VOGONS


First post, by holdencars11

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This Lenovo 33M was a trash pick from a year or so ago...
Fairly standard office stuff... socket 775 - Pentium 4 D, SiS chipset Mirage graphics.

One thing going for it was the standard nMTX layout and I/O, even through it takes half height cards. Anyway the point of the build is pure nForce relying on everything that it had built in.. nothing else added....

Always wanted to do a nForce setup showcasing SoundStorm APU and the intergrated graphics.
At the time of nForce I skipped it, and was using a Shuttle AK31 3.1 VIA KT266A and a Athlon XP 1600+ and I probably just upgraded ....or was about to upgrade my Kyro II to a Ti4200. I held on to Athlon XPs until Core2Duo..

nForce always interested me though, especially for the Audio APU capabilities, and I was pouring over the details on sites like 3DSoundSurge: http://web.archive.org/web/20040603101703/htt … /nForce-p2.html, and even the new Analog Devices SoundMAX (I had the chance to test this chip on an Intel Desktop Board recently and was pretty impressed).

At this time I was heavily into gaming and 3D sound as I was part of the driver testing team for Philips PC Consumer Electronics - Driver bug reporting for soundcards like Acoustic Edge, Seismic Edge and the C-media 8738 based Sonic and Dynamic Edge (with Philips own reworked QSound drivers under the name of "Sound Agent 2"), so new competing and emerging products and even the rise of Realtek were really intresting.... as was the somewhat disapointing downturn in 3d sound after the Audigy / Vortex2 and general loss of Sensaura and QSound.

Over the years I've collected quite a number of nForce boards as trash picks, but never really bothered to follow through with a build.
Anyway, this ThinkCentre seemed close on ideal to eventually connect to a home theatre reciever setup.

Setup:
Biostar M7NCG - very colourful motherboard!
AthlonXP 2600+ Barton core
1GB DDR 400 @ 333 x2 running in Dual Channel mode
160GB WD
Intergrated GeForce4 MX
Pioneer DVD
New 3d printed I/O shield I whipped up..

Scoring just a little over 5000 in 3dMark01... tested with a low profile 9250 64-bit and got around 4700, with a FX5200 64bit around 4200.

Next step to update is to wire up an Optical and SPDIF Coax bracket....

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Last edited by holdencars11 on 2022-04-18, 16:13. Edited 2 times in total.

Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.

Reply 1 of 6, by holdencars11

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The Nvidia System Utility and nVMixer....

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Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.

Reply 3 of 6, by holdencars11

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-30, 00:40:

That's a neat setup. Any fun plans for the build?
I was always a fan of the Nforce chipsets and honestly i kinda miss them.

Going to get it linked up to my 00's Onkyo AV Reciever via optical or coax. Waiting for an optical backplate to arrive from china. That will be the first test
Then Dolby Digital Encoding to 5.1 ch goodness... I really want to see how it handles things like CD's and games with the 5.1 encoding...curious if its just stereo x2 effect or if some HRTF's are applied like with QMSS / CMSS.
Maybe investigate TV Out options to a Trinitron... or maybe to a OSSC.
But the plan is for eventual home theatre intergration alongside xbox / ps2 / Gamecube / Dreamcast.

The best of what PC's could offer at the time for built in graphics, and comparing to what consoles offered

I think the form factor will suit it!

Last edited by holdencars11 on 2022-05-01, 13:15. Edited 2 times in total.

Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.

Reply 4 of 6, by chrismeyer6

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I know the onboard sound on the later Nforce boards was actually quite good. Using it as a htpc is a fantastic use case for it and that case should fit right in with other A/V equipment

Reply 5 of 6, by holdencars11

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-05-01, 13:07:

I know the onboard sound on the later Nforce boards was actually quite good. Using it as a htpc is a fantastic use case for it and that case should fit right in with other A/V equipment

Oh nForce 3? I think Soundstorm APU was gone by then, although Realtek like ALC650 was still using Sensaura API till the drivers from 2005 or so..

Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.