Nforce 2 Vs SB 5.1 Live Card

**Gav** · October 1st, 2004, 11:27 AM

Hi all,

I have recently built a new system using an AMD 2600 and an MSI K7N2-Delta L motherboard. I used my trusty old Sound Blaster 5.1 Live card thinking it was bound to be better than the built-in audio.

Question is - is it?
I've found that Unreal Tournament 2003 (and a few other games) slows considerably when Hardware 3D surround is enabled - would the Nforce audio work better?

To add to the mix, I have the chance to buy the S-bracket which doesn't come with the basic MSI boards, and will give me SPDIF in and out
Its the bog-standard MCP chipset, not the spangly Dolby MCP-T version, by the way.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Gav

**Stalemate** · October 1st, 2004, 11:43 AM

I would still go with the nForce2 sound.

I*m currently using the Asus A7N8X-DX and decided to use the onboard sound instead of an additional PCI card as the performance and sound quality both were superior.

**TripleRLtd** · October 1st, 2004, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by a d e p t

I would still go with the nForce2 sound.

I*m currently using the Asus A7N8X-DX and decided to use the onboard sound instead of an additional PCI card as the performance and sound quality both were superior.

Indeed. Onboard sound has come a long way and is at times superior, especially as compared to "older" cards. I wouldn't put the nForce onboard up against an Audigy though.

**Gav** · October 1st, 2004, 03:06 PM

Thanks Guys -

Looks like my SB Live is going to a new home - someone just offered me £25 for it so he can use it for music recording.

I'll post back here once I've set up the NForce sound and let you know if it does perform better..

Thanks again!!

Gav

**Duke of Rezin** · October 1st, 2004, 08:38 PM

That motherboard uses Realtek's ALC650 controller for audio with an 18 bit ADC and a 20 bit DAC while the Soundblaster uses 16 bit all the way. I don't know if that makes any real world difference though. I'm using the Delta2-ILSR that has the same chip but use an Audigy 2 for sound and have never tried out the integrated sound. My question though is: the motherboard came with Nvidia's Soundstorm drivers, so do you use these drivers or Realtek's AC '97 codec?

**Gav** · October 4th, 2004, 03:47 AM

Hi all,

Many thanks for the replies - all greatly appreciated.

I took my SB Live 5.1 out on Saturday, enabled the Nforce and installed drivers (vers: 5.10 from the Nvidia website - system drivers - select Audio driver install only).

And the results were....

NForce is a lot faster - my PC (game-wise) feels like a new rig. Looks like its been a bottle-neck since I built it.

Again, many thanks for the help!!

Gav

**confus-ed** · October 4th, 2004, 05:31 AM

Originally Posted by Gav

..And the results were....

NForce is a lot faster ..

Don't surprise me over here

, generally onboards are sooooo much better now, not because the decoding chips are that much better, but because of how they are wired in & supported in windows..

Older onboards were almost always connected via the ISA bus, which is only 1/4 of the speed of the pci bus & gets polled less frequently etc leading to lots of s/w overhead (also any ISA device takes complete ownership of all the buses while connected & signaling, so everything else waits a bit while it completes) as these chips very rarely if ever have any hardware acceleration & have to pass data back & forth between the cpu to get sound processed .. connect a better chip via the PCI bus & you have a 'winner'

.

I don't think the chipset on this board, nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset, even has an ISA bus to support (lots of boards have no ISA slot, yet still have support for 'legacy' isa because of the chipset & 'cheapo' chipsets still often have their onboard s/c wired this way, despite the speed/performance advantages as its that little bit cheaper).