nforce2 and nforce 2 ultra 400

[noxipoo]

What are the differences between the 2 chipsets? I main I asked is looking at the Abit NF7-S and AN7, they look exactly the same and the NF7-S has soundstorm sound and the AN7 just has some 97 audio codec, yet the AN7 cost more. Whats better about the latter?

 

[Brian48]

The Ultra officially supports 400FSB.

 

[mechBgon]

The nForce2 Ultra 400's northbridge has two memory controllers, whereas nForce2 400 non-Ultra has one memory controller. AFAIK that's the distinction. Brian48, I think you're thinking of the distinction between the first-generation nForce2 SPP/IGP northbridges and the current nForce2 400/Ultra400 northbridges.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

While both answers are correct his thread title is misleading since he is actually asking what the difference between the NF7-S and AN7 are As fas as I can tell the only noticeable difference is the µGuru and lack of Soundstorm cert. *I guess it needs coax in and out to qualify?* on the AN7 although it uses the MCP-T as well and they include optical in and out S/PDIF too.

 

[Johnbear007]

The 400U chipset is DUAL CHANNEL chipset and also uses the MCP-T southbridge.

The 400 is Single channel memory shipset and uses the MSP southbridge.

There is litttle difference in performance. Check out anands review of the Soltek NV400

Except for high end workstation apps the performance is very comparable, and the 400 NON ULTRA are ussually cheaper


Now, if you need a premium sound card as well, the MCP-T provides the soundstorm cert which is nice, but personally I don't like onboard sound, even premium.

 

[pkypkypky]

Originally posted by: Brian48
The Ultra officially supports 400FSB.

I was wondering, do all the 400 ultra mobo's support the new 400FSB CPUs?? I just picked up an epox EP-8RDA3I

 

[Odeen]

Originally posted by: Johnbear007
The 400U chipset is DUAL CHANNEL chipset and also uses the MCP-T southbridge.

Wrong. The MCP and MCP-T southbridges can be used with any nForce2 northbridge.

The 400 is Single channel memory shipset and uses the MSP southbridge.

Not quite. The nForce2 400 is single channel, but it can, in theory, be paired with an MCP-T southbridge. However, nForce2 400 motherboards are considered "budget" for marketing purposes, so MCP-T is not implemented as a rule.

There is litttle difference in performance. Check out anands review of the Soltek NV400

Except for high end workstation apps the performance is very comparable, and the 400 NON ULTRA are ussually cheaper

Pretty much. Since the CPU - Chipset bandwidth is the same as single-channel DDR bandwidth, the dual-channel chipset can only stretch its legs when it can use the "prefetch" function (basically "guess" what the processor would need from the RAM before the processor needs it) to retrieve extra data from the memory for the CPU

Now, if you need a premium sound card as well, the MCP-T provides the soundstorm cert which is nice, but personally I don't like onboard sound, even premium.

Actually, based solely on features and CPU utilization, Soundstorm is VERY capable, on par with everything but an Audigy2. Its downfall is twofold. First, it's hampered with a crappy DAC (Every manufacturer of MCP-T equipped motherboards chooses to use a low-quality Realtek ALC650 chip for DAC/ADC functions. The only exception is the venerable Asus A7N266-C, which moved the entire analog section onto an ACR card that featured Sigmatel codec chips. A little further away from the electromagnetic mess that is your motherboard, and using a higher-quality analog stage, it sounded glorious compared to most onboard solutions). Second, the famed "Dolby Digital" encoding is far from perfect, and is quite lossy (640K/sec stream without any channels sharing data - worse bitrate per channel than 128K mp3's)