Sad to read, but here's the Inq's take on it:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19123
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19123
Inquirer said:
No SoundStorm in NForce 4
- Thread starter Handruin
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I think I found a good use for a small nuclear weapon.
Really, this completely and totally fucking sucks.
Really, this completely and totally fucking sucks.
You had to know this was coming. THe business is cut-throat and a majority users really can't appreciate what SStorm provides...
I do like having a nice quality integrated solution on my board though...cuts down on the card clutter.
C
I do like having a nice quality integrated solution on my board though...cuts down on the card clutter.
C
I have to admit that I'm a little puzzled by all the shock and surprise I've been seeing in regards to this "latest news". I became aware of this a while back, and thought this was widely known and publicized. Somehow, I think the soundstorm rumour mill just got far out of hand.
Well, I remember reading a post here, that gave hope for SoundStorm in the next release. At least they are offering it in both 754 and 939 flavors. That must give some credit that 754 is here to stay for a little while longer.
Yes, I remember there was some initial hope. Certainly not denying that. And this thread, as evidence, points to the fact that there is a lot of desire in the community.
But the dissemination to which I referred appeared a short while later....maybe late July/early Aug ?? No one else remember this? The news consisted of some Nvidia person clearly stating that soundstorm would not make its way into the nF4.
But the dissemination to which I referred appeared a short while later....maybe late July/early Aug ?? No one else remember this? The news consisted of some Nvidia person clearly stating that soundstorm would not make its way into the nF4.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
What's Soundstorm and who cares about it anyway? Anything that cuts their costs without impacting on performance or reliability is a good thing.
Maybe, one day, Nvidia will be able to make a chipset that is as wonderfully fuss-free and put-your-money-on-it reliable as the chipsets that VIA have been churning out for years now. Maybe one day Nvidia will be able to produce a driver package that is as simple and trustworthy as the VIA Hyperons (or, indeed, as good as their own Detonators). And — who knows? — maybe they will be able to start offering the same sort of great value for money that VIA offer as routine.
But don't hold your breath. I'll believe it when I see it.
(Still, the Nforce 3 has been good so far. But the unlovely Nforce 1 and the grossly over-rated Nforce 2 seemed good to start with too. We will have to wait and see.)
Maybe, one day, Nvidia will be able to make a chipset that is as wonderfully fuss-free and put-your-money-on-it reliable as the chipsets that VIA have been churning out for years now. Maybe one day Nvidia will be able to produce a driver package that is as simple and trustworthy as the VIA Hyperons (or, indeed, as good as their own Detonators). And — who knows? — maybe they will be able to start offering the same sort of great value for money that VIA offer as routine.
But don't hold your breath. I'll believe it when I see it.
(Still, the Nforce 3 has been good so far. But the unlovely Nforce 1 and the grossly over-rated Nforce 2 seemed good to start with too. We will have to wait and see.)
NVida gets some credit in my book. Sure, it will never be perfect, but look at how long VIA has been producing chipsets, and then for NVidia to come into the market as successfully as they have. In comparison, would anyone here buy ATI's chipset right now?
I remember being weary of buying a VIA product, but now I'm not as concerned. One of the hardest change-overs was building my first AMD athlon setup. I was worried to use the VIA KT133 chipset, but how many other good choice did I have at the time. I had grown to love my Intel 440BX and the stability it offered.
I remember being weary of buying a VIA product, but now I'm not as concerned. One of the hardest change-overs was building my first AMD athlon setup. I was worried to use the VIA KT133 chipset, but how many other good choice did I have at the time. I had grown to love my Intel 440BX and the stability it offered.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Soundstorm is a DSP that converts PCM sources to Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
You've stated opposition to surround sound in the past, but here's the thing: It's wonderful for gaming, and as far as things go, the soundstorm process does a vastly better job than other 5.1 upconverting techniques I'm aware of.
It's the only thing I ever liked about ANY nvidia product. If I had to pay $300 for a motherboard to get it, I would.
