Quote Originally Posted by sholvaco View Post
That "false" 3rd PCIe costs next to nothing in terms of engineering effort and provides the user an extra x4 slot for everything from sound cards to RAID cards to network cards...
mhhh raid might actually cause problems, if it really uses the 4 lanes... cause its 4 pciE 1.1 lanes, they are 2.0 "compatible" but the bw is 1.1... and they are connected to the sb, which is connected to the cpu via... right, dmi which is? 4 pciE 1.1 lanes... ^^
and those dmi lanes are shared for everything else on the sb... hdd, audio, nic1, nic2, pci, etc... so its not even a real pciE 4x slot... but yeah better have than no have, sure

Quote Originally Posted by sholvaco View Post
The bundled audio modules use the same trick the Quantum Force SONAR X-FI modules did: move the codec to a PCIe daughterboard and add some Creative hardware like the X-Fi crystalizer and maybe better filtering. The ADI codecs (there were more versions) used on these modules are the same as the ones they use on their high-end onboard integrated audio solutions. The ASUS Xonar cards on the other hand use a dedicated audio processor (an ASUS branded C-Media OxygenHD).
trick? why trick? and no, sonar isnt pciE afaik, its a custom connector daughterboard, and it uses the realtek 888 codec and the creative stuff is all done in software, mostly, they do use the realtek hw as well of course...
it helps to move the sound to a seperate pcb, you can revise and rework it independantly and improve the signal quality of both the pwm and the audio circuicy cause there is absolutely no corsstalk or emi, plus you have extra pcb space if your using a beefy pwm... and you can shield it easily...
when you say trick it sounds as if its meant to fool people into believing its a propper sound card bundled with the board. idk if asus does that but foxconn and dfi def dont, and msi doesnt either afaik...

the ADI codec was better than the realtek or via or any other audio codecs found on cheap soundcards or mainboards i thought? and yes, asus uses the ADI codec with a special creative driver that uses the hw and adds some features via software (uses the cpu). asus xonar uses c-media? wow i didnt know that...

so then msi actually has the best onboard sound since they use an actual REAL xifi sound chip on some boards, right?

some boards used the pre audigy creative chip which creative renamed to xifi something, dont remember if its asus or msi... and that chips is worse than any onboard audio lol... gee, so confusing to figure out how good onboard sound really is, there are so many creative xifi onboard sound solutions based on entirely diferent stuff... realtek and ADI, propper xifi chip, relabeled ancient creative chip...