The thing is Tim, even if it's on a seperate daughter board, the sound quality is still going to be crap compared with a £40 EMU soundcard or any of the decent ones that are designed for music. Anyone who seriously cares about good sound quality is going to buy a proper PCI or PCI-E(assuming some exist, wouldn't surprise me if not) solution. It's an extra feature they can natter on about, but personally I'd much prefer some extra room on the expansion front for a decent sound card then less room and a crappy sound solution that doesn't suffer from as much interference as most other crappy sound solutions do.
As someone else said, it'd be wonderfull to see some proper overclocker E-ATX boards about, but I suspect it'll never happen.
With that said, the Karajan/AudioMAX are not going to replace an X-Fi or equivalent soundcard, but they are a good deal better than traditional on-board solutions. Considering that they come with the mobo, I don't think it is a bad thing. However, it would have been nicer to put the AudioMAX slot on the AW9D-MAX above the primary graphics slot and added a second PCI slot at the bottom.
Also, I doubt you're going to see an E-ATX mobo that overclocks well for a number of reasons. The increase in traces and components means that there is more chance that signal quality will degrade at higher frequency, resulting in less than stellar stability.
Also, if you're a serious audio listener I doubt a £40 EMU will do it that much credit tbh and considering most people are playing mp3s it'll make SFA difference.
Originally Posted by Tim S Also, I doubt you're going to see an E-ATX mobo that overclocks well for a number of reasons. The increase in traces and components means that there is more chance that signal quality will degrade at higher frequency, resulting in less than stellar stability.
The less components, the better in that respect.
for overclocking though, its really just the traces between NB, memory and CPU that make the biggest difference
Most boards now have individual clocks, so the extra traces for PCI and such will be at a lower frequency, at an area which wont be overclocked
Quote:
Also, if you're a serious audio listener I doubt a £40 EMU will do it that much credit tbh and considering most people are playing mp3s it'll make SFA difference.
That's true - the best quality sound doesn't come from creative
But a creative card is much better then on board (IMO, i have a Karajan audio module, but i only ever use my creative audigy 2 (also for the digital connectivity))
and a £1000 card probably sounds a lot better then a creative one
Still, at the moment 2 PCI slots would be best, if its not just sound-card & xxxx
There are so many PCI accessories, its hard to be limited to 1 slot (Tuner, Sound card, Storage Controller's etc etc) its strange though, PCI-E has been around for such a long time now (like a year) but there are still barley any cards, and the ones that do exist can be rather expensive
Originally Posted by specofdust Actually, this is something that's starting to bug me tim, why are all PCI/PCI-E layouts utter s***e? Manu's always make slots that obscure each other if filled, or obscure USB or some other connectors. I know space is limited, but couldn't they just give us fewer usable slots(say 4 usable slots) instead of trying to give us 6 that are so crammed together that 2-3 is the best we can ever use? It used to be that with a good mobo you could get your graphics card in there, and then basicly everyone had more PCI slots then they'd ever need, but it seems like these days that every type of slot is some hyper-rare commodity, and even in the most expensive mobo's we're starving for lack of the things once we stick a couple of cards in there.
Why must this be the case?
Some people *cough*me*cough* don't have a pair of dual-slot cards crammed into their x16 slots, and can get great use out of all the slots in there. I don't know about the ATi side, but I know the 7900GT performs very respectably and is only a single-slot card, so a pair in SLi wouldn't block anything (even if it would be preferable to keep the next slot down free, for airflow).
Having said that, I still agree. I'd go:
I/O (for orientation)
PCI
PCI
x16
x1
audio riser + x1
x16
PCI or x1
The riser and x1 could share a slot, since you can only use one; as it is, the risers seem to go into a backwards x1 slot, and generally close enough to the edge that you could fit a slot of either type to the right of it. Keep the x16 slots lower so they get the coolest air, and give accessability to a pair of PCI slots on top of them. In fact, I'd put the x16's a slot lower for both of them, but I dunno if that would leave enough clearance to the bottom of the case for double-slot cooler (or top, for those reversed-cases)
Originally Posted by yahooadam for overclocking though, its really just the traces between NB, memory and CPU that make the biggest difference
Most boards now have individual clocks, so the extra traces for PCI and such will be at a lower frequency, at an area which wont be overclocked
That's true - the best quality sound doesn't come from creative
But a creative card is much better then on board (IMO, i have a Karajan audio module, but i only ever use my creative audigy 2 (also for the digital connectivity))
and a £1000 card probably sounds a lot better then a creative one
Still, at the moment 2 PCI slots would be best, if its not just sound-card & xxxx
There are so many PCI accessories, its hard to be limited to 1 slot (Tuner, Sound card, Storage Controller's etc etc) its strange though, PCI-E has been around for such a long time now (like a year) but there are still barley any cards, and the ones that do exist can be rather expensive
PCI-Express has been around since 2004.
