Nforce Soundstorn In Nforce 5 from Jen Hsun Hwang hmmmmm

nV did employ some former Aureal engineers after Creative took over Aureal.

 

That and quad based geometry, too.

 

Yes I seem to recall they did. If I remember correctly (ugh, it's been a spell) many of the Aureal people went over to Nvidia rather than go to Creative. I think many of them would have rather had their toe-nails pulled before they'd go over to the dark-side

So Creative got their IP & physical assets, but Nvidia swooped in & hired their employees.

 

Tech-Reports are suggesting that SS might be integrated into future GeForce's to create a 'media processing' chip (and nVidia do already have experience from the NV1)

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/7706

P69

 

That's a disturbing read. Luckily its all speculation @ this point.
IMO Nvidia should release Soundstorm 2 as it's own chipset. Give mobo makers the option of using it, or offering it as a stand-alone sound-card solution. I would love to see them put out a product that put Creatives to shame. Soundstorm did a pretty good job of doing that, and it was an intergrated solution!

 

I can't fathom how that "experience" (read: giant flop) could have any relevance whatsoever wrt a modern audio solution... *insert joke about Jen-Hsun and pot from last year*.

 

He's not talking about nForce2 audio, he's talking about the failure of the nV1.

No one is disputing that nForce2's soundstorm was a decent solution, it was/is....but I personally would rather see an add-in card than any further integration.

I'm not a big fan of integrated stuff, I prefer to pick and choose me bits.

 

I'm not a fan of integrated 'stuff' either (have an Audigy2). But the intrinsic nature of microelectronics is to become more integrated. Cache on cpu's, SATA/RAID controllers, NICs etc etc. There's only so much you can do with sound and sooner or later you will get everything in an integrated chipset.

 

That's cool, just make sure it plugs into something and can be unplugged and upgraded.

I'd love it if soundcards got to be the size of flash memory, but I still want to be able to change it if I want.

 

The problem was that most boards that used SoundStorm also used the cheapest audio codec possible. A shame and a waste.

 

My point was that there would be nothing to change it to. Would you ever want to upgrade the integrated NIC or firewire chip on your board? Nope.

 

I was hoping no one would bring up the integrated NIC, it's the achilles heel of me argument 'cause I must admit that I do love having one just built in.

But it's different to me, soundcards evolve a lot quicker than networking protocals....and I've just had crap experience with any integrated sound solutions. :?

 

um.... YES!

I do NOT use integrated NIC's because they are, more often than not, crap. I've spent over $150 on a NIC. Not only would you want to upgrade from 100MB to Gigabit but, you might also want to toss in a fiber card (or two) at some point. I hate integrated NICs. And Firewire cards? Can you say FIrewire 800? How about USB? What about all of those boards out there with only USB 1.1?

 

I have onboard FireWire800 and two onboard Gb NIC. The NV one doesn't effect the PCI bus, so it's GREAT. 8)

 

yes that's great but what about all of those mobo's that were built without firewire 800? and I still wouldnt trust those NIC's.

 

I've never had a problem with onboard NICs, they've always just worked for me.

 

yes, they work. they do the absolute minimum- provide connectivity. would you be satisfied with a Trident video card as long as it worked?