Realtek HDA ALC883 vs XFi XtremeMusic

[Raduque]

My mobo has this this onboard, the Realtek ALC883 "High Definition" audio codec on it, and I'm wondering how it compares to the XFi Xtreme Music.

I noticed on the page that it says it's compatible with DDL and DTS programs... can I enable these on this chip using software, and if so, where would I get this (program/driver), anybody know?

My mobo, btw, is the Gigabyte 965P-S3, and I'm only using 2-channel stereo right now.

 

[darkswordsman17]

For games, there is no doubt the X-Fi will be better. Not sure about movies since I don't know if their software is setup to decode it or not or just pass it through. For music, it should be about equal to the X-Fi, although it may suffer from worse crosstalk since its onboard, as well as just poor quality interconnects, in which case it will affect the sound quality across the board. Most onboard sound probably doesn't have terribly great DACs, and so personally, I would much rather just output it to another device like an A/V reciever.

As for Dolby Digital Live/DTS-Connect, the CD you got with your motherboard should have the software for it if it supports it (they have to license it to be able to use it, and so quite a bit of mid-to-lower end boards probably don't support it to keep costs down). I don't believe the DS3 comes with said software, and I don't know that there's any real way to get it (possibly warez from someone who has a board with that same chipset that does support those features?).