nForce2

[BurningSpear]

After spending all day scouring these forums and the various links, I'm intrigued by nforce2. is it worth all the hype? and with 5.1dolby on the boards, do we have need of SBLive 5.1 card? or is SBLive still better?

[BLuE_ZeRO]

nforce2 boards are all that they are cracked up to be. They are hands down the best board for AMD processors. As for the onboard sound it's completely up to you as to whether or not you want a seperate sound card. I've always purchased a seperate sound card because the onboard sound was never as good as a regular sound card but that seems to have changed.

[BurningSpear]

I already own a SBLive! MP3+ 5.1 card, just wondering if should offer it to a friend when i go get my ASUS A7N8X.

[powdahound]

Originally posted by BurningSpear
I already own a SBLive! MP3+ 5.1 card, just wondering if should offer it to a friend when i go get my ASUS A7N8X.

Couldn't hurt to try both the onboard sound and your card before you give it away.

[Navaron]

On board is actually 6.1 (unless that is just on the deluxe).

I have one, best board ever. I absolutely love it. Get the ASUS board for sure. Best layout, stability and it looks cool.

[BLuE_ZeRO]

asus a7n8x deluxe nforce2 doesn't look all that cool but it's a damn good board. Has a lot of crap that comes with it though. I was installing one for a friend over the weekend and it had like 3 extra add-ons to wire up.

[Zatrais]

nFroce2 boards are well currently the best AMD chipset around yeah =)

Tho personally i've had nothing but bad experiences whit onboard stuff, from IRQ to it beeing a systemhog. I'd go whit the live card and save the cpu some calculations hehe.

the onboard sound quality of the nForce2 boards is also limited by AC'97's DAC codec that is uses, not as powerfull as the ones on pci slot cards. It dosn't have a hardware dolby decoder like the live card does and thus your cpu needs to use power for that. + whit EAX (the games that has it)you bypass the entire thing and let the card do all the sound work =)

edit: reason for why i said limited by the AC97, the nForce2 chipset uses a smaller less powerfull ac97 chip than mose soundcards.

[phadE]

if you go amd, nForce is the only choice IMO. Via is total crap. and the AMD chipset is to old.

[Dyganth]

if you've got a decent soundcard then opt for a cheaper nforce mobo, one without all the soundstorm stuff on it.

[ABRAXAAS]

Yeah I just built a computer for the first time on sat and so far its a really nice board (Asus A7n8x Deleuxe)