There are barely any cards because of market saturation. The mass of people who still own PCs and want small upgrades through cards have AGP/PCI systems and even those that have PCIe have PCI slots so there's very little incentive for these companies to get their fingers out.
Firehed: PCI will never be at the top. Not considering the traces and clock gens that it needs amoungst other things.
This board could reach the dizzy heights of £200...
ZZF has a habit of pricing stuff high that they don't actually have & then dropping the price when it becomes available though ...
Whilst I like the look of this board I'm waiting until next Spring before a total platform change so hopefully prices will have dropped, there will be more boards & more user feedback on them
I did just read this whole topic through and it was quite amusing.. well at school it was. As far as I understood, ppl kept saying the exact same things about the bad PCI-setting and how the on-board is no match for a X-fi while other ppl kept saying how things are from the Abit's point of view.
It's not all about the fysical space on the board that defines how the slots are located, it's also the hundreds or thousands of traces that go from the slots to the chipset. It definitely isn't all about "Abit being unfair to X-Fi-owners" or something, it might as well be about some practical issues.
But then again. I don't honestly believe there's ANY difference in the sound quality of DIGITAL output between the onboard card and the Karajan or what-ever-was-the-name-in-this-one( :) ). I don't know if some of you still use the analog output but what's the point of having a digital output if you're not using it.. Viva la AV-amps.
Digital out, Im not sure. through analogue, even though my aw8-max uses an audio-max daughter board and when using the pci bus I can hear it being used. The digital signal is still passed across the board, it's just not interfered with by the audio chip. Using a separate pci card you dont have this problem at all as they are both discrete from each other.
Im also pretty sure they do the layout first, then the traces. The board clearly doesnt have much space, rather than the level of traces because there would be LESS traces rather than more considering the components in place where another, bottom pci slot would be.
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As someone else said, it'd be wonderfull to see some proper overclocker E-ATX boards about, but I suspect it'll never happen.
With that said, the Karajan/AudioMAX are not going to replace an X-Fi or equivalent soundcard, but they are a good deal better than traditional on-board solutions. Considering that they come with the mobo, I don't think it is a bad thing. However, it would have been nicer to put the AudioMAX slot on the AW9D-MAX above the primary graphics slot and added a second PCI slot at the bottom.
Also, I doubt you're going to see an E-ATX mobo that overclocks well for a number of reasons. The increase in traces and components means that there is more chance that signal quality will degrade at higher frequency, resulting in less than stellar stability.
The less components, the better in that respect.
Most boards now have individual clocks, so the extra traces for PCI and such will be at a lower frequency, at an area which wont be overclocked
But a creative card is much better then on board (IMO, i have a Karajan audio module, but i only ever use my creative audigy 2 (also for the digital connectivity))
and a £1000 card probably sounds a lot better then a creative one
Still, at the moment 2 PCI slots would be best, if its not just sound-card & xxxx
There are so many PCI accessories, its hard to be limited to 1 slot (Tuner, Sound card, Storage Controller's etc etc) its strange though, PCI-E has been around for such a long time now (like a year) but there are still barley any cards, and the ones that do exist can be rather expensive
Having said that, I still agree. I'd go:
I/O (for orientation)
PCI
PCI
x16
x1
audio riser + x1
x16
PCI or x1
The riser and x1 could share a slot, since you can only use one; as it is, the risers seem to go into a backwards x1 slot, and generally close enough to the edge that you could fit a slot of either type to the right of it. Keep the x16 slots lower so they get the coolest air, and give accessability to a pair of PCI slots on top of them. In fact, I'd put the x16's a slot lower for both of them, but I dunno if that would leave enough clearance to the bottom of the case for double-slot cooler (or top, for those reversed-cases)
This board could reach the dizzy heights of £200...
PCI-Express has been around since 2004.
There are barely any cards because of market saturation. The mass of people who still own PCs and want small upgrades through cards have AGP/PCI systems and even those that have PCIe have PCI slots so there's very little incentive for these companies to get their fingers out.
Firehed: PCI will never be at the top. Not considering the traces and clock gens that it needs amoungst other things.
Whilst I like the look of this board I'm waiting until next Spring before a total platform change so hopefully prices will have dropped, there will be more boards & more user feedback on them
But only one PCI slot, NOOO!
What are you thinking Abit? My God..
http://geizhals.at/eu/a214107.html
It's not all about the fysical space on the board that defines how the slots are located, it's also the hundreds or thousands of traces that go from the slots to the chipset. It definitely isn't all about "Abit being unfair to X-Fi-owners" or something, it might as well be about some practical issues.
But then again. I don't honestly believe there's ANY difference in the sound quality of DIGITAL output between the onboard card and the Karajan or what-ever-was-the-name-in-this-one( :) ). I don't know if some of you still use the analog output but what's the point of having a digital output if you're not using it.. Viva la AV-amps.
Im also pretty sure they do the layout first, then the traces. The board clearly doesnt have much space, rather than the level of traces because there would be LESS traces rather than more considering the components in place where another, bottom pci slot would be.