*Update* 6-way nForce2 Roundup Online

[alexruiz]

Serious Sam First Encounter and Second encounter...... They are so cheap that there is no need to keep testing with the second encounter demo.

 

[Dbird]

Just checked out the Digit-Life review and found it pretty lacking. I'm trying to decide between the Abit and Epox boards (Asus only has two phase power). It looks like the Abit only lets you up the Vcore to 1.8 vs 2.2 on the Epox, but the Epox doesn't allow you to up the Chipset voltage. I havn't heard much on chipset voltage, how important is it to overclocking and how does it help you?

 

[Nightmare999]

That review sucks. Other than the mobo specs it gives almost NO information. If you just looked at that review you would think all the mobos were identical. If your going to take the time to build all those systems and run the tests give us more information. Component placement, stuff included in the box, and use some better game tests.

Nightmare

ps. Is it "first thing next week" yet? My old Abit KA-7 is acting all pissy with this cold weather. It won't even boot to windows now

 

[OverclockTHIS]

Where is the bloody review of the motherboards, already? That Digit-Life review sucks major ass.

 

[claspingbeast]

here i was ,excited about my most eagerly awaited review..the nForce2...and what do i get from digtal-shite?
yep,CRAP...

 

[EglsFly]

And if shuttle has a nforce2 miniPC out yet (I think they do, don't they?) .. that would be a nice addition

I agree!
With the integrated network and decent audio, I would only need an AGP slot. (and maybe a PCI slot)

 

[hotstuff2000]

Originally posted by: DeAdLyDaVe
I think I win for having the oldest (crappiest) computer here. Actually it's not that bad, but I'd love to have a new nforce2 board.

Hah! You've GOT to be kidding. I'm still running an AMD k6/2-400 @ 420 mhz and 128MB RAM on WIN98SE. Been waiting on this nforce2 for 6 months. I *NEED* it, not just want it!?!@@#$!

Just haven't seen a mobo worth upgrading to yet from my Asus p5a. Sure, chipset is a little different but only differences have been whether they accept the newest CPU style or not, which didn't compel me to upgrade. But onboard spdif audio, kick ass video and network card, dual DDR, and blazing chipset?? I needed this 5 months ago

BTW I'm trying to find out what kind of cable you use on the spdif? Is it standard RCA???

 

[kadajawi]

well, we both are in the very slow league My Celeron 366@458 isn't much better... I really NEEEEED more power... and Firewire... and a working serial port (mine seems broken or whatever...). Oh... and I could need a decent sound card (which the NForce seems to have), my SB Live simply sounds urghs (good enough for a car MP3 player tho I guess). Anyway... what about the prices? Esp. for the Asus?

 

[davidos]

What is the drawback to "2 phase power" that the Asus board has? Do the others have 3 phase?

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: davidos
What is the drawback to "2 phase power" that the Asus board has? Do the others have 3 phase?

what is the difference between 2 phase and 3 phase power? How can that affect a Mobo?

 

[AbRASiON]

what is the difference between 2 phase and 3 phase power? How can that affect a Mobo?

Well this is a long story.............

TECHNICALLY 3phase I beleive uses 3 mos-fet chips which ensures more amps / smoother cleaner power (one or both of those things, not sure)

NOW, ABIT has pushed the 3 phase fud before,.. I'll semi-quote (not word for word) something they used in their KT7A marketing campaign - this is what they implied

"KT7A only AMD board with 3 phase power, sure to run the Athlon XP" - that's BASICALLY what they said (this is when the T-Bird was the common CPU and Athlon XP hadn't been released)

Come 6 months later,...

the majority of the cheaper boards from smaller manufacturers get a flash update to run the Athlon XP.
the ABit KT7A ONLY revision 1.3 will run the Athlon XP (and 1.3 didn't come out for ages later into the scene)
1.0 1.1 and 1.2 owners were S.O.L even though abit clearly implied that 3 phase makes them the most likely to support the Athlon XP.

Now, whether this discredits the values of 3'phase - I don't know about that, it may well still be a good technology which lets you run higher wattage cpu's or some such but we will have to wait and see.

either way Abit burnt a few customers with that one,........

