[thyowlio]

I wanted to know the differences between soyo-dragon & soyo-dragon+ !
i know there is a difference on the chipset kt266 & kt266a, but i know nothing about chipsets !
and also I'd like to know if I better keep my soundblaster live x-gamer...
or use the one onboard. (less cpu usage I mean).

thanks,

[Shaotai]

Differences like you said are the chipsets. The dragon has the old KT266 chipset where the dragon+ has the newer, faster, better, etc KT266A chipset. The other difference is that the Dragon+ comes with the ZBOX which comes with a drive panel to add 2 more USB and a SmartCard reader/writer. You should check out soyo's website to decide if it's worth it, but the Dragon+ is definetly the way to go....

[Shaotai]

Also, you'd want to keep the Live card.
Although the onboard sound is *okay* for general use, I miss the clarity of the Live card. But I'm going to try and stick it out with this onboard audio, since I got rid of my live card....

[Wa11y]

You had a Soundblaster, and ditched in favor of on-board audio?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, MAN! On-board is always inferior to an expansion card!

[thyowlio]

thanks for the info...
about the onboard audio, does it increase the cpu usage ?
SBLIVE is good but i get slowdowns sometimes.

thanks

[Shaotai]

Originally posted by Wa11y
You had a Soundblaster, and ditched in favor of on-board audio?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, MAN! On-board is always inferior to an expansion card!

Yeah, I know.... Well, it was a live value card and those are pretty cheap now... (~$35) So I just might have to pick another one up... I had to sell it off with my previous system since I didn't have anything else to throw in there.... My buddy wanted it too...

[Drakester]

I have to completely disagree. The onboard sound, to my ears, and the ears of many people on other forums, is just as good, if not better than any of the SBLive cards. On top of that, the cmedia chip uses no noticeable resources, where the SBLives are well known to take a chunk out of your performance. Lastly, the SBLives are commonly problematic with Via chipsets. Before deciding to waste money, plug in some nice 5.1 speakers. You can pick up a cheap set of Creative's for around 80 bucks. Tweak your sound settings a bit with the mixer. I found the very best sound came from setting speakers to 5.1, then under Sound Effects, enable 5.1 emulation and set the gizmo to Living Room. My DVD's sound better than ever. In the past, onboard sound sucked because it was using software emulation, with no hardware acceleration. Recently, a few companies have bridged that gap and started using real chipsets onboard.

PS: The previous cards I used on two systems were SBLive XGamer and a Monster MX400. Both sounded real good, but not like the onboard CMedia chip.

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by Drakester
Lastly, the SBLives are commonly problematic with Via chipsets.

Hence, I now own an AUDIGY!

Now, I just need to buy a dragon. Darn this holiday poorness!

[DragonFire]

Id have to say that everything sounds better using the Dragon Plus's optical outputs to my stereo then my Sb Live Value's analog connection.

Im not sure why you can only enable the SP/DIF's in 2 speaker mode but Power DVD 4 XP plays DVDs like Iv never heard them now


I thought about getting a Audigy but it was either the Audigy or a new motherboard and jump to a DDR setup, I figure I can get more from a new motherboard and faster ram then I could from a sound card that has no real support for it yet


Please have reported to having issues with the Audigy on VIA boards....

[Taylor]

Originally posted by Wa11y
You had a Soundblaster, and ditched in favor of on-board audio?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, MAN! On-board is always inferior to an expansion card!

Well you gotta admit the onboard sound on those dragon boards is a big improvement over what people normally think of when "onboard audio" comes to mind.

[thyowlio]

Now u know why I was asking about keeping the onboad card !

thanks for the posts...guys !

[two_dope2000]

This is to Wa11y, your dissin' the Dragons onboard sound and you dont even have one?!? I can understand what comes to mind when the words "onboard audio" are spoken(or typed), crackling, resource eating, fuzzy songs and dvds that pretty much suck ass. But you mentioned that expansion cards are always better, Which i totally agree, but that is kind of unfair because the onboard audio on the dragon is pretty much an expansion card but only it is integrated into the Dragon Mainboard, therefore it has just as good a chance of competing with most sounds cards today. Now i know there are a lot of cards that could blow the dragons sound out of the water, but hey, its a big step forward for onboard audio. If you have the money to waste on your computer (most of us dont but spend it anyways) then buy an audigy or an x-gamer, all of the new sound cards are getting to the point to where they are just cool to anyone, even peopl who dont know squat about computers what the live! drives and 5.1 and optical outputs Speaking of Optical, what exactly are the advantages of the optical outs on the dragon or any other sound card? i cant expirement with mine because the optical IN-put on my reciever broke off because i was trying to take the disco lights off of the inside and put them in my computer.