Nforce4: failed ?

[flexy]

Originally posted by: LearnedPadawan
A better built in soundcard wouldn't do much of a difference since most of the buyers are likely going to get their own sound cards anyway.

my last board had a pretty decent CMEDIA 8738 onboard h/w sound chip....and i never had the feeling i "need" something else....ok..i only have standard speakers w/ subwoofer....but still......AC97 is just ghetto and should not be on a motherboard released end of 2004....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Auric
Using the term "SLI" might violate a trademark, but using tandem cards certainly won't violate an NVIDIA patent because ATI partners already do so with, better yet, dual VPU cards. 3dfx SLI was crap and no one wants to copy that. NVIDIA SLI is completely different. I wonder if anyone has an applicable patent on load balancing? Wouldn't it be funny if ATI did and NVIDIA had to pay them royalties?

It was stated that AlienWare does have some sort of patent, I believe that they purchased this other graphics firm, whom I can't recall their name right now, that also offered enhanced drivers for a number of cards, to support things like 3D LCD glasses, etc. I think the company's name started with 'W' or 'M', maybe.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
i hope that they put an AGP bridge on it, otherwise nvidia just gave me the big one

if ONE thing was for certain then it was that NF4 will NOT have AGP.

I have NOTHING against new and upcoming features, and i support PCiE, dual channel, 1Gig HT and all that...i was waiting for NF4 *because* it is (one) of the first boards with PciE. The PciE is basically *the* main feature which makes it interessent (together with SLI for those who want SLI)....otherwise it is still more or less the same nforce. Without Pcie and WITH AGP it would be totally pointless

i knew it would not be native, i was hoping for a bridged solution and offer a legacy AGP port

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
Why the hell is everyone so negative on nforce 4 lacking SOUNDSTORM?????

Because I don't have $100CDN for an Audigy 2 ZX. :thumbsdown:

A good soundcard costs almost as much as a decent motherboard. That said, games like Doom 3 do just fine with 5.1 AC97 sound.

It's also a huge disappointment in that the orignal spec included 32-bit audio or something insane (it was even better than DVD-audio).

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
Why the hell is everyone so negative on nforce 4 lacking SOUNDSTORM?????

Because I don't have $100CDN for an Audigy 2 ZX. :thumbsdown:

A good soundcard costs almost as much as a decent motherboard. That said, games like Doom 3 do just fine with 5.1 AC97 sound.

It's also a huge disappointment in that the orignal spec included 32-bit audio or something insane (it was even better than DVD-audio).

VIA ENVY 24PT = $25 = very good, some say better than aud2

 

[ArneBjarne]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: ArneBjarne

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: ArneBjarne

Originally posted by: Auric
SoundStorm analog was crap -on par with average on-board software audio and worse than bargain-bin cards. Its sole redeeming feature was DICE, the quality of which is obviously not quite as good as uncompressed analog through a decent DAC. The drivers were reportedly only so-so as well, plus lacking full EAX compatibility. So let us not pretend it was so great.

I'll take my SoundStorm DD5.1 -> Yamaha DSP-A2 connection over an analogue connection you could make from a creative card. IMO you would have to use a much more expensive cable to compete, not to mention 6 of them instead of 1.

I just can't see any sound solution out there at the moment, that wouldn't be a step back in my setup compared to the SoundStorm.

No you wouldn't. That DD that your soundstorm uses is a lossy format. Any critical listening would reveal the lack of quality in music. You'd be better off using straight digital PCM for music than DD. Of course, if you're not talking about music, than sound quality isn't really THAT important, since the sources aren't great for games. Then consider that Creative cards have support for EAX 4.... and Creative wins.

I'm fully aware that DD is a lossy format along with SDDS and dts (atleast until dts lossless comes out). I'm still fully satisfied by the experience i get from them though, both on my home system (DVDs and gaming)* and at my work as a projectionist (movies).

In regards to music then sure use PCM, that is no problem for the SoundStorm. It just doesn't work for gaming since it only supports 2 channels.

