suggest an AM3/AM2+ mobo

[jcmaz]

I rather like the Gigabyte 770T UD3P and its cheap so you can get a decent Xonar soundcard.

[Mook06]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Probably the best way to start this would be to use google to find out what onboard audio chips support your requirements and work from there.

that is the problem, most realtek 800 or higher support ddl/dts encoding, but its up to the mobo manufacturer to include it, i think there are licensing fees or something. so it seems it is implemented on the driver / bios / firmware level, unfortunately i havent found a hack for that yet

what is really anoying is this feature is done almost exclusively on the cpu, there is no reason a virtual soundcard set up to encode dts/dolby then stream it over any available Spdif wouldnt work, i would gladly pay 30 bucks for software like that

[Mook06]

so i found an ooold Creative Audigy 1 laying around and found the Daniel K hacked drivers that enable DTS interactive via some hacking, so i bought the license from creative for ~$5 and wouldn't you know, it works pretty much perfect, uses 2-10% cpu on my 2.0Ghz athlon x2

but my 8800gt is hot enough without this card, this adds 10+ degrees so ill have to slap an extra fan somewhere for now

so now all i need is a mobo that will unlock phenoms and a legacy pci slot on the bottom, easy!

now to take another look at those evos