choice of 2 mobo's - want Soundstorm. Which one to pick? please help.

[dpolmann]

My local supplier stocks two AMD 64 mobos. I am looking for Soundstorm chip, but am confused by what I am reading in various places. I am novice at hardware. 8O Looking for good htpc set up. Threads here suggest I should be looking for Soundstorm chip. Do these boards have that, and similar features for sound? Any other key features good/bad for htpc? Thanks in advance...

Gigabyte K8N SNXP 800mHz fsb

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum

Which one should I pick ??

[Gordon Moore]

Those are both NForce3 (nvidia chipset) based boards. Soundstorm was only available on NForce2 boards.

Personally unless you really want to play games in DD5.1 discrete there's no mitigating factor to having soundstorm. (I have Soundstorm on my Abit board).

With PLII, PLIIx, and NEO on most receivers you can convert the incoming bitstream at the receiver to 5.1 and beyond.

I'd look into a solid board like your choices and find a good sound card with the ENVY24HT-S chipset like this one (true 24/192):

http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=maddog_1

Good chipset on the cheap for HTPC (no resample from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz).


I'd say of your choices go with Gigabyte....I've had a few MSI products and I have a hard time recommending them anymore....they havea spotty reliability track record.

One other board to look at is the Asus A8V Pro (possibly...different chipset but outperforms the Gigabyte...but not by much)

[malcky]

soundstorm is only available on nforce 2 mobos, so there is a lot to choose from if you want to go with a xp cpu instead of 64.

if its for htpc it doesnt have to be the most powerfull set up, so go for a mobile xp 2500 and o/c it like mad if need be & get a good gfx card if you want a gaming machine as well.

only know of 1 nforce 2 mobo (dfi infinity) that uses a coax output for sound whereas almost all others use optical.

[Ten 99]

If you are looking at Nforce2 boards, and going that route, I would suggest the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe board. It does have a coax Toslink connector built into the motherboard.

I run it on my home machine, and liked it so much I built my parent's machine around it, and my brother-in-law's machine as well.

[dpolmann]

need mobo w/out resampling audio; straight thru 44.1 kHz; s/pdif outs

Thanks for the feedback. Good information. Very helpful. :T I see that I can do without Soundstorm, and get separate sound card if I decide I need that. For now, looking for good solid stable mobo with reasonable performance for htpc that provides pass-thru of bitstream audio in digital format without resampling. Want to rip CD's to HDD in native format and use as jukebox server without mobo processing the signal. I will use either external stand-alone DAC between the htpc and the pre-amp, or else use DACs in the pre/pro audio equipment for any processing that I want. In future, I could always add separate sound card into htpc if I find features worth that. I am interested now in having mobo with multiple audio outputs, so that I can run two separate zones of music through the house stereo, or watch a movie on HDTV while someone else listens to music in another zone. Can I get multiple assignable digital outs on mobo, or do I need separate sound card to get the second/multiple zone capability? Is this a hardware issue, or a software issue, or both? Many thanks again. You folks are great

[Shane Martin]

I'm very happy with my Asus A8V Deluxe. I use a 3500+ Winchester.

For sound, I went with the Audigy 2zs and I'm blown away by the sound.

That my new logitech speakers are the best investments I made in my PC recently