I can't find any information about games that make use of it

It was integrated solution on a limited amount of boards. Of course nobody bothered. Besides, it does support EAX and some form of 3D audio positioning in DS3D games.

I know nForce3 sounds terrible and tinny. The perfect "Way it's meant to be played" audio to complement the GeforceFX series.

nForce 3 can't do sound.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

nForce 3 can't do sound.

Sure it can. ALC655 comes standard.

Which is not Nvidia APU.

The nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset usually included the MCP-T which supported "Soundstorm" audio. If you look that up you'll find a decent amount of info about it. It was a very nice sound solution for the time. Interestingly, it not only could do Dolby Digital Live encoding for surround sound, it could even do real time Dolby Prologic (1) analog surround matrixing. This means that weirdos like me that had ancient stereo receivers could actually have a single rear surround channel, "encoded" in real time over stereo RCA jacks. I'm not aware of any other piece of audio equipment that could do this in real time.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

The nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset usually included the MCP-T which supported "Soundstorm" audio. If you look that up you'll find a decent amount of info about it. It was a very nice sound solution for the time. Interestingly, it not only could do Dolby Digital Live encoding for surround sound, it could even do real time Dolby Prologic (1) analog surround matrixing. This means that weirdos like me that had ancient stereo receivers could actually have a single rear surround channel, "encoded" in real time over stereo RCA jacks. I'm not aware of any other piece of audio equipment that could do this in real time.

"Real-time" in these cases usually means "it works with whatever you feed it with, but............ you'll have to wait for some handfuls of milliseconds".
I'd love to be proven wrong with this one.

Also, I didn't realize that only the nForce2 packed this. That's kind of sad, for it really says something about its performance on the market.

They've butchered APU and FIrewire support later with nForce 3 to fit everything into single chip.

I think it's really great in the XBox, where lots of games used its 5.1 output and its 3D audio features. But for PC gaming you're better off with an Audigy.

silikone wrote:

"Real-time" in these cases usually means "it works with whatever you feed it with, but............ you'll have to wait for some handfuls of milliseconds".
I'd love to be proven wrong with this one.

Also, I didn't realize that only the nForce2 packed this. That's kind of sad, for it really says something about its performance on the market.

Not every nForce2, only the MCP-T southbridge, which was generally used with the nF2-Ultra 400, but not universally 🙁 - on the other hand, some 'normal' nForce2 and even nForce1 boards sported the MCP-T, although given the costs involved they were rare combinations.

The 'regular' MCP southbridge just had the regular ubiquitous AC'97, just as on the nF3 and pretty much anything else from the same era. The reason for dropping the Soundstorm was cost, particularly the Dolby licensing costs.

In terms of functionality the SoundStorm compared favourably to the Creative's contemporary SBLive offerings, particularly as it supported Dolby Digital before any discrete card did. It also did A3D and EAX2 (although with higher CPU usage than an SB Audigy). As for sound quality - via digital out it was superb, but analog out relied on motherboard implementation and an external codec, which could be really good but generally wasn't, leading to all manner of noise. YMMV, look up reviews of the specific motherboard for an indication.

Note that driver support is an issue, the SoundStorm design was a one-off, with proprietary stuff all over, so no open-source (Linux/BSD) support other than bypassing the chip entirely and talking AC'97 directly to the external codec. Windows support is available from Win95 and NT4 to Vista / 2003.

It uses Sensaura tech for 3D audio so you can probably grab a card that uses say CS4630 for a similar experience. Santa Cruz or Game Theater XP. Realtek was also using Sensaura libs back in the XP days. Sensaura 3D audio is pretty nice.

The NV APU is based on Parthus Mediastream DSP hardware. The Xbox guys have been trying to reverse engineer it.

My impression has been they made it for Xbox and thought it might sell on PC too. But it didn't so much. Most boards don't use that southbridge. It was probably quite an added cost. The more expensive chip plus Dolby license I imagine.

Realtek was also using Sensaura libs back in the XP days.

If software solutions are considered - Diamond MX400.