Sound Quality on NForce 2

[Slappy00]

My mother's phillips sound card (not surprisingly) crapped out on her reciently and I was considering getting a new sound card (audigy 2) and letting her have my Audigy card as a replacement, but for the money I would consider getting a Nforce Board with onboard sound if the quality is comperable...

So is the Nforce 2 board's sound any good? is it comperable to the Audigy ? I dont care for proprierty stuff such as EAX just direct sound for gaming and music/movie sound....

thanks in advance for any insights

 

[Killrose]

I have the Epox 8RDA with 2-channel sound, and it seems to do real well. I have stereo speakers with a seperate sub-woofer and the positional audio while gamming is excellent IMHO.

 

[jamesbond007]

I'm not an owner of a nForce2 motherboard, however, I have read over and over again that the onboard sound in both the nForce 1 and 2 chipsets is VERY good. We're talking SBLive! > Audigy quality. Plus, no buggy or problematic Creative drivers to plague your experience on the machine. (Some people have good experiences, some have bad...but having no Creative aleviates any chance of a problem from the start. )

I have built many systems based on the nForce1 chipset, and I must say, the features (EQ, Bass/Treble, GUI) is very very nice. It kind of mixes the EQ of the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and the features of the Audigy 2 Control Panel all in one. Very nice, for onboard sound.

Enjoy!

 

[MichaelD]

My 8RDA+ gets here on Tuesday. I am planning on ditching my SBLive XGAmer/MP3 card in favor of the onboard sound too. Creative's drivers have gotten BETTER, admittedly, but they are still buggy. I shouldn't get random hard lockups when playing random games....not in 2002/2003!! Not anymore. I know it's not another component causing it either...Creative....*sigh* ya coulda been soooo good.

*EDIT*
One mroe thing. As long as the onboard sound isn't "popping or hissing" and the sound QUALITY is comparable, I''ll be losing the SBlive card. As buggy as the card is w/games, it's sound quality is superb. I have Klipsch PM 4.1s and I listen to a lot of music on them.

 

[Literatii]

I own an A7N8X and have an older computer with an Audigy X-Gamer. The SoundStorm system on the Asus is as good if not better than the Audigy. I think the general concensus (for the Asus anyway) is that the onboard sound is better than anything other than the Audigy 2 and perhaps the Santa Cruz (which is excellent).

 

[WolverineGator]

Leadtek nForce2 mobo onboard sound vs. SB Live. Sound is good, no hissing or popping. I can't tell the difference between the two playing music, video, and some games. I did see a difference in BF1942 where the onboard sound clipped lower volume levels to zero.

I couldn't find a way to change this and it negatively affected my kill ratio. The SB Live had a larger "halo" of sound and so the SB Live was superior in this respect (playing at low volumes).