MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum onboard sound quality?

[morkys]

Upgrading from my previous PC. I had a SB PCI 128. I was going to upgrade to an Asus A7N8X E Deluxe which apparantly had soundstorm.

What is the onboard sound of the Neo 2 Platinum like compared to SB PCI 128? SB Live! Sound Storm? I know there are nVidia drivers out there that potentially improve the sound over the oem realtek drivers. Thats all I know. I like the idea of being able to use the onboard sound and LAN.

If you have an MSI Neo 2 Platinum could you comment on the onboard sound quality vs others as mentioned above?

 

[Veramocor]

Also throw in a comparison to Turtle beach Santa Cruz.

 

[zakee00]

its "iffy", seems like it would pop and crack when the CPU useage went up around 100%. i used my old SB Live! from my old computer, and i think its been better then onboard sound.

 

[ts3433]

It's probably your average onboard sound--nothing special, but gets the job done. If you need something a bit better, try a Chaintech AV710.

 

[morkys]

That sucks. I was very close to upgrading to an Asus A7N8X E Deluxe and that had nVidia Sound Storm which was as good or better than Sound Blaster Live! Frick!! I wanted to avoid having to add a PCI sound card. I guess I'll give it a try especially since there are new nvidia drivers out which supposedly improve things. This is the one thing I overlooked. Arrghh! I wanted to save money and eliminate PCI slot usage.

I guess it wasn't worth keeping the old A7N8X E Deluxe just because it had Sound Storm?

 

[ts3433]

Not really, since the lowest A64 still beats the highest Barton, and the AV710 uses one of the best chipsets for music playback there is (while still commanding only $25 from your wallet).

 

[morkys]

zakee00,

Have you tried the new nVidia drivers? They are supposedly quite a bit better than the realtek drivers.

Which SB Live! model # do you have?

ts3433,

You're talking about a sound card, not a motherboard? Right? I'll look into that sound card.

I guess I'm just panicing because I thought a while back that onboard sound had reached a point where it was really good. If its equal to or better than my SB 128 then I'll be happy. I'll wait until I'm up and running and give it a try before looking for alternatives.

 

[Slaimus]

Wow, check out the new Nvidia audio drivers. They are really nice. ASIO support!
ASIO output Plugin for Winamp

 

[morkys]

I'll try the new drivers. I'm just bummed because I went from one platform upgrade to another but potentially lost in audio quality. Thats really lame.

 

[Chesebert]

AV710 has horriable CPU usage when gaming.
their analog out was not good either. buy that card for its digital out, stereo and nothing else. making a great music card.

 

[morkys]

Weird. I'm noticing the 939 motherboards came with difference onboard sound. Some have ALC658 while others have ALC655 and ALC850. Oh well. I guess I've got what I've got and thats it.

 

[Slaimus]

I would much rather take the 658 than the 850. There really is no use for 7.1, but the increased SNR is much needed.

EDIT: after a quick benchmark, CPU usage did not improve by much through. Q3 timedemos: Realtek driver: 417fps, Nvidia driver: 423fps, No sound(s_initsound 0, snd_restart) 521fps. Not even close to the low CPU usage of the MCP-T APU.

 

[morkys]

Whats the MCP-T APU?

Where can I find the specs for the onboard sound chips?

 

[Slaimus]

The MCP-T is the southbridge for nForce2. APU(audio processing unit) is the built-in audio DSP in MCP-T. Link

Specs for nForce3/4 APU from NVIDIA website:
AC ?97 2.1 compliant interface
7.1 surround sound audio***
Supports 2, 4, or 6, or 8-channel audio
Dual AC-Link ? supports up to two codecs
16-bit or 20-bit stereo output and 16-bit input streams
Supports input, output, and general purpose input/output (GPIO) channels for host-based modems
Separate independent functions for audio and modem
Supports ACR and CNR interface
S/PDIF output (stereo or AC-3 output)

ALC850: 8 channel, 16 bit, 100 dB SNR

 

[morkys]

100 dB SNR doesn't sound bad. Perhaps people are displeased with the gaming performance. I saw some comparisons of how onboard audio affected FPS in one instance but the FPS were well over 100, in fact, way over. Once you're over 100 FPS, what difference does it make?

 

[Slaimus]

I yanked my old Digital Research DRSOUNDPCI out of my ancient Cyrix 6x86MX/PR200 box and even it has less static than the onboard sound. Realtek is seriously lying about specs on that CODEC.

Actually this card is sounding good enough right now. Yamaha YMF-724 DSP with a Texas Instruments TLC320AD91 AC'97 DAC on this thing.

 

[Azndude51]

Originally posted by: zakee00
its "iffy", seems like it would pop and crack when the CPU useage went up around 100%. i used my old SB Live! from my old computer, and i think its been better then onboard sound.

I agree, my old SB Live! Value sounds noticably better than the onboard on my MSI.