Baron wrote:
Samuel M. Goldwasser wrote:

IMO There are only a few onboard chipsets that are good in quality -
the rest, including realtek, tend to be rather noisy.
That's my feeling at this point. I'm also not that fussy as long as
it sounds decent. I don't need to shake the foundation.


On board sound chip failure is very very common. I wish I had a £($)
for every new machine or mainboard I've seen that had to have sound
card added because of it !

Some of it is unnessary circuit complication though which causes
headaches installing the right driver, as there are /two/ of those to
install with either AC'97 or (the later) High Definition schemes in use.

The first for the motherboard chipset HUB controller (normally Intel,
but AMD and Nvidia as well) and the second for the Codec (Realtek,
Conexant, and Analog Devices). Then ye get the headache of Microsoft
stepping in and wreaking the compatability of everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC'97
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_H...finition_Audio


I've seen chips fitted rotated 90 out on the mainboard.


Laterally or tombstoned?

I've got a cheapie Gigabyte AMD board here I'm scrapping. The board had
so warped on the wave soldering machine, that the DDR sockets only grab
memory modules by the edge contacts and bows away from the middle.

Complete junk.

--
Adrian C