NFORCE Questions

[moosey]

What are the different nvidia nforce chipsets available? what is the difference among them? how stable / reliable have they been? how is the performance?

 

[Athlon4all]

<< What are the different nvidia nforce chipsets available? what is the difference among them? >>

There are 3 revisions of nForce:

220-D: does not feature the Twinbank Architechure, but has integrated GF2 MX video. The video performs very poorly but in overall system performance it is identical to 415-D and 420-D.
420-D: Same as 220-D except that it does use the Twinbank architechure. Features GF2 MX video
415-D: Uses Twinbank like 420-D but it does not feature the Integrated GF2 MX video

<< how stable / reliable have they been? >>

At non-overclocked speeds, definately at the same level as KT266A if not better. The only hiccup has been with the audio drivers, but these issues seem to have been resolved with nVidia's Unified Drivers

<< how is the performance? >>

Assuming you're using an AGP card, the performance between the 3 nForce revisions is nearly identical, and is at most around 5% slower than KT266A. Not noticeable at all. Just note that 415-D isn't out quite yet, but by the end of the month it should be and boards using it are rumored to run at around $100 and will still feature the Ethernet and nForce APU on-board, just no video. It should be a great solution unless u allready have an Audigy, or if u need to use more than 2 DIMM's (Twinbank for optimum performance must use only 2 Double sided DIMM's, if you use a 3rd Double-sided DIMM, then memory slows to 200MHz rather than 266MHz)