QUOTE(MaaseyRacer @ Aug 27 2008, 05:14 AM)

Peter can you clarify what you mean by the sound is not as good? Is it just audio quality or, does it only support 2.1 sound, etc.
Perhaps that was an unfair criticism, as I only support two stage channels, anyway: two Altec-Lansing A7-500 "Voice of the Theater" speakers.
After putting the two ALC888-equipped Shuttles into service, I went back to Gigabyte and to the ALC662 for its five PCI slot GA-P35-S3G motherboard, truly an overclocker's dream come true.
There is an exceptionally good guide to bringing up the GA-P35-xxx family via Kalyway 10.5.2 all the way to 10.5.4 with the vanilla kernel and every fix available from Software Update, and the only required deviation was to use the ALC662 codec dump instead of the ALC888 dump.
Worked the first time, and has worked well ever since at 2.8 GHz from a hand-me-down E4500. 170 on XBench.
The five PCI slots were immediately useful, with one taken by a generic RTL8169 gigabit LAN card, to overcome the limitation of the on-mobo RTL1000 gigabit LAN and its dependence on Psystar's improved kext, and another taken by a generic Firewire/USB 2.0 card (VIA chip sets), thereby leaving me with four free slots.
A Si I 3132 PCI-E card is coming, and will provide two additional SATA ports, either internal or external, jumper selectable.
So, the way I am using them, it matters little whether ALC888 or ALC662.
Well it does matter, somewhat, as there has been much more effort put into the three PCI slot GA-[E]P35-xxx (ALC888) models and a lot less into the five PCI slot GA-P35-S3G (ALC882) model.