You've stated opposition to surround sound in the past, but here's the thing: It's wonderful for gaming, and as far as things go, the soundstorm process does a vastly better job than other 5.1 upconverting techniques I'm aware of.
It's the only thing I ever liked about ANY nvidia product. If I had to pay $300 for a motherboard to get it, I would.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
I assumed it was something of that general nature, Merc. It's good to know the details.
More broadly, in my market, sound is a complete dead issue. Want to know how many soundcards I've sold this year? One. It was a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy, bottom-end model, to someone who came in and ordered just the sound card itself, nothing else. (He already had a nice system. Needed an Audigy — any Audigy — for some particular special purpose application the details of which have slipped my memory me.)
System buyers sometimes ask about the standard of the on-board sound. One in 10, maybe. No more than that. Some say "my old board has on-board sound and it's not very good, do I need a sound card?" I tell them that on-board sound has improved a lot, that they can expect a fair random current mainboard to produce sound of equal or better quality to the old Sound Blaster Vibra 128. (Nearly everyone has owned a Vibra 128 at one time or another.)
They say "Oh, that will be fine. Forget the sound card. Now, about that LCD monitor ...."
Fair dinkum, I could ship computers without any sound at all and half of them wouldn't even notice. As a selling point, sound is a complete waste of time. No-one is interested.
--------------------
Doug. Yes, you are quite right. For a first-ever chipset, the Nforce 1 was a damn fine effort. It's just a pity that they don't seem to be able to improve on it. I think their problem is that they aren't putting in the engineer time on driver improvements. Have you noticed that they practically never release updated Nforce drivers? Trust me, it ain't because the v1.0 was perfect in every detail.
A good simple, practical measure of a chipset's quality is the number of what we call "floaty-round motherboards" we have in the workshop at any given time. These are boards that, for one reason or another, got unpacked, usually bolted into a system, and then came out again. Usually, it's because they have some kind of a question mark over them. Maybe they are faulty, maybe they are OK. Sooner or later, we have to go through them one by one and determine if the fault is (a) real, and (b) reproducable enough to RMA them.
Good boards don't keep "floaty round" status for long. They get pressed into service for one odd job or another quite quickly. Out-and-out faulty boards don't hang round for long either: they soon get marked with the fault and go out the back onto the RMA pile.
It's the "works most of the time" boards that stay of floaty-round status practically forever. You can't pin an honest-to-goodness fault on them that's reproducable enough to RMA the board (not without spending a ridiculous amount of time on each one) and yet every time you need a board to do an actual job you have to choose another one because you can't actually trust the floaty-round board not to come back again.
Right now we have about a half-dozen floaty-round motherboards. Five of them have Nvidia Nforce II chipsets. (The other one is an Asrock KM-600 that refuses to power up for several hours about twice a month, then works perfectly again.)
Nope, it's not a brand thing. Of our five problem children, three are (from memory) Albatrons and two Gigabytes. One of the five is an on-board video job, the others are high-end boards with goodies like Firewire. Two different manufacturers, three different models. And don't even think about mentioning those pox-ridden ASUS disasters — they float straight over to the garbage bin: they were dreadful: greater than 50% return rate. Considering that even at the height of their popularity, Nforce II boards only accounted for maybe 20% of our motherboard sales mix, that 5:1 ration is a telling indictment of the chipset. And it's not unusual. We RMAed an unusually high proportion of them when we were handling more of them.
We also has heaps of weird sound problems with the Nforce II. Like about 30% of systems shipped. You can't even plug in a stand-alone sound card and/or swap the motherboard: the noise through the speakers just comes back anyway after a reinstall and a week or two. The only cure is to substitute a VIA board. I'm virtually certain it's a driver problem.
But guess what? Nvidia don't do driver revisions.
More broadly, in my market, sound is a complete dead issue. Want to know how many soundcards I've sold this year? One. It was a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy, bottom-end model, to someone who came in and ordered just the sound card itself, nothing else. (He already had a nice system. Needed an Audigy — any Audigy — for some particular special purpose application the details of which have slipped my memory me.)
