AC97 is not a type of sound card

Caged · 10 Jul 2006 at 00:54

When asking questions comparing your onboard sound to an add-in sound card, please be aware that AC97 is a standard interface for converting digital sound signals into analogue sound fed into the ports on the back of your motherboard. Saying you have AC97 onboard sound is the same as saying you have a PCI sound card: it doesn't mean anything.

When asking if your onboard is good or not, we need the actual name of the sound chip.

For more information, look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC97

FishThrower · 10 Jul 2006 at 08:43

sorry

I always thought they were the same to be honest

Sandmaster500 · 11 Jul 2006 at 21:20

Had no idea about that. Thanks very much

ShiWarrior · 12 Jul 2006 at 16:01

i always thought AC97 was a "type-of" sound chip, I always thought they are totally different from PCI sound cards
the name of the company is "realtek" isnt it?

Caged · 13 Jul 2006 at 00:20

Realtek make sound chips which conform to the AC97 spec. But so do VIA, C-Media, Yamaha, Silicon Image, Philips, Winbond etc. Did you read the link?

nikebee · 13 Jul 2006 at 09:46

i was aware of Realtek, Silicon Image and VIA... didn't know that there were that many manufacturers of the chips though.

tbh i thought that AC97 was the chip and it was manufactured by Realtek/Silicon Image/VIA etc... in the same way that graphics cards are made companies like Saphire or XFX.

El_Watcher · 13 Jul 2006 at 12:33

nikebee said:
tbh i thought that AC97 was the chip and it was manufactured by Realtek/Silicon Image/VIA etc... in the same way that graphics cards are made companies like Saphire or XFX.

That's another common mistake as well. The sound chip is made by realtek/VIA etc, but assembled on a board by Asus/Abit etc, just like a graphics chip is made by Nvidia/Ati, but assembled on a board by Sapphire/XFX etc.