Originally posted by: GadgetBuilder
The difficulty is that the nVidia driver/installer problems are unpredictable. Anything from a BSOD when you access the net to corrupted disk files to innocuous things like the icons disappearing from IE's favorites. The majority of users have no problems or don't recognize the problems as stemming from the nVidia drivers. Many problems are "cured" by not using the nVidia firewall. Visit the nVidia forum I mentioned earlier and read the threads with over 1000 views to get a feel for the situation.
I'm not an overclocker but have read that the card overclocks well if the proper approach is used, see this forum for info:
http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46
There is a problem achieving Vcore voltages between 1.4 and 1.6v. Some overclockers complain about this, others say it doesn't matter to them... it has been known for months and Chaintech hasn't addressed it. No on knows whether it is a BIOS problem or a board problem.
As far as better mobo's -- I'm fairly happy with mine in spite of the nVidia stuff. The major remaining nVidia driver issue I have is that the firewall flogs my disk several times per second; as I mentioned there are many different symptoms displayed by these drivers and mine is one of the less common problems so I have little hope that it will be addressed any time soon -- and my disk has a 5 year warranty The last nVidia driver update was over 2 months ago so they clearly think the problems are not important/widespread enough to affect sales.
Another facet of the nVidia driver problem which I encountered is a BSOD on accessing the net after I upgraded to the 6.39 or 6.53 drivers regardless of the technique I used to upgrade (and I tried many approaches). I had to reformat the disk and reinstall XP SP2 followed by the 6.53 drivers to achieve stability. This took several hours instead of minutes for a driver upgrade. Other owners upgrade the nVidia drivers without difficulty -- I have no clue why some systems like the drivers better than others; this is simply another aspect of the unpredictable nature of the drivers/installer.
The nVidia driver problems are common to all NF4 and NF3 boards since they share the mobo drivers. If you purchase a board which uses either of these chips then you will have (in my estimation) about a 1 in 10 chance of encountering one or more of the problems covered in the nVidia mobo forum. It's a crapshoot where you must decide how lucky you feel and if you're willing to deal with problems should you be unlucky.
NF4 boards seem to have more than a normal probability of corruption problems with certain models of Maxtor drives. Hard to say whether this is a disk or driver problem. If you decide to try your luck with an NF4 system, research carefully if you intend to use Maxtor disks.