Audio Evaluation

Gigabyte does your audio better by putting a Sound Blaster Live chip on the GA-G1975X. We test the performance of audio by running it through Serious Sam 2 and some subjective listening.

Gigabyte GA-G1975X Intel 975X Motherboard Review - Motherboards 70
Gigabyte GA-G1975X Intel 975X Motherboard Review - Motherboards 71

By bundling the Sound Blaster for audio instead of generic AC’97 codecs found so often on other boards, Gigabyte has managed to provide very good performance with nary a decrease in frame rate! But how does it sound?

I put the SB Live through some quick subjective listening tests and it sounds just like an X-Fi without X-Fi’s Crystalizer enabled. So audio quality is very good and clear with the big bonus of course being very little performance decrease in games.

The Sound Blaster Live is capable of doing Dolby Digital decoding, 7.1 analog audio, and SPDIF output via optical and coax connections. It’s a very good audio solution for customers who want performance as well as decent audio quality.

*DMM 7.1 = Diamond Multimedia Xtreme Sound 7.1 with Dolby Digital Live! (reviewed here)

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