nForce 4 Evaluation

[Mummy]

Hello all,

i'm a very happy nForce 2 user (have three ABit NF7*.* mobos) but im thinking of buying a dual core A64 soon, paired with a nForce 4 chipset mobo (probably Asus AN8-SLI).

My question is, reading http://www.nforcershq.com/ forums i've seen that there are still some problems with NF4 drivers (i've read of ethernet transfer problems, ethernet related lockups, IDE/SATA drivers problems, for the most part), sure ppl that post in forums for problems are more than the ppl that have no problems, so i take those posts with a grain of salt (also because i know that nForce chipsets, at least the 1/2 from my experience, are very picky on ram quality [but once you stick the right memory modules its stable as a rock], and because i know that most users don't really do any serious system test like memtest86[+], prime95, superpi, 3dmarks, to test system stability/ram comp. etc), what is your experience ?

With its current driver release, is it stable as nForce 2 is ?

 

[Rys]

I'm typing this from an nForce4 system that's on its 40th day of uptime (not that that really matters, and my own Viagra tool measures availability as 99%+). Most of its time the system is pushing out a fair amount of net traffic (God bless 8Mib broadband), writing to the disk (as I encode internet radio to MP3 or encode films/TV for my PSP) or using the CPU heavily (spitting out MPEG-4 AVC chews the cycles).

It doesn't lock up, act funny or otherwise act weird, it just gets on with stuff without letting me down.

Obviously I might just be incredibly lucky with my mainboard (DFI LanPartyUT nF4 SLI-D), memory (Corsair XMS3200XL x 4 sticks, 512MiB each) and nForce4 driver revision (6.39), but I'd hazard a guess that other people are getting similar results to me.

I'd even venture that most instability of a well-setup PC system these days is down to OS misconfiguration or software issues.

 

[Rodéric]

6.66 drivers are corrupting internet packets or whatever making the web unusable.
I got 6.65 drivers from ASUS website and they work much better.

So if you choose the right drivers you shouldn't have problems, just get more than one version while it still works so that you can try a different set w/o having to use another comp/NIC to get them.

 

[Mummy]

Drivers Drivers Drivers Drivers Drivers Drivers !

Thank you both.

 

[rashly]

My NF4 system is on its way to me in the mail, but on my NF2 system I couldn't use the integrated NIC due to driver problems in Quake3. I would constantly drop packets and lag out. It didn't do it in any other game, and doesn't do it with a PCI Ethernet card. I tried a million driver revisions and none fixed it. On the Urban Terror forums many others have confirmed this problem.

I hope it doesn't happen on my NF4.

 

[linthat22]

6.66 drivers are corrupting internet packets or whatever making the web unusable.
I got 6.65 drivers from ASUS website and they work much better.

It might have been the heretical number of the newer driver as to why it wouldn't work

 

[CosmoKramer]

I'm using the 6.66 drivers and I have no problems with corrupted packages. Naturally, I don't use the nVidia firewall software.

 

[Pete]

6.66

+

firewall

=

funny.

 

[Rodéric]

mmh Indeed I use nVidia's firewall..

I think I used the drivers w/o that firewall but I don't remember whether it worked...

Doesn't change the fact that nForce4 is a rather good chipset and just have some drivers problems.

 

[incurable]

The chipset might be decent, but if you're continously offering drivers with a tendency to cause issues in user systems, like nVidia currently does, the solutions sucks.

Just today I read a blurb in the newest issue of c't (German computer magazine) noting that the intergrated nForce 4 Firewall still tends to fuck up FTP downloads, and that's almost a year after release!

Sometimes I wish Intel would do an AMD chipset.

 

[Sxotty]

My Nforce4 is great, but I have noticed one problem. It will not function with a new power supply, apparently the newest PS requirements got rid of a 5V line and my mobo will not boot with it, of course my trusty nf7-s works fine with the new psu, so it is obviously the fact that Foxconn doesn't make as nice of mobos ah well

 

[DudeMiester]

Last time I set up a Nforce 4 system, I couldn't get the NV firewall to work properly period. imho, it's the worst piece of software they've ever made. The interface is always crashing.

 

[Altcon]

nforce 4 minor precautions

well, Ive been using mine for a couple of months.
Im fairly happy with perfomance and stability but there are a few things to look out for.
On Asus boards-Be warey of the chipset fan, they're doomed and tend to start failed or screeching within a few months, easiest solution replace with a Zalman NBJ47 (I think) chipset cooler.
Secondly, temps tend to go up in such an environment, so make sure you have solid cooling.
My mobo hovers near 40 most of the time, and that's with three 120mm case fans.
Apart from that every thing is pretty much ok.
Sound is mediocre (as expected of onboard).
One thing I did notice about some Abit boards-Cool n Quiet doesnt work for all Nforce 4 bios revisions-I tend to stick to the ones that do since I like it nice and quiet.
I think that's all I've got right now.
Oh, and I made the transition from Nforce 2 as well, and Im happy about it....