Well-known mainboard manufacturer, Gigabyte, announced that they decided to give up using integrated Creative CT5880 hardware sound controller in their products from now on, although they have been using this solution in their mainboards for a significant while now. According to their announcement, Creative CT5880 sound controller doesn’t meet the growing user demand any more as it doesn’t support 6-channel sound and S/PDIF Out. From now on they are going to use 6-channel AC’97 codec instead.

They also report that AC’97 codec will appear not only in all the ongoing Gigabyte’s products, but also will replace the old buddy Creative CT5880 on the already manufactured GA-8IEXP, GA-8IEX and GA-7VRXP (there must be new revisions announced). The new codec 9the manufacturer’s name is still kept secret, though we suspect it might be Realtek) will meet AC’97 2.2 specification supporting 20bit digital-analog sound conversion, providing over 90dBel SNR, supporting 6-channel sounding with 3D effects and featuring digital S/PDIF Ou and In.

This move of Gigabyte’s is pretty illustrative. AC’97 codecs have already become so perfect that the sound quality and features they offer can easily compete with analogous hardware solutions. At the same time, codecs are much cheaper. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that any AC’97 codec loads the CPU when working, but the contemporary processors are so powerful that this additional load remains nearly unnoticed. That is why it seems we will see hardware sound on the new mainboards more and more rarely now.