Asus?s Proactive Premium series of motherboards are the company?s flagship, the crème of the crop and a perfect representation of peripheral advancements over the years. Last week Joel gave us his thoughts on Asus?s 925X based P5AD2. Overall his opinion of the board was very positive and the board was awarded Editors Choice. Instead of reiterating what he said in my review of the 915P based P5GD2; we?ve decided to continue our coverage of Intel?s High Definition Audio.

A few months ago we took a look at Intel?s High Definition Audio and found that it was just sub-par and not much better then the existing ADI1885 AC?97 codec. Our test board at the time was equipped with the Realtek ALC880 HDA codec and performed abysmally. At the time of testing, we weren?t able to get a hold of a CMEDIA CMI9880 based solution, which is supposedly better then the ALC880. Since Asus tends to equip their high end motherboards with above par audio solutions, we?ve chosen their P5GD2 as the test platform for the CMI9880.

Starting out with the specifications, the CMI9880 appears to lose to the ALC880. In CMEDIA?s white papers for the CMI9880, they listed a greater than 95dB SNR, that?s just a little less then Realtek?s claim of 100dB. Whether or not this will impact overall performance is another story. For sampling rates, the CMI9880 can?t sample 44.1 KHz like the ALC880 can, this means the CMI9880 would have to up sample everything to 48 KHz for output, which is a problem that has plagued CMEDIA in the past. The same goes for SPDIF out, the CMI9880 has to up sample to 48 KHz, this could is usually frowned upon.

On the DVD Audio side of things, Realtek makes claims that their codec supports hardware de-scrambling that allows copy protection for DVD-A. The problem is there are no applications available or the driver support for full resolution playback of DVD Audio material on non Creative solutions. Though WinDVD will play DVD-A on the ALC880, it?ll only be the AC-3 track. Moving further on, the CMI9880 white papers make no mention of DVD Audio at all or any type of hardware content protection required by the DVD Audio forum. For the most part, this isn?t that much of a negative as DVD-A hasn?t been well received by the general public.

For API?s, both solutions have support for the usual DS3D, EAX1, 2, A3D, and HRTF. The CMI9880 also has support for CMEDIA?s home brewed Xear3D that essentially spans stereo sources across all 8 channels.

A closer look?

The Asus P5GD2 is their flagship 915P board, being that it comes with everything except a kitchen sink. It features a very well laid out board design that places the ATX power connector towards the edge of the board, far out of reach of the power supply fan. Color-wise, the black PCB looks clean and stylish. Expansion wise, the board features one PCI Express x16, 2 32bit PCI, and 2 PCI Express x1. While the expansion appears to be lacking, there is no real need for it, as the board integrates practically everything.

On the networking side of things, the P5GD2 comes with everything you need to get on a network and plus some. It comes with two Gigabit Ethernet controllers, that are correct folks, two, though it seems like overkill, it?s a nice addition. The GBe is powered by the Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI Express GBe controller and an additional 88E8001 32bit PCI controller. In addition to the two GBe controllers, the P5GD2 also has an integrated 802.11g wireless adaptor. The wireless is powered by a Marvell 88W8310 WiFi chipset. 

Storage is where the P5GD2 really shines. In addition to the 4 AHCI capable SATA RAID ports provided by the ICH6-R, Asus has taken the liberty to integrate an additional Silicon Image SI3114 SATA RAID controller. This brings a total of 8 SATA ports, which is extreme overkill, but a nice addition. Since the ICH6-R only has one PATA channel, Asus has integrated an ITE IT8212F PATA RAID controller for all those IDE devices that you?ve accumulated over the years.

Also integrated onboard is a 1394b controller that delivers up to 800Mbit transfer rate. In the past, 1394b has been a MAC novelty but with the new Premium series boards, Asus has allowed PC users to experience the novelty that has little to no support from peripheral manufacturers.

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• Bundle, codec... (1 of 4)
• Drivers, jack sensing... (2 of 4)
• Dolby Digital Live, rightmark... (3 of 4)
• Conclusion (4 of 4)