System buyers sometimes ask about the standard of the on-board sound. One in 10, maybe. No more than that. Some say "my old board has on-board sound and it's not very good, do I need a sound card?" I tell them that on-board sound has improved a lot, that they can expect a fair random current mainboard to produce sound of equal or better quality to the old Sound Blaster Vibra 128. (Nearly everyone has owned a Vibra 128 at one time or another.)
They say "Oh, that will be fine. Forget the sound card. Now, about that LCD monitor ...."
Fair dinkum, I could ship computers without any sound at all and half of them wouldn't even notice. As a selling point, sound is a complete waste of time. No-one is interested.
--------------------
Doug. Yes, you are quite right. For a first-ever chipset, the Nforce 1 was a damn fine effort. It's just a pity that they don't seem to be able to improve on it. I think their problem is that they aren't putting in the engineer time on driver improvements. Have you noticed that they practically never release updated Nforce drivers? Trust me, it ain't because the v1.0 was perfect in every detail.
A good simple, practical measure of a chipset's quality is the number of what we call "floaty-round motherboards" we have in the workshop at any given time. These are boards that, for one reason or another, got unpacked, usually bolted into a system, and then came out again. Usually, it's because they have some kind of a question mark over them. Maybe they are faulty, maybe they are OK. Sooner or later, we have to go through them one by one and determine if the fault is (a) real, and (b) reproducable enough to RMA them.
Good boards don't keep "floaty round" status for long. They get pressed into service for one odd job or another quite quickly. Out-and-out faulty boards don't hang round for long either: they soon get marked with the fault and go out the back onto the RMA pile.
It's the "works most of the time" boards that stay of floaty-round status practically forever. You can't pin an honest-to-goodness fault on them that's reproducable enough to RMA the board (not without spending a ridiculous amount of time on each one) and yet every time you need a board to do an actual job you have to choose another one because you can't actually trust the floaty-round board not to come back again.
Right now we have about a half-dozen floaty-round motherboards. Five of them have Nvidia Nforce II chipsets. (The other one is an Asrock KM-600 that refuses to power up for several hours about twice a month, then works perfectly again.)
Nope, it's not a brand thing. Of our five problem children, three are (from memory) Albatrons and two Gigabytes. One of the five is an on-board video job, the others are high-end boards with goodies like Firewire. Two different manufacturers, three different models. And don't even think about mentioning those pox-ridden ASUS disasters — they float straight over to the garbage bin: they were dreadful: greater than 50% return rate. Considering that even at the height of their popularity, Nforce II boards only accounted for maybe 20% of our motherboard sales mix, that 5:1 ration is a telling indictment of the chipset. And it's not unusual. We RMAed an unusually high proportion of them when we were handling more of them.
We also has heaps of weird sound problems with the Nforce II. Like about 30% of systems shipped. You can't even plug in a stand-alone sound card and/or swap the motherboard: the noise through the speakers just comes back anyway after a reinstall and a week or two. The only cure is to substitute a VIA board. I'm virtually certain it's a driver problem.
But guess what? Nvidia don't do driver revisions.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Over a year ago nvidia made a press release stating their intention to offer a soundstorm based sound card
And, for the record, the NV1 graphics product was integrated as a dual purpose video and sound card. nVidia HAS made sound chips before.
Anyway, I'd commit vile and heinous crimes to have that technology continued on a more modern architecture than slot A. As a sound card. As a motherboard-integrated feature. I tolerate what I feel is the overall buggy nature of my nforce-based systems to have that tech. It *IS* worthwhile to me.
I haven't had great experiences with nforce either - probably a self-fulfilling prophecy in my case, but if someone who is as die-hard anti-nvidia as I am is willing to say "I want that feature and I'll pay anything to get it", maybe it really is worthwhile.
And, for the record, the NV1 graphics product was integrated as a dual purpose video and sound card. nVidia HAS made sound chips before.
