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Music Please
Sound is something really nice on this mainboard, Integrated High-Definition sound. Intel designed this to integrate quality sound in Intel desktop platforms to meet the demands required of a modern PC in the home and office or even your HTPC (Home Theater PC). The previous AC'97 solution was capable of delivering a maximum of Six Channels of Audio at 48KHz/20-bit Audio quality, the Intel HD specification manages 8 channels at 192KHz 32-bit. With this solution Intel can support all modern Dolby formats like Dolby Digital EX and even DTS ES. Small note for the freaks, the software provides real time Dolby Digital (AC3) encoding and can take standard stereo signals and output them digitally and as Surround. Not bad, not bad at all. Even better is the wide array of connectivity for sound, there even are optical SPDIF in and outputs available. Fantastic, especially when you are using this in a HTPC environment.
The Realtek Software Suite has become mature for sure. Please don't mind the Dutch language btw.
From a graphics/gamers point of view most exciting for us is of course that PCI-Expess technology is slowly replacing the older PCI and AGP ports. Why? Bandwidth, it's all about bandwidth these days and the PCI-Express solution is a major step into the future. With up to 4GB/s of one-directional and 8GB/s of concurrent bandwidth, users are free to have high-speed graphics output. PCI Express significantly increases bandwidth between the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU). PCI Express can also deliver more power than the older AGP slot, the x16 slot can feed your graphics card directly with 75 Watts, which unfortunately is still not enough for the latest high-end graphics cards.
The mainboard itself then. Slightly off-topic, but be sure to have a look at that 24-pin power connector, that's right I said 24 pins. This is new, when you look at your PSU you'll notice a 20 pin connector. Don't worry, it'll still fit, yet 4 pins will be empty. Future PSU's will have 24 pins. BTW small warning, don't even think about trying to connect the additional 4-pin connector that your PSU supplies on there! That still has its own socket on the mainboard.
