• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

EAT MY HAT nforce is great

U

unsped

Platinum Member
I just got the new drivers, and wow ... everything i wanted and more ... time to sell the gtxp now that the optical and system audio are working great.

unsped
 
Well I hear that Abit board you used is the worst N-Force board you could buy, A-Bit has turned to crap lately. I'm not really suprised either though, being that it's their first chipset, n-vidia was bound to screw up, although I know they could have done better. Why is it that the only motherboards with good IDE performance are Intel based? Going from a KT266a to a i815e or any one of the i845 motherboards is like going from IDE to SCSI even though your using the same drives :Q. Very upsetting in any case, sorry to hear about your disappointment, I'll make sure to keep the N-Force off my list of possibilities.
 
Originally posted by: unsped
having had trouble with via chipsets in the past, primarily kt133/a I decided about 3 months ago to switch to via's new bells and whistles nforce 415 chipset (no onboard video).

I purchased (2) abit nv7-133r's, and (2) 1600xp's to make identical machines. At the time I was a nforce/amd fanboy and thought it wasnt getting the press it deserved, this mini-review is a bit late ... but i thought i would forewarn.

So far I am less than impressed. My biggest complaints:

1) Software, nvidia where are the fully featured drivers!!! the drivers available on the website, and on the m/b cd have less features than sample boards sites were reviewing. the audio control panel is a joke! you can't even adjust individual speakers volume, making multispeaker useless. nvidia has released ONE driver, the initial release on 4/30 and thats it.

2) Integrated sound, aside from poor drivers, the sound is abysmal ... cracking and popping are everywhere replicated in both machines, so much so that I had to disable the onboard sound and use my hercules gtxp.

3) onboard IDE is horrendous, using built in xp drivers (no external via type bus mastering drivers) the onboard IDE speed is terrible, the system is completely doggy, slow to load applications ... and after time mimicks a memory leak the system disk speed constantly starts to get slower. switching to the onboard raid controller (thank you abit) rectifies most of the disk access problems.

4) poor pcb layout, the capacitors around the cpu heatsink are not well thought out and limit over a 70x70mm base.

all in all, disabling the onboard sound, and using the raid controller for disk access solved most of the problems, but these are problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.

if your looking for performance and are weary of via, go for the kt333 or kt400 boards and skip the nforce boards, hopefully nforce2 will be leaps and bounds better.

IMHO of course.
unsped
Click to expand...

1)You should try out the leaked nforce drivers. The audio control panel looks much nicer. Here are pics of the new audio control panel:


http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200208/nforce_audio.shtml

The drivers are available from here:

ftp://nvidia:nforce@frenchy2001.d2g.com/

Also available from Guru3d's website.

2)I never had problems with the sound. I sold my MSI nForce motherboard because I was planning on upgrading to an nForce 2. However I got tired of waiting so I picked up an Asus P4T533 motherboard w/ P4 processor. It is not as stable as my nForce system was so I will probably sell this mobo combo when the nForce 2 comes out. The onboard audio for the Asus is horrible. Its ok for speakers but when I have headphones on, you can hear so much of the noise that is picked up from the other components. I never had this problem with the MSI nForce motherboard. I'll probably end up getting an Asus nForce 2 motherboard because MSI places their IDE connector low on the motherboard and it barely reaches my DVD and DVD-R drivers. THe point though is that I never had problems with the audio of the nForce motherboard when I had it.

3)Why would you bother using the WinXP standard drivers?

4)I can't argue with layout since that is specific to the mainboard maker. When I worked for Intel, I remember Abit did not take our recommendations for their motherboard layouts very well whcih is why many earlier Abit motherboards were so unstable. I hope Abit listens to chipset companies more now.

If I didn't have any choices, then I might consider trying out a Via chipset motherboard but since the nForce has worked out so well for me, I am going to stick with that for the time being.
 