Anyway, I'd commit vile and heinous crimes to have that technology continued on a more modern architecture than slot A. As a sound card. As a motherboard-integrated feature. I tolerate what I feel is the overall buggy nature of my nforce-based systems to have that tech. It *IS* worthwhile to me.
I haven't had great experiences with nforce either - probably a self-fulfilling prophecy in my case, but if someone who is as die-hard anti-nvidia as I am is willing to say "I want that feature and I'll pay anything to get it", maybe it really is worthwhile.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
(Tea tries to imagine the sort of slocket adaptor necessary to fit an Operon into a Slot A mainboard. Fails miserably.)
Judging by how long it took VIA to get it right (I don't really know I still don't have the courage to go back to them) I'd say nVidia is doing remarkably well given the short amount of time they have been making motherboard chipsets. JMHO.
While I'm no system builder, I have not had any problems I can attribute to an nVidia chipset...
C
While I'm no system builder, I have not had any problems I can attribute to an nVidia chipset...
C
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I sell on the order of 50 systems a year. Tannin probably does ten times that number.
We both use and recommend Via over its alternatives.
Hm...
We both use and recommend Via over its alternatives.
Hm...
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
Six? In how any years? Compare this to VIA or Intel or Nvidia's own video drivers. Really slack. Their web site only has two. (Or that's what was there last time we looked, and the several times before that.) And none of them have fixed the persistent problems. Only thing you can do is use the board in an application where sound is unimportant.
Anyway, from memory, it's not an XP specific problem: happens in Win98 too.
Clocker: you exaggerate how long it took VIA to get their boards right. VIA were producing chipsets as good as any other in the industry at that time years before Athlons arrived. 1996 was the watershed year, when the unlovely 570M gave way to the excellent 580VP. And, in fact, FIC 486 chipsets were just fine, but I won't count them: anyone seemed to be able to make a decent 486 chipset. Well, almost anyone - the Intel ones were pretty ordinary, but Intel never were any good at chipsets until they started paying serious attention to the matter, back around about the same time that the second-generation Pentium Classics came out. The FX wasn't bad and, for all their much-hyped limitations, the VX and HX were vastly better than anything else around at the time, bar only the VIA 580VP and the SiS 5571.
Anyway, from memory, it's not an XP specific problem: happens in Win98 too.
Clocker: you exaggerate how long it took VIA to get their boards right. VIA were producing chipsets as good as any other in the industry at that time years before Athlons arrived. 1996 was the watershed year, when the unlovely 570M gave way to the excellent 580VP. And, in fact, FIC 486 chipsets were just fine, but I won't count them: anyone seemed to be able to make a decent 486 chipset. Well, almost anyone - the Intel ones were pretty ordinary, but Intel never were any good at chipsets until they started paying serious attention to the matter, back around about the same time that the second-generation Pentium Classics came out. The FX wasn't bad and, for all their much-hyped limitations, the VX and HX were vastly better than anything else around at the time, bar only the VIA 580VP and the SiS 5571.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
I don't think VIA made a good chipset till the kt266, everything previous was either ok or bad.
Intel 440BX was a great chipset, it appears the 845/865/875 are also very good chipsets, but just aren't destined to have the life span of the 440BX.
I think Nvidia's chipsets have all been good. Nothing great.
SiS chipsets are a mixed back much like VIA. Their current chipsets for athlon64 appear very good. Their current southbridges are excelent, however some of their Northbridges for AthlonXP are lack luster in terms of performance.
Intel 440BX was a great chipset, it appears the 845/865/875 are also very good chipsets, but just aren't destined to have the life span of the 440BX.
I think Nvidia's chipsets have all been good. Nothing great.
SiS chipsets are a mixed back much like VIA. Their current chipsets for athlon64 appear very good. Their current southbridges are excelent, however some of their Northbridges for AthlonXP are lack luster in terms of performance.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
Yeah, SiS are a lottery. Fair to poor, utter crap, fair to poor again, an absolute little bottler, fair to medium ... Do you feel lucky?
