AMD to Intel????

[Jun aka Pekto]

The ALC850 sucks. Even I wonder why I'm not replacing it with a VIA Envy-based card yet.

OT
If it's just sound quality, I don't have good-enough ears to tell the difference between it and my Audigy 2 Value. As far as causing any instability or other problems. Mine has none to speak of except occasionally doing the "skipping record" thing on BF2's main menu. That's the sole reason why I have an Audigy 2 Value installed. That was under Win XP. That problem's not present with BF2 under Vista RC1 which is why the Creative card is disabled in Vista RC1. The Realtek's doing just fine.

Via on the other hand, has had a track record of unstable and quirky motherboards especially with the KT266 and KT266A series. I lost an Abit and a Soyo KT266A boards after 2-3 years while an older AMD760 board outlasted both and still works great in my wife's pc. The Abit simply died for no reason. The Soyo (Dragon+) lasted 3 years. So long as no cards were installed except an agp video card, it was great. But put anything on the last 3 pci slots and that board becomes very unstable. Granted, that quirkiness may not apply to other Via-based components like the Envy soundcard or the Firewire chip of my current pc. But, I learned to take the name Via with caution.