 

[ClockerXP]

Anxiously awaiting the review.....

Do you guys think it will go up today? Maybe tonight? Is there a usual time they update things like that?

C

:disgust::Q:frown:

 

[Mrburns2007]

Originally posted by: Dbird
Just checked out the Digit-Life review and found it pretty lacking. I'm trying to decide between the Abit and Epox boards (Asus only has two phase power). It looks like the Abit only lets you up the Vcore to 1.8 vs 2.2 on the Epox, but the Epox doesn't allow you to up the Chipset voltage. I havn't heard much on chipset voltage, how important is it to overclocking and how does it help you?

Yeah and we all know how instable the Asus have been

 

[Nightmare999]

I still have the lead:

ASUS P5A <- This Mobo survived a Power Supply short and now it won't ATX power off :/
AMD K6-2 300 Mhz with 3-D NOW!
256 MB pc 100 ram
ATI Xpert 98 8 MB AGP video card (purchased in 98)
Hercules Muse 5.1 sound Card

And I do have 2 Commodore 64's , a 1541 5 1/4 floppy drive and a 300 Baud modem <- do these count?

 

[Odeen]

Soundstorm or no soundstorm, ALC-650 is not the first thing I have in mind when it comes to sound quality. Even if the "digital" part of the chipset is superior (read: Can do the whole DS3D and EAX and A3D bit with low CPU utilization), having a crappy DAC will lower the sound quality that we actually hear.

Here's what I ideally would like tested:
1) Objective audio quality tests of a motherboard with ALC-650 (Asus, Epox), CMI9739A (MSI) versus a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and/or Audigy 2.
2) Objective CPU utilization tests for 2d and 3d sound (Fire up Quake 3 or your favorite CPU-bound game heavy on 3d sound and benchmark:
KT400 with no sound
KT400 with built-in AC'97
KT400 with high-end soundcard (Audigy2 or Santa Cruz or Game Theater XP)
Nforce2 with no sound
Nforce2 with Soundstorm sound (analog only)
Nforce2 with high-end soundcard
Nforce2 with Soundstorm doing DD encodinging of 3d sound
Possibly, Nforce2 with AC'97 only

3) ANY problems with using DD encoding for 3d games. According to a friend of mine who bought the Asus A7N266-C (Nforce 415D chipset, no video but first-generation APU), he had some issues with EAX and DS3D not encoding correctly to his DD/DTS speaker system. Please test the compatibility of the new APU with 3d sound.

Any comments on the above methodogy would be welcome too..

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: Odeen
Soundstorm or no soundstorm, ALC-650 is not the first thing I have in mind when it comes to sound quality. Even if the "digital" part of the chipset is superior (read: Can do the whole DS3D and EAX and A3D bit with low CPU utilization), having a crappy DAC will lower the sound quality that we actually hear.

Not if we use an external decoder, which I intend to do.

Here's what I ideally would like tested:
1) Objective audio quality tests of a motherboard with ALC-650 (Asus, Epox), CMI9739A (MSI) versus a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and/or Audigy 2.
2) Objective CPU utilization tests for 2d and 3d sound (Fire up Quake 3 or your favorite CPU-bound game heavy on 3d sound and benchmark:
KT400 with no sound
KT400 with built-in AC'97
KT400 with high-end soundcard (Audigy2 or Santa Cruz or Game Theater XP)
Nforce2 with no sound
Nforce2 with Soundstorm sound (analog only)
Nforce2 with high-end soundcard
Nforce2 with Soundstorm doing DD encodinging of 3d sound
Possibly, Nforce2 with AC'97 only

I doubt any site would do that, specially since audio quality can't be easily compared unlike a benchmark.
(and I do agree that would be a good test)

3) ANY problems with using DD encoding for 3d games. According to a friend of mine who bought the Asus A7N266-C (Nforce 415D chipset, no video but first-generation APU), he had some issues with EAX and DS3D not encoding correctly to his DD/DTS speaker system. Please test the compatibility of the new APU with 3d sound.

I'd blame the game / drivers.

