh, and I'd rather see a Analog Devices AD2000B any day instead of a RealTek.

**saaya** · 03-02-2009, 04:44 PM

broadcom is good, but their dev support is terrible... slow and unfriendly
realtek is the largest codec maker now, and they didnt get there by coincidence...
i asked our engineer about different nic codecs and he said marvell is ok and the support from them is ok, realtek is ok and their support is great, broadcom is good but their support is a nightmare, intel is ok but way overpriced.

he said the performance is about the same for all, slighty faster is intel and broadcom. broadcom doesnt have good engineering support and their chips sometimes have quirks and dont work in every scenario, like you mentioned, and intel is expensive without offering any real performance advantages... it supports vpro, which is why its expensive, but i doubt any of you cares about vpro... normal NICs cost around 2$, Intels NIC costs almost 10$...

if you find any benchmarks of the intel NIC beeing a lot faster let me know and ill push them to use it instead!

but from what ive seen and read, the performance difference is tiny or nonexistant...

bill, about the AD stuff, afaik asus made a deal with them so they wont supply their chips to any other board makers.
they are asus exclusive... but ill check...

**xXlAinXx** · 03-02-2009, 07:37 PM

Sayaa !! Marvell would be definitively much better duo the manageability provided by the driver inselft

Realtek NIC division are slacking lately even in their support over End User, so having one controller which claim to be able aggregate his port with one outdated unreleased driver, mean nothing to me.

For this I will sing for sure on Marvell Yukon Ethernet solution at least the user who actually need one failover or teamed stream can truly take advantage off two Gigabit Device in Window Vista or the upcoming Win7.

Example Thread Problem - Dual Gigabit LAN support teaming function by Realtek® 8111C

About the poll, Sonar X-Fi MB is a pretty cool "on board" solution, for this will be fine keep it function at basic removable peripheral.

**CmB** · 03-02-2009, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by zanzabar

can u guys get nics with cashe on them in the boards, and maybe use an intel nic instead of the broadcom or marvel, the broadcom dont get along with hyperV

hell yes, i had 7 customers make a similiar request on ym custom PCs. Unfortunately I don't design boards. Gamers crave a better than onboard giga LAN. they want a dedicated nic. That Killer NIC pci card come up often though i have no experience of it.

--Chris

**saaya** · 03-04-2009, 07:11 PM

xXlAinXx, ok, ill ask our engineers to check if we can change at least one NIC to marvell or broadcom.
you seem to be into networking, do you recomend broadcom?
having two different NICs should be better i think, no teaming but thats barely beeing used and i think people prefer a marvell or broadcom NIC with a realtek over 2 realteks with teaming...

Originally Posted by mountain_king

That Killer NIC pci card come up often though i have no experience of it.

the marketing force is strong with them, sense it i can

**CmB** · 03-04-2009, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by saaya

xXlAinXx, ok, ill ask our engineers to check if we can change at least one NIC to marvell or broadcom.
you seem to be into networking, do you recomend broadcom?
having two different NICs should be better i think, no teaming but thats barely beeing used and i think people prefer a marvell or broadcom NIC with a realtek over 2 realteks with teaming...

the marketing force is strong with them, sense it i can

Your BS-ometer went off too? Yeah, but I promised I would ask and ask I did.

**Serpentarius** · 03-04-2009, 07:27 PM

i had a question prodding my mind .. if we're to o/c the fsb .. wont the onboard audio and onboard NIC overclocks as well? since it's onboard ..

**BenchZowner** · 03-05-2009, 01:46 AM

Originally Posted by Serpentarius

i had a question prodding my mind .. if we're to o/c the fsb .. wont the onboard audio and onboard NIC overclocks as well? since it's onboard ..

No.
Because the PCI and PCI-Express BUS clocks stay still, no matter what you do to the Bclk, the QPI BUS, etc.

**xXlAinXx** · 03-05-2009, 03:39 PM

Well, I do not recomend broadcom for desktop segment board and about having two different on board NICs perhaps will be better keep only realtek one // save money for gain compatibility.

back on topic, I forgot one more thing

The deafult RCA S/PDIF must be nice have it replaced with one Toslink S/PDIF and much more important: having it aligned with the PCB!

**saaya** · 03-08-2009, 06:33 PM

hmmm about the toslink thing, yeah... we will have both for now and yes we will hopefully have it aligned with the pcb.
the problem was apparently getting the io shield cut out big enough so the plug can be pushed in deep enough with the spdif coaxial plug moved further inside pcb wise.

yeah, it seems broadcom hasnt been doing too well drive wise recently...
i heard marvell is good from a few people and i asked if we can go realtek/marvell

the thing about realtek is that it used to be the cheapest codec found on all the entry level boards, and lets not kid ourselves, they sucked big time back in the days...
they have come a long way, their sound codecs are great, their nics are great... they arent the best out there but they are close.
I have to admit though that i still dont like realtek that much cause i still have this association and memory of them being the cheap stuff... but now it seems via actually replaced them there, with the cheapest nics and sound and... not that good quality

**saaya** · 03-08-2009, 08:40 PM

Originally Posted by Serpentarius

i had a question prodding my mind .. if we're to o/c the fsb .. wont the onboard audio and onboard NIC overclocks as well? since it's onboard ..

there are several reference clocks that the clock generator provides, and most if not all of them are locked. i think audio uses the same 24/48mhz clock signal as the sb and usb. the sb uses several signals tho... sata and pciE have a base clock of 100 so they are usually on the same clock signal, but since mars we actually seperated it, so ocing pciE shouldnt affect sata at all.