[ZmaN]

No, Im not buying a motherboard, or anything related (hopefully a sound card doesnt count)....  I just felt like asking everybody.....

An Nforce 4 Motherboard or an ATI Xpress 200 chipset for your motherboard?

[WMCoolmon]

nVidia vs ATI!!!

nVidia vs ATI!!!

Probably nVidia, because their drivers are usually more Linux-friendly...I haven't heard any significant performance diff either way.

[Admiral LSD]

Actually, nVidia's support for the nForce chipsets in Linux has historically been quite poor. Their LAN driver kinda-sorta worked (I never had all that much trouble with it myself but there are plenty of reports out there from people who have) and their sound driver was originally a rehash of the kernel i810 driver which didn't support the advanced features of the SoundStorm APU. They later released a driver that supported SoundStorm but even then it was less than stellar and not just because it was still an OSS driver when just about every distro worth using has standardised on ALSA for sound.

[Scuddie]

Fact of the matter is that they both suck.  Honestly, I'm really ashamed at ATi and nVidia for producing boards that are so feature rich, but also so inefficient.  VIA has better efficiency than these two chipsets, but isn't getting any acclaim for it...  Probably because their only current interface is Socket940 .

[CP5670]

How do you measure the "efficiency" of a chipset?

Anyway, they're both similar: fairly fast and loaded with features but buggy. The individual boards matter more than what chipset they're on.

[edit] never mind, thought this concerned the newer Crossfire chipset. The xpress 200 isn't really a competitor to nforce4, as it's a lower end integrated graphics solution.

[MatthewPapa]

Xpress 200 was ATIs last minute halfass attempt to counter Nvidia's nforce style chipsets. while i've built computers with both style chipsets and have noticed no obvious problems, for overclocking and overall RAM compatibility Nforce is a must. I would trust Xpress fine with a office comp, but i wouldnt let it near a gaming rig.

[Scuddie]

Efficiency is easy.  The nForce4 has to deal with two seperate SATA controllers (each holding four hosts), an integrated AC97 system, an entire SuperIO system, legacy ISA -> PCI bridges, USB-> PCI bridges, Six USB 2.0 hosts, a tertiary PATA channel, two Gigabit Ethernet controllers, four IEEE1394a controllers, and a few more things that add up to of overhead.  And how much can I disable?  None.

If I want to run 8 different SATA devices, I'd buy a dedicated RAID card with support for RAID5.  Integrated AC97 sucks donkey nuts, I'll buy a dedicated sound card thank you.  If I wanted SuperIO devices, I'd buy dedicated serial/parallel/ps2 ports.  I have no need for ISA if I run everything dedicated.  USB is neccessary, but I think six hosts is a little much, two does just fine.  What the sam **** am I going to do with a tertiary PATA channel??  One 100Mbit host is good enough, two Gbit hosts is overkill.  If I ever need IEEE1394a connections, I'll buy a card.

In short, I don't want all my neccessary resources to wade thru a bunch of useless DMA in order to use the system bus.

[ZmaN]

the xpress 200 is actually a pretty good chipset....  in benchmarks using a video card (not the onboard video, which still works pretty well [better than the geforce 6100])

yea the chipsets are almost equal in performance so the decision to get either would be a board issue, not a chipset issue...

I like the xpress 200, i think i might get it for my next pc... 

PS:  oh and I dont wanna hear any of that "Nvidia works better with AMD, Intel with ATI"...  thats completly bogus....

[IceFire]

Xpress I've heard presently has some problems with USB performance.  Not sure if that was sorted out but thats a bit of a problem.  That aside, both the nForce 4 and Xpress options seem quite good.  I'm doing the research right now but they are both very viable performers.

[ZmaN]

Xpress I've heard presently has some problems with USB performance.  Not sure if that was sorted out but thats a bit of a problem.  That aside, both the nForce 4 and Xpress options seem quite good.  I'm doing the research right now but they are both very viable performers.

agreed! 

[Taristin]

I've only ever used nForce 2, so I can't really say, but your bash on integrated sound is a little unfounded. nVidia Soundstorm is awesome. Really. Not a single complaint with it here.