So after looking this up I found NO good info and ended up working it all out for myself.

Incase anyone else has been wondering the same here's what I found:

In short, buond bow is better for 'general use' Daedric is better for a dedicated archer with enchanting/smithing

Bound Bow
Bound bow draws/shoots 20% faster (because it weighs less)
Requires far less skill point investment (with only two points in conduring it gets upgraded to the same as a fully upgraded daedric bow (with daedric crafting blacksmithing talent))
You get unlimited Daedric arrows - from my experience daedric arrows aren't nearly common enough that you could ever use them exclusively on a normal bow.
Weighs nothing
Makes noise when you cast it

Daedric Bow
Requires SUBSTANTIAL investment to be better than bound
But if you have max enchanting and max BSing it acn be substantially better. With max enchanting you can dual enchant your daedric to do 60 combined frost/fire damage. You can upgrade your daedric bow far beyond the damage of a bound bow by enchanting a set of +blacksmithing upgrade gear and chuggnig a 30% upgrade potion (will usually find a few throughout the game so save them)

As you can see, the investment is absolutely huge so unless you are a dedicated archer or you already have maxed BSing and enchanting.
The only time it's worth the effort is if you are a dedicated archer/stealther (as my char is) in which case it's worth EVERY bit of the time/points required to get the daedric bow to it's full potential.
Even with iron arrows a fully upgraded daedric (upgraded with upgrade enchanted gear + potion) and dual enchanted blows the bound bow out of the water.

That said, if you just use your bow on occasion or as a blackup for when dragons are in the air etc then a bound bow is definately the way to go. It will do FAR more damage than a basic non blacksmith spec upgraded daedric.

If I missed anything or anyone wants some more detail added post up. Just thought I'd try post something useful for when people google "daedric bow vs bound bow" like I did, since the first page of results is idiots on yahoo answers given false info.

This post was edited by IIFOXII on Oct 10 2012 06:10pm

in skyrim it doesnt matter if it's iron bow or daedric bow or bound bow, they all pretty much one hit on sneak

if you dont get sneak crit it's most likely 3-5 hits ~~

You usually don't get to sneak up on dragon.

well dragons usually aint a problem either

Yeah that's entirely not true.

Base damage of daedric bow is ~6x higher than iron bow. Just about everything works off % modifiers so your end damage is again 6x more.

I don't know about you but I play on Master diff... Even with a 350 damage dual enchanted daedric bow I still don't 1 shot sneak any of the harder mobs.

If you find the game too easy put the difficulty up... I can't believe how many people cry that sneak is OP yet they're playing on adept.

not if you have the right mods..

well i played on master too. i only leveled up to 20 something and was never using the best items i could and still 1 hitted everything

also dragons never were a problem, just switch some res boots and or helm, np

Oh yeah, I remember using Deadly Dragons mod months ago.

Downloaded 'hardcore' difficulty for them, they had like 6-8x more HP, ignored stagger effects and some were immune/high resistant to specific dmg.
Took about 20 mins to kills Aspect of Alduin dragon, although my char armors/weapons were "gimped" because playing on master with smithing and enchant perks was too easy.

This post was edited by malbaz on Oct 12 2012 02:42pm

bound bow doesnt have to make noise when you cast it if you have quiet casting perk

this~