EAX4? What good is it when you can only get 2 channels out on digital? To me it is completly useless. It is much more important to me to have 3D positional audio AND a way to transfer it digitally to my amp.

The loss in using DD compression is negligable, especially compared to the loss of quality involved in analogue transfer and use of soundcard DAC instead of the DAC in my amp. Creative wins? Personally I wouldn't dream of spending money on one of their cards before they implement hardware encoding.


*SoundStorm uses the maximum bitrate for AC3 640 kbit/s. For comparison most DVDs use 384 kbit/s and the maximum is 448 kbit/s. for DVDs.

Duh, run EAX 4 via analogue to your amp. EAX 4 is leaps and bounds better than EAX 2.

Importance of hardware encoding is far greater to me than EAX4 support. That is just how it is. Having better sound on my computer does me no good if the quality loss in the transfer to the amp exceeds that advantage. IMO it does. It all comes down to a chain not being stronger than it's weakest link.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: ArneBjarne

Originally posted by: Nebor
Duh, run EAX 4 via analogue to your amp. EAX 4 is leaps and bounds better than EAX 2.

Importance of hardware encoding is far greater to me than EAX4 support. That is just how it is. Having better sound on my computer does me no good if the quality loss in the transfer to the amp exceeds that advantage. IMO it does. It all comes down to a chain not being stronger than it's weakest link.

The source from GAMES just isn't good enough for there to be a difference in transfer. EAX does make a big difference in GAMES though.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Soundstorm makes life easy, I use one coax cable to run from my PC to my reciver and all my audio gets sent to my HT reciver in DD5.1 no other sound solution can do this, personaly I do not want to have to run 5 or 6 cables from my PC to my HT Reciver and use analoug instead of digital in many cases w/ the DD5.1 encoding support provided by soundstorm, until I can find another card that can do this it's just not worth replacing. Maybe Nvidia will come out w/ a PCI-E soundstorm card since they claimed the bandwith / latency issues w/ PCI was why it was never released and I'll be able to move to a different sound solution.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
Why the hell is everyone so negative on nforce 4 lacking SOUNDSTORM?????

Because I don't have $100CDN for an Audigy 2 ZX. :thumbsdown:

A good soundcard costs almost as much as a decent motherboard. That said, games like Doom 3 do just fine with 5.1 AC97 sound.

It's also a huge disappointment in that the orignal spec included 32-bit audio or something insane (it was even better than DVD-audio).

Definitely - I'm disappointed as well, and I'm not even sure if I'll be upgrading to nForce4 now. I'd have to replace my AGP 6800GT as well, in addition to buying a new sound card. I may just have to go on for a while longer with the NF2 and Athlon XP until something better (i.e. what NF4 should have been) shows up.

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: flexy
the more i read......the more it looks that NF4 is actually a disappointment...i am especially disappointed in the fact that it uses AC97 (read: 97 !) software audio which is a HUGE blow and step back 7 years ago.

I read through the whole thread, to make sure no one called you on this; no one did, but now I'm going to.

AC97 is a specification. The publication date (1997) has nothing to do with how old the technology is, as AC97 codecs usually have little to nothing to do with each other. Set the audio codec from an i810 next to the one from an i875. Pretty big difference, no? The i875 has 6 channel out, digital in and out, and 3d capabilities, all of which the i810 solution lacks.

By your logic, it's terrible that the Nforce4 supports ethernet, because that's 30 years old.

Back on topic, I do think it's unfortunate that SoundStorm isn't included in the new chipset; it's not the problem it used to be for me though, as newer versions of AC3Filter have the capability to matrix audio into AC3 and dump it out a SPDIF - so I get the same functionality for my HTPC out of an i865PE as I would out of an Nforce SoundStorm. Note that I don't play games, just run SageTV.

Also, more receivers have 6 channel analog input today than they did when the Nforce and Nforce2 came out - the proliferation of DVD-Audio has assured that, since you can't play a DVD-Audio disc out a digital port by specification.

Still, nothing beats a svelte little box connected to a DD5.1 receiver and HDTV for party gaming. It's like an Xbox, with better games. /me loves BF:Vietnam on the PJ.