Nforce 3 sound?

[Howard]

Will it have some sort of all singing all dancing equivalent of SoundStorm or are we gonna have to put up with rubbish onboard standard crummy sound?

[headbrace]

http://www.nforcershq.com/modules.ph...ticle&sid=1038

Apparantly only AC97 basic type stuff, no hardware acceleration. Tho I only read the first few lines.

[directhex]

no soundstorm on nf3

[Zak33]

I believe that they are gonna use other peoples chips for this set of boards...the on board chip does lots of good stuff, but not sound.

I believe the Realtek ALC850 8 channel chip is gonna be popular, but it does use CPU strength as its AC97.

Not that that's a problem tho....my Revolution 7.1 uses CPU cycles on my 2800 and simply put...it dont matter with this much power

[Howard]

Might have to invest in a decent soundcard when I upgrade then

[Efaill]

they reasoned that they wouldn't put it in the Nforce3 because most people used oher sounds card and so used the space to add features such as hardware firewall and gigabit ethernet.

[Zak33]

I'd try it first matey...might be all you want anyway

[Steve]

The only problems I've had with onboard sound is crap drivers. So if NForce 3's work OK - no need for an addon.

edit: Still by the time I get a mobo it'll be Nforce4, probably.

[Howard]

Yeah by the time I get around to upgrading they will have new boards anyway! hehe

And Zak, IMHO there is a noticeable difference between onboard sound and even a half decent soundcard. I tested it with my old ECS motherboard and my SBLive. The Live was much clearer and better sounding.

You know me, I'm an audiophile Gotta have the best

[Zak33]

And Zak, IMHO there is a noticeable difference between onboard sound and even a half decent soundcard. I tested it with my old ECS motherboard and my SBLive. The Live was much clearer and better sounding.

Bad example matey...bad example indeed.... not that its your fault...just out of date comparison

the Realtek stuff is good now...you're going waaaay back with that comparison....and I am NOT gonna even suggest you SHOULDN'T but a nice card matey.....if you got the dough, DO IT

But....what people NOW need to realise is that cos nForce Soundstorm was SO GOOD the opposition cacked their pants and upped the quiality of their offerings...

hence (imo) nVidia didnt need to do the work this time. The opposition is good gear.

[Howard]

So the Realtek ALC650 or whatever it is, will be almost as good if not as good as the Soundstorm?

I just always have had the impression that onboard audio is crap. Soundstorm is the exception to the rule.

[BlackSheep]

Soundstorm was awesome - what a downgrade when using the onboard sound on the Asus K8V-SE (awful motherboard - way way too many conflicts with stuff) - and I wasn't much more impressed by the onboard solution on the Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP ... so I think if you have the speakers to justify it you will be disappointed unless you upgrade to something like an Audigy 2 ZS (which I did) which you can get for < £100

As a side note the Gigabyte is an awesome board - the Asus mobo has gone into my second machine along with a A64 3000 and it's now perfectly happy (as it doesn't have any pci cards it doesn't like - e.g. my LSI Logic U320 scsi card and the Audigy 2!).

It's such a shame they didn't include the Soundstorm in the NF3 as even with the Audigy some games just don't sound quite as good - and that's not a reflection on the card, more on the EAX programming which often doesn't have enough centre channel for my liking.