Questions about NForce 2 and Dual DDR...

[human2k]

After reading Anand's round up on NForce 2 I have several questions (excuse me if they are dumb).

1. THen Nforce 2 audio requires a separate chip to drive the APU?? I always thought it works by it self. Doesn't this bring down the sound quality? How good is the sound quality, is it on par with an audigy/santa cruz?

2. So in order to use Dual DDR you need to sticks of the same ram right? Dual DDR333 will only work if you have a 333MHZ FSB CPU???

 

[bgeh]

2. So in order to use Dual DDR you need to sticks of the same ram right? Dual DDR333 will only work if you have a 333MHZ FSB CPU???

the answer is yes and no
yes you need 2 identical sticks of ddr. no, dual ddr will work even you have a 266mhz fsb chip.but even at 333 mhz fsb,the nforce 2 provides twice as much bandwidth with dual channel ddr 333.so that is why you don't see a significant performance gain.it's the cpu's fsb that is limiting it.

 

[Adul]

1. well if it is anything like the nforce audio, then I can say yes it is comparable to what the TBSC has to offer.

2. Well you can have different sized ram
256 and 512, but only the 256 and 256 of the 512 wuld be run in dual. the left over 256 on the 512 would be single channel.
Has for ddr 333, you can run it async, but the perf is worse then running sync to the FSB.

 

[human2k]

So say if I have an Athlon XP 2200 266FSB with two sticks of 256MB corsair pc2700, it wont operate at Dual DDR333 but only at DDR266 right? Is it possible to have Dual DDR400 with 2 sticks of PC3200??

 

[bgeh]

it will operate at dual ddr 333
you just won't see a performance increase
yes, it is possible that you can get dual ddr 400 with 2 sticks of pc3200

 

[human2k]

So if there's no performance improvement with DDR333, i should get DDR266 ram right (not gonna overclock btw)?


BTW all Nforce 2 boards with come with 5.1 dolby digital Nforce audio right?

 

[bgeh]

yeah, but the performance is slightly lower(not that you are going to notice)
no not all nforce 2 boards have dolby digital 5.1
only the mobos which have the southbridge MCP-T will feature it

 

[human2k]

So in Anand's review under onboard audio, if it says: Realtek ALC650 controller (nForce2 APU). It doesnt have MCP-T right? WHy does it say nForce2 APU if its using a realtek chipset?

 

[bgeh]

i think the realtek is functioning as an analog to digital converter(ADC)

 

[Insane3D]

Oh man..I don't understand all this confusion about the Nforce sound. The Realtek codec simply handles the output from the APU. The APU can not output sound by itself, it needs a CODEC to handle the various input and output ports. The sound quality is not degraded in any way, and it is very good, as good or better than any of the mainstream soundcards. The real power is in the real time Dolby Digital encoding.

Here's some screenshots from my Epox 8RDA+ system that I hope will help you see that the full power of the MCP-T is being used.

Nforce2 Audio Control Panel:

Main

Speaker Setup

MIDI

Enviroment

Applications

Information


And finally, a screen shot of my Device Manager to see that there are no Realtek drivers to be found, only Nvidia MCP-T APU sound..


I hope that finally clears it up...jeez.

 

[human2k]

those are some dandy looking drivers! Im prolly gonna get the Epox also.