cel4145
Headphoneus Supremus
It's pretty damn good. Up to 115 dB SNR on the main DAC What you would have expected in a high end/professional unit costing $2000+ 15 years ago. 10 years ago it would have been project studio quality and cost $500+. Even 5 years ago or less it compares well with boxes costing $150+. Now it comes as a $10 part on expensive motherboards.
This is overstating the significance of 115db SNR. Redbook CD audio has an SNR < 100db. Now bluray has an SNR of 124db, but tor the average consumer, there's probably little benefit of SNR rations much above 100db. You'd have to have the system cranked really, really loud, and then you'd only be able to hear the SNR from the DAC with a bluray in a dead quiet part of a film. Might not even ever notice it even at reference volumes.
But, higher SNR does makes them sell, just like higher mega pixels on digital cameras makes them sell, even though it's generally not significant because cameras (such as in phones) need bigger sensors and better lenses much more than more megapixels.
That being said, I'm not saying that the 1150 might not sound good. Just be wary of getting hyped advice about how well motherboard audio performs now based on specs. Higher specs sometimes only mean higher specs, not significant audible performance increase. And, higher specs still don't tell you how the audio performs in the environment of a computer with noise problems potentially being introduced by PSUs or gaming graphic cards.