Audigy vs onboard 8RDA+

[Acts837]

I'm either going to get the Epox 8RDA and use my Audigy card
or I will sell my Audigy and get the 8RDA+ which has the onboard firewire and 6 channel sound.

Question - Can someone who has an 8RDA+ tell me if the onboard sound uses the cpu or does it use it's own APU like the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. Also, does the Epox have Soundstorm? BTW, what exactly is soundstorm? Which setup would be better for performance?

 

[mechBgon]

The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge with the nVidia APU in it. EPoX does use the APU for processing, with a Realtek coder/decoder chip (CODEC) to convert the APU's digital output to an analog signal, and connect to the rear jacks. Same as the Asus in that respect.

Soundstorm audio means that 1) the board is using the nVidia APU, and 2) it has at least one digital-output jack (optical or RCA are the ones I've seen so far) besides the usual analog jacks. The EPoX board has #1 but not #2 (although you can buy an optical-out with cable for it from EPoX if you want, at which point it would officially be Soundstorm).

Performance-wise, between the Audigy and the nVidia APU... not sure, but there was a writeup comparing Audigy 2 to nForce APU here that may interest you.

If you did install an Audigy or Audigy 2 then you may need to disable the motherboard's on-board gameport to prevent a conflict.

 

[jaeger66]

nForce is the best onboard sound out, but for gaming stick with an Audigy. It's
hard to say that since I hate Creative Labs, but any sound processor that uses
Sensaura for 3D audio(which is every one on the market except for Philips or
Creative cards) will suffer because Sensaura abandoned PC support for their 3D
engine almost 2 years ago and now sticks to consoles. The nForce is the only
chip with a 5.1 DD encoder, but this feature isn't nearly as useful as it
sounds. The only real need for it would be if you have 6 channel speakers with
digital only inputs. Otherwise, it's useless.