Is the nForce2 Still The Best AthlonXP Chipset?

[Jonny M]

Well it's been nearly a year since it was released, and is it still the best Athlon XP chipset? Has the KT600 bettered it, or slowly faded into nothing?

[Austin]

YES, nForce2 is still the best chipset and should offer everything needed until you switch to Athlon64 939pin. KT600 is pretty close but being VIA is much more likely to have compatibility issues or general quirkiness, nForce2 even in Single Channel solutions (£40ish) are still faster, cheaper and more o/c'able. If you can get the full nVidia audio that's a BIG bonus too, great and basically free!

[Lexeus]

Originally posted by Austin
If you can get the full nVidia audio that's a BIG bonus too, great and basically free!

You mean an Nforce board which acually uses the chipsets audio, rather than a cheap alternative ? i.e. a deluxe version ?

Sorry, its just i still get a bit confused about the 'soundstorm' standard
My board has the better sound right ?

[Lexeus]

oh, and a question i have been wanting to ask for a while. Do you think the Nforce audio is better than a videologic Sonicfury 6 channel soundcard, as thats what i had in my old system, and its just sitting on the side now....

[Austin]

Yup, many manu's offer at least 2 alternatives of each mobo, one with nVidia's audio (MCP-T) and one simply using basic sound (albeit 5.1) which is MCP. Soundstorm is a reassurance that the manu has implimented the 100% true nVidia audio solution including things like SPDIF, so long as you have MCP-T (aka MCP2-T on nForce2) instead of MCP you have the nVidia's top notch sound. Even basic onboard audio is much better now than in years gone by, but nVidia's solution (MCP-T or Soundstorm) is not only very high quality and very capable but only has tiny CPU usage too, the best of any consumer audio solution and allows maximum speed for other tasks and max FPS when gaming. So yes it is certainly as good as Sonic Fury, although that is top notch too.

nForce2 using the MCP-T/Soundstorm are Asus A7N8X Deluxe, Abit NF7-S and MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (std Delta-L lacks MCP-T).

MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR:

SPP+MCP2-T, IEEE1394, 10/100, Lan, Serial ATA RAID

Details
Extra Features:
FireWire® for the fastest digital connectivity.
Audio Processing Unit (APU) encodes audio in Dolby® Digital 5.1 format for full surround sound effects.
Serial ATA Interface.

CPU: Socket A for AMD® Athlon™/Athlon™ XP/Duron
Chipset: nVIDIA® nForce2 SPP Chipset

Memory Type:
• Support Dual channel PC3200/2700/2100/1600 DDR SDRAMs
• Supports both 64-bit and 128-bit DDR SDRAM
• Maximum memory size of 3GB

Memory Slots:
6 memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs

No. of Serial Ports: 1
No. of Parrllel Ports: 1
USB: 6 USB ports
Audio: 3 audio ports in vertical
On Board: LAN, RAID
PCI Slots: 5