found this thread which talks about audio being combined into the dvi port a little...
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/d ... mi.273139/here's some of the dvi/audio references from the thread...
"Modern GPUs have their own built-in audio chip, output HDMI natively via an HDMI port and Windows 7 will automatically switch to said A/V output when a display is connected. They can also output via DVI with otherwise unused pins assigned to audio, which are then connected to the correct HDMI pins via an included DVI-to-HDMI adapter. "
"Audio is admittedly slightly less common but like I said, most modern GPUs will output audio over DVI but they have to be set up correctly and you have to use the special adapter that came with the graphics card (AMD and nVidia probably use different pins to do different things so you need the matching one for your card). Integrated graphics processors might be less likely to have this capability, I'm not sure."
"Further, audio does not ride on additional DVI pins, and does not interface with HDMI in this fashion. Audio in the HDMI spec occurs during video blanking, it doesn't reside on it's own pins or have it's own signal transmission, it is basically a subset of the video data."
so still unclear exactly how it works, but good to find more posts on the subject.
my main rig...
asrock 970 extreme3
AMD FX-6300 Vishera CPU
zalman cpns5x performa hs/fan
crucial ballistix 2x4gb sport ddr3-1333
powercolor ax7750 1GBK3-H vga
antec neo he 650r
Samsung 840 EVo SSD 120 GB
toshiba 2TB HDD 64M cache sata3
seagate 1TB HDD 64M cache sata3
hitachi 2TB HDD 64M cache sata3
lg wh14ns40 bd burner
optiarc ad-7240s sata dvdrw (nec chipset)