What audio drivers do I need?

[Ronin13]

I'm installing an ASUS P5GD1 board, and am unsure of what audio drivers I need.

When i checked Intel's site for their chipset downloads, I was directed to the mobo manufacturer's site instead (for audio drivers).

On ASUS site I've downloaded the latest Realtek driver (in 3 parts, totalling about 35MB).

When browsing the disk that came with the motherboard, I've found the Realtek drivers as well as a 'C-Media High Definition Audio driver'.

Do I need the Realtek driver, the C-Media driver or both?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Ronin13]

Anyone?

 

[Technonut]

Funny, I was just messing with this on my ABIT. I wanted to see how the HDA sounded compared to the Audigy2 ZS.

I checked the date of the latest drivers on ABIT's site, and found that they were as old as the original BIOS on the mobo. I then just used the auto install from the CD.

Anyhow, I checked it out for an hour or so, then threw the Audigy2 ZS back in...

 

[Ronin13]

In my research of which driver to use, I came across a test that rated the C-Media solution higher than the Realtek one, so I tried to install the C-Media drivers, but they were incompatible with my hardware.

Checking the mobo manual, it states that the audio codec is Realtek ALC861, so I guess there never really was a choice.

But then why have the C-Media drivers and PDF manual on the mobo disk at all?