Still, at least the price of the ticket is cheap.
Still, at least the price of the ticket is cheap.
I like the nForce2 Chipset a lot, and I've been nothing but dissapointed with pretty much anything nVidia has done since then. My main question is, will the 5.1/7.1 onboard audio still exist? The rest of the chipset looks pretty robust, from the built in firewall to the NCQ SATA RAID controller
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm sure it will, but it will be built on AC97 or some similarly crappy standard, rather than the drool-worthy Soundstorm codec. IIRC new intel southbridges do Pro Logic II, but IMO that's the least-pleasant of the fake-5.1 encoding methods. I don't have THAT much of an opinion on DD5.1 vs. DTS but I do like Neo:6 better than DPLII.
BooST if you'd really like a demonstration, I'll let you hear the difference on the nforce 220 setup in my office.
That's an offer I wish I could extend to everyone here. It REALLY DOES sound better.
BooST if you'd really like a demonstration, I'll let you hear the difference on the nforce 220 setup in my office.
That's an offer I wish I could extend to everyone here. It REALLY DOES sound better.
ddrueding
Fixture
I liked my nForce2 systems (running on Asus A7N8X Boards of all varieties). I currently really like my nForce2 250Gb system (running an Asus K8V board). I still mention the concerns of "reputable dealers" (meaning you guys) to my clients, but am pleased with my own good fortune.
ddrueding
Fixture
ddrueding said:
nForce3 250Gb; of course
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I've read that they've already split the engineering group that was responsible for soundstorm into different product groups. I don't think we'll see a future version of it.
The good news is, there's enough outcry that perhaps someone will take up and champion the technology someplace else (a spinoff company, maybe?). I'm just glad I'm not the only one who feels that way about that particular tech.
The good news is, there's enough outcry that perhaps someone will take up and champion the technology someplace else (a spinoff company, maybe?). I'm just glad I'm not the only one who feels that way about that particular tech.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks Doug. That's good to know. Clearly, for my market, the basic chip is the one to have. Unless someone get's their finger out of their backside and provides us with a VIA-based board first. But it needs to be a decent maker. Right now, I have two makers in the #1 "we like these guys" slot:
* Biostar
* Gigabyte
Plus, in the "first reserve" slot,
* Epox
* err .... um .... I don't think we have any others we particularly favour at present. Soltek are all about flashy boxes and dayglow packaging at the expense of simple, solid engineering these days (and expensive too), I've gone off Albatron after three boards in a row we didn't like (all three Nforce II based ... mmm ... maybe there ius a hint there).
We gave up on MSI and ASUS long since. Might be almost time to look at another wholesaler, see what's around.
* Biostar
* Gigabyte
Plus, in the "first reserve" slot,
* Epox
* err .... um .... I don't think we have any others we particularly favour at present. Soltek are all about flashy boxes and dayglow packaging at the expense of simple, solid engineering these days (and expensive too), I've gone off Albatron after three boards in a row we didn't like (all three Nforce II based ... mmm ... maybe there ius a hint there).
We gave up on MSI and ASUS long since. Might be almost time to look at another wholesaler, see what's around.
ddrueding
Fixture
Handruin said:
I like that the 16x port is lower on the board, allows more ventilation room for the CPU.
Drew's response to end-user feedback of the lacking SoundStorm in NForce 4.
Yes, but if one uses better-than-stock VGA cooling, it limits the available PCI slots. (well, there's still room for a sound card...)ddrueding said:
Also, it's a bit interesting why some manufacturers have just basic HS for the nForce chip, and others have a fancy fanned solution. Well, maybe they're not final, as half of the boards don't have even a HS...
The DFI board looks really innovative: they've mirrored the VR to the right edge of the board and moved both power connectors there. But what's that 4-pin Molex doing in the board? (near the center) Is that a feature in SLI-boards?
Cheers,
Jan
Hopefully I'm not driving you guys nutz with NForce info, but here is some more.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19313Inq said: