New motherboard to OC and good onboard sound

[alonbl]

I am building a new rig and deliberating between Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H with vt2021 or ASUS P8Z77-V LE PLUS with ALC889.
The Asus cost 60$ more.

I have Sherwood receiver and Yamaha nx-s120 and listen to music movies and games.

Thanks for your help.

 

[de.das.dude]

you need to give more details abut the rest of your setup, unless you are just spamming, then youre doing a great job.

 

[alonbl]

I don't see the point but fine..
NZXT Whisper
Seasonic 750W
Seagate 2Tera
Hitachi 1 Tera
Intel Core i7-3770K
Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600MHz דגם CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10
Noctua NH-U12P SE2

 

[Nordic]

I am not the most knowledgable in audio so I would need someone to confirm this... but... On the audio end I don't think it matters too much as long as you send a digital signal to your receiver.

 

[Aquinus]

I am not the most knowledgable in audio so I would need someone to confirm this... but... On the audio end I don't think it matters too much as long as you send a digital signal to your receiver.

I'll confirm this for you. A digital signal doesn't have DAC losses and should be an exactly copy of the audio being played. The digital signal gets to the receiver than the receiver is responsible for decoding the audio.

The only reason why you might want a nicer audio card in this setup is for something like DTS or Dolby Surround. My ALC889 supports DTS but I'm not sure about Dolby. Since it's a digital signal all you would need is an audio card that supported the features you need. Like I said before, in the end the receiver does all the heavy lifting.

More on topic:

Is the motherboard the only thing you're upgrading? Are you happy with everything else? Also how much are you looking at paying? Quality motherboards cost a pretty penny.

 

[Jetster]

If your not overclocking then the Gigabyte. If you are then ASRock. Are you running optical?

 

[alonbl]

I'm upgrading everything. Its basically new pc on the same case, psu, hard drive.
I use a realtek 888 now and using the optical for music and movies and analog for games only.
I dont want to pay much but in israel everything is expensive anyway so to make things easy I just want to decide between the two I mention in the start.

 

[d1nky]

you need to look at their power phase design if you want good overclocking, and all recent boards have spdif so like said before it really is determined by the amp etc

try and find out the phases of several boards you'd like and see which has the best and compare other specs to make an informed choice

I don't know shit about intel but heres something that may help

http://www.overclock.net/t/1272248/...ion-intel-motherboard-socket-2011-x79-chipset

and id think am3 boards have the same phases as the intel version

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spr...D79Joo7tdE9xMUFlMEVWeFhuckJEVF9aMmtpUFE&gid=2

 

[alonbl]

only the ASUS has this info- Digital Power Design :
- Industry leading Digital 8 Phase Power Design
(6 -phase for CPU, 2 -phase for iGPU)
- Industry leading Digital 2 Phase DRAM Power Design

You gave links for X79 that i dont need and the other one is old. Anyway I have no idea what you said.

 

[de.das.dude]

the realtek alc890 and up is good. i have a alc892 its awesome. its THX certified as well.

 

[d1nky]

more phases means better power control to the cpu, so that the voltage is steady and stable for overclocking. the vrm needs to be heatsinked and cooled.

in order to overclock without harming motherboard or cpu, its ideal to have a board that has a higher phase count and vrm cooling.

research.....

 

[AlienIsGOD]

the 898 is the top of the line which i have in my main rig and the z68 rig has the 892, i could instantly tell the difference when i set up my Z77 rig. Thats not to say the 892 is bad i just found i needed the X-Fi software to make it a little bit better.

 

[alonbl]

If you use spdif is there any difference between vt2021 - 889 - 892 - 898 ?

 

[drdeathx]

If your overclocking, the Gigabyte board will do fine. There are some issues with Asus bios on Z77 boards. I would look into MSI's Z77 -GD65. It overclocks like a beast, has no issues and is priced right.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

If your not overclocking then the Gigabyte. If you are then ASRock. Are you running optical?

Why do you say that?

Gigabyte's UP series is very good with overclocking. UP4, UP5, UP7.

MSI MPower Z77 is great as well.

Out of the options you have posted in the OP, the Asus will be better for clocking then the Gigabyte. Also Asus deployed a BIOS update to fix some corruption with Windows 8 when trying to overclock IIRC just the last few weeks, but if you are using Windows 7 it isn't an issue.

 

[drdeathx]

Why do you say that?

Gigabyte's UP series is very good with overclocking. UP4, UP5, UP7.

MSI MPower Z77 is great as well.

Out of the options you have posted in the OP, the Asus will be better for clocking then the Gigabyte. Also Asus deployed a BIOS update to fix some corruption with Windows 8 when trying to overclock IIRC just the last few weeks, but if you are using Windows 7 it isn't an issue.

Difference in max OC between P8 and UD3 is 100-200Mhz and thats max OC on a chip. If he is not looking to break any records, UD3 is fine.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Difference in max OC between P8 and UD3 is 100-200Mhz and thats max OC on a chip. If he is not looking to break any records, UD3 is fine.

So you are confirming my statement that the Asus will be better for overclocking. Thanks

 

[drdeathx]

So you are confirming my statement that the Asus will be better for overclocking. Thanks

Umm buy 100MHz(maybe). I have overclocked UD3's as high as high end boards. I don't think these threads are competions for overclockers to show how much testoterone we have, rather making sound suggestions....... LOL plus the P8 series is overpriced.

 

[de.das.dude]

i would go with GIGABYTE just because asus is having some bumps with their after sales service and RMA ATM.

 

[drdeathx]

i would go with GIGABYTE just because asus is having some bumps with their after sales service and RMA ATM.

Yuppers. What he said.

 

[alonbl]

If you use spdif is there any difference between vt2021 - 889 - 892 - 898 ?

Lol you guys.. Thanks for the extra info but can you answer this?

 

[Nordic]

Lol you guys.. Thanks for the extra info but can you answer this?

As I mentioned and confirmed by aquines, sound processing will be done on the receiver so it should not matter.

 

[alonbl]

Ok and with analog what is the order from good -> bad?

 

[Aquinus]

Ok and with analog what is the order from good -> bad?

The same chipset can do better or worse depending on the board. For all purposes, it really doesn't matter. If you really want it to sound nice that is what the receiver is for. I think you're over-thinking your problem.

 

[Jetster]

Why do you say that?

Gigabyte's UP series is very good with overclocking. UP4, UP5, UP7.

MSI MPower Z77 is great as well.

Out of the options you have posted in the OP, the Asus will be better for clocking then the Gigabyte. Also Asus deployed a BIOS update to fix some corruption with Windows 8 when trying to overclock IIRC just the last few weeks, but if you are using Windows 7 it isn't an issue.

Because I had a D3H that didn't get very far before it start having problems. It might have just been the one board but sold it and used a ASRock which did much better. I dont think this guy s is thinking about overclocking. I'm not sure what hes doing but it looks like a 3770 Media player which makes no sense