 

[ManBOO YA]

Originally posted by: Odeen
Soundstorm or no soundstorm, ALC-650 is not the first thing I have in mind when it comes to sound quality. Even if the "digital" part of the chipset is superior (read: Can do the whole DS3D and EAX and A3D bit with low CPU utilization), having a crappy DAC will lower the sound quality that we actually hear.

if you think the DAC is crappy then don't use it. Use the digital out on the asus board (i think the Epox has it on a seperate piece as well) and send it right to your speakers.

 

[Palek]

I was wondering about the sound quality of the Realtek chips too, Odeen. But I am wondering if those chips matter at all... This is what the Abit NF7-S review of hexus.net says:

Kind of difficult to see from the above picture due to their tiny size, 3 Realtek physical interfaces sit around the 8x AGP port. The ALC650 (6-channel sound, bottom left), RTL8201B (10/100 LAN, middle), and RTL8801B (Firewire, right). Why are these here when we have all of these features integrated from the MCP-T ? The reason lies in the fact that the NVIDIA features need physical routing to the ports that they work from. What that means is that no Realtek chips will show up in your device manager - they're just there to ensure that the features are routed properly to the headers and backplane.

Could this also mean that the Realtek chips will basically not have any effect on sound quality?

 

[AbRASiON]

Could this also mean that the Realtek chips will basically not have any effect on sound quality?

For the analog ports, I beleive these will have a DIRECT result on the sound quality.
For the digital ports, it should be routed straight out as 10101111011101101 to the DD 5.1 decoder, so no problems.

 

[AbRASiON]

Hey guys I just posted this in another thread, I hope this isn't true, it would dash our (some of our?) hopes in speeds over 166mhz FSB.
Fingers crossed the dude @ Hexus is incorrect or it's ABIT specific (anyone got more information?)

Hexus Abit Nforce 2 review PCI issues @ 200mhz FSB?

With that in mind, and the ABIT NF7-S completely unlocking our XP2400+, I used a single module of Corsair XMS3200 that has seen 225MHz+ at weak timings and 2.7v. Even though I could boot into BIOS perfectly at 212FSB (10x212), the motherboard steadfastly refused to boot correctly into Windows XP above 188FSB. It wouldn't even get to the Windows XP splash screen. Considering that entering BIOS can be done without having a hard drive installed, I have a sneaking suspicion that the PCI bus is unlocked above 166FSB. I also tried 205FSB in the hope that a 6:1 FSBCI ratio was present. No go there either. I'm a little disappointed due to the expectation of benchmarking at 10x200+ with dual-channel DDR400. This will need further investigation. It looks like a PCI-related limitation, as BIOS is fine at 200FSB+. Here is the BIOS at 212FSB. Note that it has actually booted in at those speeds shown below.

 

[kgraeme]

The DAC of the physical layer does play a critical part. The best review of the nForce sound is here.

 

[Palek]

Thanks for the link, kgraeme, that was quite a good read.

I am still hoping that at least one reviewer out there on the web will choose to test the audio quality on these nForce2 motherboards. The roundup at digit-life left a bitter taste in my mouth. People whack together a few charts with info they grabbed from the manufacturers' websites, paste in some pretty graphs, and then call it a review... Sheesh. I guess they had to be lazy otherwise they would not have been the first site with a round-up...

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: Palek
Thanks for the link, kgraeme, that was quite a good read.

I am still hoping that at least one reviewer out there on the web will choose to test the audio quality on these nForce2 motherboards. The roundup at digit-life left a bitter taste in my mouth. People whack together a few charts with info they grabbed from the manufacturers' websites, paste in some pretty graphs, and then call it a review... Sheesh. I guess they had to be lazy otherwise they would not have been the first site with a round-up...

Like Tomshardware's roundup over a week ago?????

 

[SFang]

I am going to die waiting for this review. Checking Anandtech once per hour every day is just not the way I used to live. :|

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: SFang
I am going to die waiting for this review. Checking Anandtech once per hour every day is just not the way I used to live. :|

Me too, I thought it was early this week.
I hope they are testing all the finicky little things then with the boards and looking into things like the 2phase power on the asus (see if it does cause a problem) - see if there is a PCI lock on the Abit etc.