NVIDIA nForce 4 = disaster

[hoom]

So, I had an Nforce 2, followed driver issues for some time at nforcersHQ (hoping for properly working ones), they essentially ended support about the same time they started work on Nforce 3 drivers leaving me pissed.
Some time later I stupidly bought an Nforce 3 (having forgotten about NF2 issues) & had some more issues.
Next was a Via which had RAM compatibility issues (where the same RAM was & is fine on the NF3).
Back to the NF3 but this time with XP64 & still there are only beta drivers for NF3, offical for NF4 & presumably NF5 but not for NF3, support for that went out the door with intro of NF4.
Mind you, I have actually had no particular problem with these beta drivers. Which again brings the question why they couldn't just re-label them as official?

So next mobo is an Intel 965.
Would have been an ATI RD580 (& A64 X2) if I could actually find one for sale a couple of months back

 

[Kurt]

I went from NF2 (A7N8-E deluxe) to NF3 (GA K8NSC-939) and have had no problems whatsoever, neither performance, stability or compatibility-wise.

I even kept the old Windows install (going on three years now lol) -- something I would never have thought possible before. They just work. Always used the driver package (minus graphics card drivers) from NV, too. Again, zero problems.

I don't have any SATA drives and never got around to playing with RAID cause I never saw the need for it, so that was definitely one headache less.

Compared to the troubles I went through with my old Chaintech VIA Apollo Pro+ this is heaven

 

[Gubbi]

I have found that VIA, SIS, and ATI chipsets are more reliable and stable the NV chipsests.

I've had the exact opposite experience. Only ever had a problem with an AGP GPU on NF3-ultra (had to disable side-banding), otherwise they have just worked, - in complete contrast to my experience with VIA and SIS. VIA in particular is junk, everything from straight up broken hardware to drivers with BSODding bugs in them.

NV tally so far:
1 x NF1
2 x NF2
1 x NF3 (shuttle)
1 x NF3-ultra
1 x NF4

Might give ATI a go, but otherwise it's Intel and NV for me.

Cheers

 

[_xxx_]

Never used ActiveArmor, never had any problems with NF2,3 or 4 whatsoever.

 

[AlNom]

Active Armour is buggy in general IIRC. It was certainly causing a lot of system issues when I tried to use it.

 

[Sobek]

but otherwise it's Intel and NV for me.

Only in my worst nightmares can I dream how terrible an experience that must be...

 

[ERP]

Active armor repeatedly corrupted downloads for me reguardless of Bios or Driver versions. Since I uninstalled it, everything has been fine.

I've not had a lot of luck with chipsets for AMD processors, evey motherboard I've ever owned (VIA or NVidia) for an AMD chip has required a lot of messing about to get it stable. On the Intel side things have for the most part just worked, but I've only ever used Intel chipsets.

 

[Sxotty]

Well, like I said many times before the best motherboard I ever had was an ABIT nf7-s. A close second is an old Intel chipset from P3 early days bh6 or something.

My current nf4 fromfoxconn is perfect though it is a RMA b/c the first one had weird power issues. My other nf4 is an MSI and is a piece of junk, but was a refurbished cheapo so who knows if it is indicitive. I actually used Active armor a bit and everything worked fine, but I turned it off b/c it is useless to me as I have a router already I just wanted to see if it was nifty from a UI standpoint etc...

Edit:
I quit using NV IDE drivers as well from all the complaints, but I used them for years with no issues whatsoever, the whole of my nf2 experience I used them and I used them for my NF4 at first as well.

 

[Mize]

Have all of you tried to use the Active Armor firewall? I've heard that some people have no problems with it at all, while others like me have rather terrible issues. The audio issue could be the same way. A lot of these issues could be board quality and/or BIOS related too.

I'm using a DFI NF4 Ultra-D.

Never got that to work right at all. It would mostly work, but it would block some sites even when I had it turned off. I had to actually disable it to get to one of Verizon's sites. Since I had a hardware firewall already I just blew it off, but it never worked as advertized for me.

 

[swaaye]

Well I haven't had problems with VIA until you go back to the K6 MVP3 chipset which has probably the worst AGP implementation in history. Otherwise, KT133A, KT266A, KT333, KT400, and K8T880 were all worthy chipsets. Even the 686B southbridge with KT133A didn't give me grief. The nForce2 does feel a lot snappier than KT400 on down though, even if benchmarks don't show it. Not sure if that was DASP or what.

I actually still have my KT266A running my boss's home comp. Their ancient Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 Pro just died a week ago and I replaced it with a Radeon 9000. That Shuttle AK31 is like 5 years old now. It's rock solid.

Never have had problems specifically with VIA drivers. I think you'd have to again go back to MVP3 to see problems there. And those probs were them trying to get the crap chipset to work with AGP cards lol. They ended up basically disabling AGP. I noticed AGP texturing was usually off.

NVIDIA's chipset drivers have been far more troublesome than VIA's. When you install the checked-to-install-by-default IDE drivers (unless you know not to) and have 50% of systems showing bad optical drive probs or even HDD "stutters", that's something that should never be in a driver install. Unacceptable. Never has a VIA 4-in-1 install done that to me.