My experiences audigy -> soundstorm

Bigjohns97

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2000
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Unbelievable, if you want my opinion (and you're getting it anyway) soundstorm is a must for htpc systems, i think they should sell their chip to set top boxes and audio recievers. This thing encodes Everything in Dolby Digital and it sounds unbelivable. I would compare to watching a dvd on a ps2 and watching a dvd @1080 through an htpc, it's really that good.

I just hope the keep making them for the nforce 3, i don't see any yet....
 
Because of complecations with the nforce3 chipset they can't put Soundstorm on there (something like that anyways) sort of like how you can't find a nForce3 board with intergrate video (not like you'd want it anyways). What board do you have?
 
I have the nf7-s sorry i guess i should have mentioned that before.

Well if they can't put it on the board they should at least make a pci card with it. I cannot go back to 6ch stereo for my mp3's, i just won't do it.
 
Yeah the sound storm audio was great but I dont think Nvidia was able to use it in a PCI version as there was not enought bandwidth to do the all the encoding and decoding. But afaik they are working on a PCI Express version and have some working samples.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Because of complecations with the nforce3 chipset they can't put Soundstorm on there (something like that anyways) sort of like how you can't find a nForce3 board with intergrate video (not like you'd want it anyways). What board do you have?

There's no "complications" from a technical aspect- its a matter of the mobo makers- they wanted a single chip chipset to reduce manufacturing costs, and soundstorm would push it over the edge and onto a second chip.

Nintari is correct about not having enough bandwidth to make it PCI and about the PCI-express card in the works. I would imagine they will use it to face kreative labs in the add on market, which would be more profitable for them than the current way of bundling it w/ a southbridge.
 
Bigjohns97 said:
Unbelievable, if you want my opinion (and you're getting it anyway) soundstorm is a must for htpc systems, i think they should sell their chip to set top boxes and audio recievers. This thing encodes Everything in Dolby Digital and it sounds unbelivable. I would compare to watching a dvd on a ps2 and watching a dvd @1080 through an htpc, it's really that good.

I just hope the keep making them for the nforce 3, i don't see any yet....

I'll second this. I have Sage 2.0 running on a Hauppauge 250 with the Soundstorm fed into my Dolby Digital 6.1 receiver, and it sounds better than the original source, by far. Also, the level of control you have over the audio is amazing.

Matt.
 
I recently upgraded from an old Gigabyte AMD 760 platform to an ASUS A7N8X-E w/ Soundstorm in anticipation of kicking it down to an HTPC. Its awesome, ditching my audigy was no problem after hearing the DD encoding through my theater. I was sursprised that thier aren't more SFF with NF2/SS chipsets - only one I know of is shuttle - the combination of sound and silence afforded by them makes the most sense for any HTPC.

....I always wondered why there wasn't a standalone version, or at least a riser card for regular nf2 mcp's. I always though that they held off because it was a value driver for premium mobo's , though bandwidth limitation makes more sense. PCI express is great news!
 
JScottie said:
I always wondered why there wasn't a standalone version, or at least a riser card for regular nf2 mcp's. I always though that they held off because it was a value driver for premium mobo's , though bandwidth limitation makes more sense. PCI express is great news!
Ya, Soundstorm audio travels thru the hypertransport bus, freeing the increasingly restricted pci bus for other hardware. Originally one of the mcp-t's most lauded features >insert marketing jargon here<

I never would have figured that it saturates so much of that bus that a pci card couldn't be built with it. It still surprises me that Nvidia's first foray into audio was so successful and it makes me wonder what the heck Creative and the others were up to all along.
 
dernit, I had a chance tonight to ask an Asus rep when or if we could expect some future soundstorm. I totally blanked it - to dazzled by the A64 notebook with the mobile 9700... Sexy!
 
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