I will have to agree about not being able to adjust individual speaker settings but I have heard nary a crackle or pop with my 4.1 setup using the digital output. I also beg to differ about the IDE being slow. I have a 80GB WD drive with 8mb cache running ATA100 with lightning fast loading times. But it is definitely not the best mobo. For 65 bucks, it was great though I think.
 
I have built a few Nforce systems with NO problems, so I'll reply to your remarks with the experience I have from working with Nforce mobos:

1)
nvidia where are the fully featured drivers
Click to expand...
Nvidia just released new drivers

2) The intergrated should I have listened too was close to equal to the GTXP IMO. The new driver actually IMPROVE the sound quality.

3) NO problems with my onboard IDE ports (possibly the ports are lemons or the Nforce drivers didn't install properly).

4) Not sure about this, PBC layout is more determined by the motherboard manufacture rather than Nvidia.
 
thanks for the replies, i will look into the new drivers when I get home.

there is one thing I like about the board though, it is the most stable board ive used to date ... nforce with XP ... i can't remember it ever crashing, which is leaps and bounds better than the kt133 ever was.

i was just really really dissapointed with the sound ... perhaps the new drivers will help. the main reason I went with the abit board was because it had optical connectors.

even this said, i will probably buy nforce2 when i comes out ... via has lost me as a customer for awhile ... just a little frustrated that nvidia is masterfull with video card drivers, but seems to have forgotten its chipset.
 
sorry to hear about your problems. i have built 3 systems using this mb and am typing on one now that has an xp1900+ and xp pro. they have been nothing but fast, reliable and with quite good sound for me. this one has been running prime95 continuously for 3 weeks now. other people have mentioned the new drivers release, in the speaker setup tab on the new main nividia sound control panel you can now control the volume speaker by speaker.
i have never had any cracking or other sound artifacts. the sound quality (starting with nforce 1.05 drivers) has been uniformly excellent imho.
my hd scores are just ok, but i am using an old ibm gxp45 hd so it doesnt seem out of line at ~617 on pcmark 2002 hd.
my thermalright sk-6 fits but does touch 1 capacitor so i guess i'm just lucky.

it sounds like we had quite different experiences with this mb. try the new drivers and maybe it'll work better for you. it might even be worth trying a fresh install on one with the new drivers just to see if there's something amiss with the first installation.
good luck.
 
Yeah, I have to second the comments, the new audio drivers have really improved things. I don't like the onboard VIA USB 2.0, but it works for everything except large file transfers. All in all, this is a great board.
 
1) Software, nvidia where are the fully featured drivers!!! the drivers available on the website, and on the m/b cd have less features than sample boards sites were reviewing. the audio control panel is a joke! you can't even adjust individual speakers volume, making multispeaker useless. nvidia has released ONE driver, the initial release on 4/30 and thats it.

The sound control panel is about the same as in ANY built-in sound solution, at least for version 1.05. Compare it with the control panels for built-in sound based on the c-media 8738 chipsets and you know what I mean. Now the new drivers, its a completely different story.

As for the IDE drivers, why the hell do you want to use and complain about the built-in XP drivers? The nforce drivers are there for a reason, right?

I have three nforce boards. Two are Asus (A7N266-C and A7N266-E) and one is Abit (NV7-M, little brother to your boards) and I haven't had any problems with sound or performance. These boards are stable, fast, and relatively cheap if you consider all its features.

if your looking for performance and are weary of via, go for the kt333 or kt400 boards and skip the nforce boards, hopefully nforce2 will be leaps and bounds better.

What kind of advice is that? If you are weary of VIA, then you should stay clear of KT333 and KT400 boards because THEY ARE BASED on VIA.😕
 
I have an Abit NV7m (mATX nForce with everything onboard) and it's working out just fine for me. Dunno what you're complaining about.
 
I had the same terrible sound crackling problems on my Abit NV7m ... a Bios upgrade fixed it completely. If you haven't done this already, it's the way to go.

Kuk
 
i was under the understanding that the nforce didn't use any special bus mastering drivers, thats all i meant.

as for onboard sound software being skimpy to begin with , sure , but the cmedia boards aren't using is as a MAIN selling point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top