Onboard sound - C-Media 8738: Good or Bad ?

[Corinthian 0]

I am considering buying an Asus A7V333 motherboard.

This board has a C-Media 8738 6-Channel Audio soundchip.

Is it any good ?

How about EAX support ? (The C-Media web page says it is EAX compatible, but is the EAX quality any good ?)

A hardware site (don't remember which one) claims it is comparable to the Soundblaster Live.

True or false ?

 

Also, does anyone here have the Asus A7V333 motherboard ?

Any problems ?

 

Thank you !

[Palos 0]

It's supposed to be the best integrated audio solution at the moment. It offers SPDIF out among other things...http://www.cmedia.com.tw/product/doc8738.htm

 

I'm looking at a P4 DDR board that has the same audio chip on it, the MSI 845 UltraARU.

[dougmach 0]

I have this audio chipset on the SOYO Dragon Plus. It's OK for playback but don't plan on doing any recording with it. I was getting really poor recording quality on the line in, and when I searched Deja.com for help, I found that I was not the only one. I have now disabled the onboard sound and went back to my Sound Blaster 5.1 Live.

[tweaked 0]

how did you get your live to work with your dragon plus?

my audigy locks up my system every time i try to install it!

[dougmach 0]

had to put it in PCI slot 6. PCI 1-3 cause problems

 

 

__________________

 

Antec SX1040 (400Watt PS)

Soyo K7V Dragon plus

Athlon XP 1700 1.46 OC'd to 1.56

512 MB OCZ cas2 Ram

ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon AGP 32mb

NVIDIA TNT2 (PCI Slot 5) second video display

KDS Avitron 17" Trinitron tube .24 (X 2)

SB 5.1 Live (PCI Slot 6)

On board via Lan

IBM 45gb ATA-100 7200rpm X 2 (Raid 0)

IBM 10gb ATA-100 7200rpm

Maxtor 80gb ATA-100 5400rpm

IDE ZIP100

Phillips 8X CDRW

16X DVD

[Palos 0]

Can I use my Creative Soundworks Digital Speakers (2.1) with the SPDIF out from the onboard sound chip???

[Corinthian 0]

I have those speakers too

[Palos 0]

Lol, then ask at the shop before u buy it if there are any problems. Let me know too...

[Avalanche 0]

I have a Chaintech C-media 8738 based add-in card, and it's really quite good. I have even used it for recording demos, and while it's stuck at 16bit sound rather than 24bit like is industry standard for audio recording, so is the Live!.

 

The great thing about it is it's in the neighbourhood of 10,000% better than the onboard audio on my mainboard, and the card only cost $30 Canadian. I know it's not a great card, and I'm waiting til I can afford a Game Theatre XP, but it's a darn fine stop-gap measure until my wallet sees more money in it!

 

As for EAX, it depends on the game, and the driver release. It didn't work at all in Half-Life, no matter what drivers I used, but it seems to work quite well in just about everything else. The newest drivers are quite good, and stable. But it also claims to support A3D, but it does not, do not believe them when they say this!