Manufacturer:

NVIDIA Reference design

Chipset:

nForce1 / nForce 2

3D Sound and Reverb Engine:

Sensaura / NVIDIA

Drivers:

Reference drivers available from NVIDIA in addition to drivers available from motherboard vendors shipping nForce 1 and 2 based products.

Suggested Retail Price

N/A - integrated sound in motherboard.  Pricing will vary from motherboard to motherboard.

Cables:

N/A

Bundle:

As this is a reference review of the nForce APU audio system, bundles will vary depending on the specific motherboard you are buying.

 I/O Availability

Front:

Yes – typically 1/8” stereo

Rear:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically  1/8” stereo

Center:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically 1/8” stereo shared with subwoofer output.

Sub:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically 1/8” stereo shared with center output.  Small speaker mode supported.

CD Analog:

Variable

CD Digital:

No

Auxiliary:

Variable

Video:

Variable

Microphone:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically  1/8” stereo

Line input:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically  1/8” stereo

Wavetable header:

No – typical of the majority of sound cards and integrated systems today

Digital Output:

Only on SoundStorm branded boards – typically 1/8” stereo

Digital Input:

Variable depending on brand and model but will only be found on SoundStorm branded boards

Joystick connection:

Variable

AC3 Decoding:

Not integrated but works with software DVD players

AC3 Encoding:

Yes -  nForce MCP-D and nForce2 MCP-T contain the APU and most motherboards that use this chipsets will offer the real time Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder (DICE) feature 

Equalizer or effect mode (e.g. Theatre preset)

Yes - multiple processing effects including reverb presets, 9 band equalizer and 4 band parametric equalizer.

Sound quality: 

Pure sound quality, particularly on the analog outputs, is atypically
difficult to generalize because of vendors ability to use a variety of
different codecs with the nForce APU.   What we can say is the quality of the reference system using Sigmatel codecs is very good.  While it's not quite at the level offered by the Cirrus Logic 4630 products
such as the Santa Cruz or Creative's Audigy 2, it's more than good enough to satisfy the majority of casual listeners.  View detailed test results

Games:

It offers excellent support for DirectSound, DS3D (all with plenty of 3D
channels), I3DL2, EAX and EAX2 along with native OpenAL support.

Most noteworthy and somewhat surprising given our expectation of a stock Sensaura reverb engine, the reverb quality while not quite as consistent as the Live or Audigy, is clearly the overall best of all Creative's competitors and a clear plus of gaming on the nForce.   What is lacking is support for EAX Advanced HD.  While EAX Advanced HD titles can be written with a fall-back to EAX 2, only the Audigy series from Creative currently take full advantage of aural aspects of EAX Advanced HD titles.

Two-speaker, headphone and four-speaker 3D audio from Sensaura’s engine is simply outstanding with both the two speaker and headphone modes arguably being the current top of the market.  Six channel gaming support using the NVIDIA implementation of the Sensaura MultiDrive 5.1 engine is also excellent..

DVD:

AC3 and DTS passthru worked correctly as did basic stereo, 4 and 5.1 analog output modes.  Note that multichannel analog output ability and DTS decoding ability will vary depending on the software DVD player that you utilize.  Having the DICE encoder enabled has no impact on Dolby Digital or DTS S/PDIF output to an external decoder.

There are no special our unique features for DVD playback offered by the nForce.

Summary 

In keeping with our practice for reference reviews no award is given because the award takes into consideration other aspects such as retail price, bundle etc.  Having said that, even when completely ignoring the DICE feature that until recently was offered exclusively for the PC on the nForce, I feel that the nForce is currently offering the best overall performance to gamers looking for an alternative to Creative’s product line.  

Movie performance is also strong as is music playback ability although the latter will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer for the reasons covered in this review.  For both the reasons that got the hype (DICE) and for other reasons NVIDIA has delivered a winner with the nForce.