How to Tweak and Configure the nForce2 Chipset and
ASUS A7N8X for Digital Audio Recording

©AGRONOVA/Anders Fahlén
2003-04-30 First edition

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Network Interface Card (NIC):

The A7N8X Deluxe is equipped with two onboard NICs, a 3COM embedded network interface and Nvidia’s own interface. There have been various reports of problems with the 3COM interface not operating reliably at 100 Mbit speed (10 Mbit seems to work). It is advised to use the Nvidia NIC as it also uses less cpu power than the 3COM version.

VIDEO card compatibility:

The following AGP video cards, but not necessarily restricted to, are tested by users and/or independent reviewers and found compatible with the Asus A7N8X:

Note that there are incompatibility issues reported with the Matrox G550 video card and nForce2 in audio applications (www.audioforums.com). Early versions of Matrox G400 may also be incompatible, as they do not meet 1.5 V @ AGP 4x/8X specifications.

PCI Bus and Interrupt Request Table:

The A7N8X is equipped with five PCI slots. You have by default a maximum of four independent interrupts spread across the PCI slots and Serial ATA controller if onboard audio and midi are in use. The Interrupt request table has the following outlook:

ATA/PCI slot	INT-A	INT-B	INT-C	INT-D
PCI slot #1	shared	-	-	-
PCI slot #2	-	-	-	used
PCI slot #3	-		shared	-
PCI slot #4	-	used	-	-
PCI slot #5	shared		-	-
Serial-ATA	-	-	shared	-

To minimize risks of IRQ configuration issues when installing your professional soundcard you should consider PCI slot #2 and/or #4 as first priority. If you are not using onboard audio and midi (IRQ 10 by default) you can free up irq positions by disabling these resources. Similarly, you can disable the serial ATA controller – you then have to manually disable the serial header on the motherboard (serial ATA is enabled by default; to disable serial ATA place the jumpers to position 2-3; see manual, section 2.7.1). If you are only using the first IDE channel you can also free up irq position 15 by disabling the second IDE channel in BIOS. If you are using several external PCI-DSP cards, in combination with one or several soundcards, it makes sense to guarantee as many independent IRQs as possible across the PCI bus.

CPU fan/Northbridge-Southbridge heatsinks:

The following CPU fans are known to work well with Athlon XP Thoroughbred/Barton CPU. Note that it is especially important to install a high-performing CPU fan/heatsink if you apply O/C:

Brand/model*	Fan air flow	Fan noise (dB)
Thermalright SLK-800 heatsink	-	-
Thermalright AX7 heatsink	-	-
Swiftech MC462A heatsink	-
Vantec AeroFlow VA4-C7040 heatsink/TDM CPU fan	35.5 cfm	38 @ 5600 rpm
Zalman CNPS 6000cu heatsink/92 mm CPU silencer fan	28 cfm	20 @ 1600 rpm /35 @ 2500rpm
AMD Retail CPU fan	18.15 cfm	28
OCZ Dominator-2 CPU fan	24.4 cfm	40
Nexus KCZ-2700 CPU fan	17.1 cfm/21 cfm	25.2 @ 3200 rpm/28.8 @ 3900 rpm

* check for compatibility with your Thoroughbred/Barton CPU

Among the heatsinks for socket A CPU’s the Thermalright SLK-800 and AX7 are rated among the best at both 12/7/5 voltage CPU fan settings (silentpc preview test).

The following Northbridge heatsinks are compatible with the Asus 7N8X:

High CPU utilization issue:

The nForce2 may under specific conditions be affected by high CPU utilization under Win XP/XP SP1 (this can be illustrated by running the HDTach benchmark utility). Affected users are recommended to install Win XP SP1 Hotfix as it will solve a memory allocation problem with XP SP1 (WinXP SP1 Hotfix Fixes High nForce 2 CPU Utilization) and result in snappier program loads. The beta patch can be downloaded from here.

Alternative nForce2 motherboards:

All nForce2 motherboards share the common feature of having a locked PCI bus at 33 MHz wherefore they all principally are of interest to O/C. The individual BIOS features and other motherboard layout characteristics set them apart from each other in terms of O/C stability.

The Abit NF7-(S) revision 1.2 and 2 motherboards are known to O/C well. Users report that these motherboards can reach 200 MHz FSB stable out of the box without any voltage modifications (Abit NF7 review). Both chipset voltage and DDR voltage are adjustable from the BIOS on these boards and they are equipped with a heat fan on the Northbridge chipset by standard. One active Abit NF7 user forum is found at View Forum - ABIT.

The Epox 8RDA(+) is also known from user experiences to O/C well. The BIOS since original version is friendly for O/C tweaks. The one main issue seems to be that many users have reported problems with Corsair and OCZ PC3200 LL/EL/TwinX memory modules and the 8RDA+ motherboard. One active Epox nForce2 forum is found at View Forum - EPoX.

Future digital audio-nForce outlooks:

The new 64-bit x86 Opteron CPU from AMD is just released and Nvidia has also announced the coming release of the nForce3 chipset that will match the Opteron. This CPU-chipset combination will introduce many potential advantages to digital audio recorders/producers, like the HyperTranport link between the CPU and the nForce3 chipset with a bandwidth up to 3.6 GB/sec and thereby reduce effective I/O latency with multiple I/O devices installed, effective backward compatibility to 32-bit software, etc. The nForce3 will be a single chipset architecture.

Valuable links:

Acknowledgements:

The author greatly appreciates users’ inputs to make this documentation a reality. Specifically, Rob Yale and Eckhard Doll have put great interest into the RME-nForce2 PCI stress test and delivered significant amount of data. www.hardware.no has generously allowed me to re-print selected ATTO hard disk benchmarks on nForce2 motherboards. It is also acknowledged that a big portion of this document is based on experiences presented at various public nForce2-related and DAW forums respectively.

Final words:

Have fun and do not get overly “tweaked” in your experiences with music, DAW and the Asus A7N8X or any other nForce2 motherboards!

Anders Fahlén,
anders@agronova.se
AGRONOVA
Sweden

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