Realtek ALC880 integrated audio in motherboard for AMD64?

[J R W 0]

There are motherboards based on the Intel 915 and the Intel 925 for the Intel side of life that use the Realtek ALC880 for integrated HD audio. Are there any motherboards for the AMD64 that use the Realtek ALC880 for integrated audio? I don't really care if the motherboard is NVidia or Via based as long as it is for the AMD64.

 

I have read several reviews that suggests that this codec is much better than the Realtek ALC850 codec used in most of the motherboards for the AMD64. I have also read that the Realtec ALC880 is even a better choice than the Creative Sound Blaster Live 24-bit H/W audio used in the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI.

 

Is there a CMedia integrated audio solution that is the equal to the Realtek ALC880?

 

Thanks.

[jmmijo 1]

That's a tough one because I've just built a box for a friend using the Asus P5GD2 Premium board and it has Cmedia HD Audio Codec onboard. It sounds surprisingly nice for onboard sound that is

 

I've also been using the Aopen i915Ga-PLF/i915Pa-PLF that only uses the ALC850 codec, also not a bad sounding codec.

 

I've only built a couple of the machines using the Intel motherboards with the ALC880 codec, but since the techroom has crappy little speakers you can't really hear much of a difference

 

My money however is on the Audigy 2-ZS Platinum, I still think these cards sound the best, especially working over a 5.1/6.1/7.1 sound system

 

And here's Cmedia's HD Audio Codec page.