[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message


Depends on the audio chipset, I'd say. There are a number
of different ones you know.

Motherboard Audio is a highly competitive area with just a few players. One
source suggests that Realtek has 80% market share with Analog Devices,
Intel, CMI and a few others splitting up the rest. Realtek is so competitive
that Intel motherboards often have Realtek audio chips on them.

But what it is probably NOT a
function of is computer price. Audio chipsets, like every
other chip in a computer is a commodity item with
processors being the most expensive chip in most
computers. Some less expensive computers can actually use
an audio chipset that's better than one in another, more
expensive model. It's hard to know. OTOH, they are all
probably in the ballpark, performance wise, and none of
them mentioned here in the last couple of days exactly
excites me with their -3dB @ 20KHz performance.

For example Realtek's ALC 888xx spec sheet claims 7.1 channel support via
high-performance DACs with 97dB SNR (A-Weighting), and ADCs with 90dB SNR
(A-Weighting) Independent tests done on motherboards from several different
vendors show results in this range, as well as response no more than 0.5 dB
down at 20 KHz.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthre...=150208&page=4 post #87