What the Audio row on our spec tables names, and when a better one changes anything you will hear
The Audio row names one chip. It does not name the circuit around that chip, and the circuit is most of what separates two boards carrying the same part number. The one genuinely structural difference on the market is that the ALC4080 and ALC4082 connect over USB rather than the HD-Audio link the ALC1220 family uses — a different chip class, not a newer version of the same one. And if your sound leaves the machine over USB, over HDMI or DisplayPort, or into an external DAC, the codec row is not in the signal path at all.
Every review on this site prints an Audio row, and on nearly all of them it holds a Realtek part number. That part number is an audio codec: the chip that converts between the digital audio the system produces and the analog signal that reaches the jacks on the back panel and the front-panel header. It is not a sound card, and it is not the whole audio subsystem.
The framework it plugs into is Intel High Definition Audio, which "acts as a device driver, defining the architecture, link frame format, and programming interfaces used in the hardware of the host controller of the PCI bus and linking it to a codec used by a computer's software". Realtek is one supplier among several — the same source notes that codecs "have also been provided by third-party suppliers including Realtek, Conexant, Creative, IDT, VIA, SigmaTel, Analog Devices, C-Media and Cirrus Logic" — but on the 80 boards we review, every named codec is a Realtek part.
The specification itself allows a wide envelope: "Sample resolutions of 8, 16, 20, 24 and 32 bits" and "Sample rates of 6–192 kHz, and with vendor drivers, up to 384 kHz is possible". What a given board does inside that envelope depends on its codec and on how the board is built.
Two boards can print an identical part number in this row and sound different, because the codec is one component in a chain. How well the audio section is isolated from the rest of the board, which capacitors are fitted, whether there is a headphone amplifier and what impedance it is meant to drive, and how the front-panel header is wired are all board-level decisions the codec name says nothing about. Our spec tables record the part number because that is what manufacturers publish; treat it as an identifier, not a rating.
Reading the Audio cell off all 80 review pages on this site gives ten distinct strings. They fall into three groups, plus three boards that name no codec at all and one part we could not place in any group from a source we could read:
| Tier | Spec cell, exactly as we print it | Boards |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | ALC897 |
30 |
| Entry | ALC1200 |
3 |
| HD-Audio high end | ALC1220 |
3 |
| HD-Audio high end | ALC1220-VB |
3 |
| HD-Audio high end | ALC1220P |
3 |
| USB-attached | ALC4080 |
22 |
| USB-attached | ALC4082 |
11 |
| Not classified | ALC4050 |
1 |
| Not named | Codec not published by GIGABYTE |
2 |
| Not named | 8-channel HD audio, codec not verified |
1 |
Entry (33 boards). The ALC897 is on 30 of the 80 boards we review — far and away the most common answer to "what audio does this board have?", and the reason this page exists. It and the ALC1200 are what a mainstream board fits when audio is not part of the pitch. We could not read a manufacturer datasheet or a tech-press page for either part, so this page states no signal-to-noise or sample-rate figure for the ALC897 or the ALC1200. Numbers for them circulate widely; we could not verify any of them from a page we actually read, so we are not repeating them.
The ALC1220 family (9 boards). Three different strings appear on our pages and they are three different part numbers, not typos: ALC1220, ALC1220-VB and ALC1220P. Only the -VB is described in a source we could read. igor'sLAB reports that "The ALC1220-VB is also a SoC and a high fidelity multi-channel audio codec with bi-lingual interface supporting High Definition Audio 1.0a and industry standard I2S and I2C", that its "signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the front panel is also up to 120 dB", and that "Three stereo ADCs are also integrated and the line-in offers up to 110 dB SNR". What separates the plain ALC1220 and the ALC1220P from the -VB is not something we found a readable source for, so we do not say.
USB-attached (34 boards). The ALC4080 and ALC4082 together now cover as much of our catalogue as the entry tier does. The ALC4080 is the one with a source behind it, and it is the subject of the next section. For the ALC4082 specifically — 11 boards, all of them near the top of their ranges — we found no page we could read that documents it, so nothing on this page attributes any figure or behaviour to that part.
The ALC4050 (1 board). One board prints a part we cannot place in any of the three groups: the ASUS ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi, whose spec page names "ROG High Definition Audio CODEC ALC4050" and adds that "All audio functions on ROG STRIX Z790-I GAMING WIFI are supported through the ROG STRIX HIVE" — an external module rather than jacks on the board's own rear panel. We found no page we could read that documents the part, so we do not say which tier it belongs to and we state no figure for it. Grouping it with the ALC4080 and ALC4082 on the strength of the part number would be a guess, and the rest of this page does not make those.
