ATI high Definition Audio

[brons2]

OK so I just installed my very first ATI graphics card, a 4850 HD. Immediately after boot up it asked for my display drivers, no problem there, I installed the catalyst display driver only. It then asked for a driver for the ATI High Definition Audio....? I went ahead and let it look on the Internet for that and it found it and installed.

After a reboot, I was able to switch the sound source from it back to the integrated Realtek, but still, what exactly is the point of this driver? The video card does not have HDMI or a regular analog sound jack, so it cannot output sound anyways. I don't get it. Do they put the chip in the reference design in case one of the video card OEM's decides to implement it?

 

[DaveBaumann]

Irrespective of whether the sound is used or not the system will detech the hardware and ask for a driver. Even though the board has two DVI outputs HDMI (with audio) can be achieved via the DVI-to-HDMI adapter that you probably got with the board. However, if you have no intention of using HDMI with the board then I suggest just disabling the audio device associated with the graphics board via the device manager.