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Sound, Feature Chart and Test System Setup

Sound on the nForce4

There has been a lot of rumors on the popular sites recently about SoundStorm and the future of NVIDIA's sound technologies.  I can tell you for sure, coming from the head of the nForce marketing team, that SoundStorm team has been killed at NVIDIA -- no more development is going to happen in the near future.  NVIDIA said that simply not enough motherboard manufacturers were putting it on their boards and utilizing the technology that was so expensive to continue to develop.

Sorry guys!

Final Feature Chart

This final chart here quickly summarizes all the features that you will see on the nForce4, the nForce4 Ultra and the nForce4 SLI. 

System Setup

We are finally one step closer to having consistent test setups across our motherboard platforms.  With PCI Express on its way to retail Athlon 64 boards, the field is leveling out once again.

AMD Test System Setup
CPU	AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
Motherboards	NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Reference Board VIA K8T890 Reference Board
Power Supply	Antec 480 watt
Memory	2x512MB Corsair Micro DDR500 2x512MB Kingston HyperX 4300 DDR
Hard Drive	250 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA
Sound Card	Creative Labs Live!
Video Card	ATI X800 XT
Video Drivers	ATI Catalyst 4.9
DirectX Version	DX 9.0c
Operating System	Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

I would really like to thank Heather at Kingston for helping me out of a jam with this review, as my usual memory was having a lot of problems with the particular reference board I was first sent.  When I called Kingston to ask for help, I had the necessary memory in my hands the next morning at 9am sharp.  Thanks!

Intel Test System Setup
CPU	Intel 560
Motherboards	Intel 925X Refeence
Power Supply	Antec 480 watt
Memory	2x512MB Corsair Micro DDR500
Hard Drive	250 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA
Sound Card	Creative Labs Live!
Video Card	ATI X800 XT
Video Drivers	ATI Catalyst 4.9
DirectX Version	DX 9.0c
Operating System	Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

 

The benchmarks used were:

• SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP1
• AIDA32
• Cachemem
• Quake III: Arena
• Unreal Tournament 2003
• X2: The Threat
• 3D Mark 2001: SE v330
• 3DMark03
• Far Cry 1.1
• Doom 3
• PC Mark 2002
• PCMark04
• Business Winstone 2004
• Content Creation Winstone 2004
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• XMPEG / DivX Encoding
• WinRAR Compression
• CineBench 2003
• ScienceMark 2.0 Beta

Finally, here is a quick pic of the reference board for those of you interested:

Next Page - Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra, AIDA32 and Cachemem

Review Index:
- Select - Summary Introduction and Networking Storage and RAID Management nTune Optimization Software The SLI Chipset Sound, Feature Chart and Test System Setup Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra, AIDA32 and Cachemem Gaming: Quake III and UT2003 Gaming: 3DMarks Gaming: Doom 3 Application: Winstones, Sysmark and Webmark Application: DivX and MP3 Encoding, WinRAR and PCMark04 Professional: CineBench 2003 and KribiBench 1.1 Scientific: ScienceMark 2.0 Beta Thoughts and Conclusions