This is the single most useful thing to know about the Audio row on a current board, and it is widely got wrong. In his teardown of the part, Igor Wallossek of igor'sLAB states plainly that "the ALC4080 is NOT the successor of the ALC1220, as you could read in many media, but a completely new chip class".
The difference is how the chip is attached. The ALC1220 family uses the traditional link into the chipset; the ALC4080, per the same article, "breaks with the long tradition of direct connection to the SoC via a bi-lingual interface (HD-A or I2S/I2C) and uses USB instead". It is described as "a single-chip, multi-channel USB audio codec that embeds a USB 2.0 controller with a high-performance audio codec", and it "supports a standard HID-class USB audio device designed for PC motherboards".
What that means for a reader is narrow and worth stating carefully. The onboard audio on such a board presents itself to the operating system as a USB audio device rather than an HD Audio device — which is why it can appear in a sound menu alongside your headset instead of where you expect it, and why the software that comes with it may differ from the Realtek control panel on an older board. That is a consequence of the attachment igor'sLAB documents. It is not a claim that the audio is better or worse, and it is not a latency claim: we found no source we could read that measures latency or driver behaviour on these parts against the ALC1220, so this page makes no such comparison.
On the published figures the two are closer than the generation gap suggests. igor'sLAB gives the ALC4080 "a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of up to 120 dB for playback of PCM streams" and notes "A total of three stereo ADCs are integrated and can support multiple analog audio inputs, including a 110dB SNR stereo line-level input", plus "Support for 16/20/24-bit SPDIF output with a sampling rate of up to 192 kHz". Those are the same headline numbers the article gives for the ALC1220-VB. Both sets are manufacturer figures reproduced by igor'sLAB, not measurements — ours or theirs.
Work backwards from where the sound actually leaves the machine, because that decides whether the codec is in the path at all.
For the last three, the Audio row is close to irrelevant to you, and an ALC897 board is not costing you anything you would have heard. That covers a large share of readers, which is the honest answer to "should I spend more for better onboard audio?" — usually not, and you can tell which case you are in by looking at what your headphones plug into.
Two things worth knowing even in the analog case. Nothing about a codec fixes interference picked up elsewhere: if you hear the mouse cursor or coil whine through your headphones, that is a grounding or shielding problem and a different board is a blunt instrument for it. And the row says nothing about the microphone input, which for most people matters more than playback and which no manufacturer specifies in a way we can compare across boards.
Three of our 80 review pages print something other than a part number in this row, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight:
Codec not published by GIGABYTECodec not published by GIGABYTE8-channel HD audio, codec not verifiedThe manufacturer's own specification page for these boards describes the audio without naming the chip. We will not fill the gap with a plausible guess, because a part number in a spec table reads as verified whether or not it is, and a wrong one is worse for you than a blank. Backfilling those cells from a source that does name the part is a separate piece of work, and it needs a source, not an inference.
If you are choosing one of these three and the analog output matters to you, the answer is not on our page or on the manufacturer's: ask for the part number before buying, or plan on a USB or HDMI output path where the codec does not matter.
The Audio row sits in the spec table near the top of every review. Four of ours, one per tier:
ALC897. The ordinary case on this catalogue, and on 29 other boards.ALC1200. The other entry-tier part.ALC1220-VB. The HD-Audio high end, and the one member of that family with a readable source behind it.ALC4080. The USB-attached generation: a different chip class, not a newer ALC1220.The full set is in our reviews index, and the compare tool puts the Audio rows of two boards side by side. If the analog jacks are your output path, read the row as a starting point and then check the board's own specification page for what is built around the chip.
The codec descriptions, interface details and SNR and sample-rate figures on this page come from the two sources listed below, both read directly; every figure quoted is a manufacturer specification reproduced by igor'sLAB, not a measurement. The board counts come from the Audio row of the spec tables on the 80 review pages of this site, counted on 9 September 2026. Nothing here is a listening test: we have no test bench, we did not connect headphones to any of these boards, and this page contains no judgement of our own about how any codec sounds. We could not read Realtek's product pages for the ALC897, ALC1200 or ALC4082, and ASUS's article on motherboard audio solutions refused our request, so no figure is stated for those three parts and no difference is claimed between the ALC1220, ALC1220P and ALC1220-VB.
Published 28 August 2026. Board counts taken from our own review pages on 2 September 2026.