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Realtek ALC650 vs. SB Live Value

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Dragon365

Golden Member
Right now, I'm using the onboard realtek audio in my PC, and i'm wondering if i could get better performance on some creative inspire 2.1 speakers if I instlled the live from my secondary computer in this PC - what do you think?
 
Yes most like although the Live loves to hog IRQ 5 but you'll also gain some processing resources with it
 
Wrong question, inadequate answer. This Realtek chip is just a codec (doing analog/digital conversion, in/out crossbar, and volume control). The work is being done elsewhere, namely in the chipset. How much CPU load is being eaten depends on how intelligent the sound engine in the chipset is. This ranges from brainless (Intel, most SiS) over so-so (VIA) to full blown hardware solution (ALi). Can't rate NVidia's.

Analog audio signal quality then again is a function of the quality of the hardware design AROUND these chips, not of the chips itself.
 
OK ... KT400 uses the 8235 south bridge, whose sound engine is about midrange in CPU load. So is the SB!Live, with the drawback of being much more of a system bandwidth hog because it's on the slow PCI bus rather than on a fast chipset internal connection. So decide whether this board has good enough signal quality for you, and if not, try the SB!Live. But be prepared, they aren't THAT good sounding either.

regards, Peter
 
From my experience, the Realtek chips combined with a KT400 use about 9% (tested with ZiffDavis Audio WinBench 99 on a XP 1800+), SB Live will use under 4%. The EAX quality on the live will be slightly better then on the ALC650, which uses Sensaura 3D. The good thing with Realtek is the driver support. They release driver updates every month, so any issues are bound to be fixed / or improved quickly. They just released a new driver a couple of days ago (version 3.40)...

Cheers
 
... and you always have the alternative of using the chipset maker's drivers rather than the codec maker's.
 
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