http://www4.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q.../hammer-02.html

So what do you think? Useful or just a selling point like AGP 8x?

When I think of vacuum tubes for sound I think of large power amps, not little weenie radio-tubes. Must be the environment I live in.

Why they do this tube for onboard sound I have no idea other than just gimmick. Makes me also wonder if transistor power is better for onboard sound because: tubes have more distortion at this (low-power) scale; tubes create more heat than transitors. Maybe they are neither of the above, but my hunch says both are true. Onboard sound being "free" always seems to compromise quality for features/gimmicks.

I also think it is only sort of gimmick. Vacuum tubes are much more sensitive to electromagnetic irradiation than any tiny little integrated circuit.
And the potentially better sound quality of tubes surely makes absolutely no sense if there is a crappy resampling algorithm driving the tube amplifier.

I hope they're not using the Realtek ALC650 audio chip again. This would indeed reduce the tube amp's value to that of a gimmicky eyecatcher.

yeah, every tube amp I've seen got VERY hot. just what we need next to our hot-running-already AMD processors.

Hmm... Who changed my topic so that every word starts with a capital letter?

http://www.invisionboard.com/