I don't get it

[WillyTrombone]

I've been looking for information on nForce2 motherboards considering the possibility of an upgrade in 2-3 months (currently still running a gforce2 gts on an athlon 1 gig athlon/266 bus). The nForce2 sounds pretty cool even though I know the integrated video will stink compared to the cards available but the integrated motherboard provides a strong selling point to me in that it theoretically can result in a very small motherboard footprint, creating a perfect opportunity to throw together a portable miniature PC that actually performs at an acceptable level for games. But these nforce2 motherboards (at least, the three or four pictures of various manufacturers' takes that I've seen so far) are bloody huge. They all have 6-8 slots and look about as big as the beast my original 8088 was mounted on. Anyway, what strikes me as extremely odd is that given that the nForce2 has integrated video, lan, sound, and IDE, the space used for all the expansion slots is wasted. I can understand maybe a pci slot or two in case a user might want SCSI or RAID and the AGP slot makes sense given the likelihood that the integrated graphics will have a very limited lifespan, but the AMR slot seems stupid since USB modems are no worse than AMR modems and an AMR sound card would be pointless with the onboard audio. It seems to me the mobo vendors are ignoring a ptentially large market by not shrinking the boards down to a size suitable for a device like the openbrick, cappucino tx-3, or jadetec micropc.

Oh well, I just felt like ranting. Trying to get info off of motherboard manufacturer sites always gets me into a pissy mood.

On second though, 3 PCI slots would be perfect: Firewire, PCMCIA, and either SCSI or RAID. The only other thing I could think of that might be useful in a tiny PC would be a second NIC so that it could act as a router, but since there are now so many simple hardware routers out there for around $60, a whole thousand dollar mini PC wouldn't make much sense. Actually, I think they should build the Firewire, PCMCIA, and RAID into the next nforce, but that's probably unlikely.

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

Hold on a second.........there........had to pull down my pants, so I could talk out of my ass.
I believe the mobo manufacturers make the boards big because they look more manly that way........just a thought........not an educated thought, but still.......a thought. :roll: :lol: *HPC tries to quickly run away...trips over his pants, exposing his rump......hey! Get off me!!!!

[AcidWarp]

Willy, the reason they are so big is partly because the integrated video is actually a Geforce 2 GTS with it's own RAM iirc, rather than video integrated into the North Bridge, also, I believe they usually have an AGP slot as well, which adds sized. It's not your run-of-the-mill integrated board. As for it being a good board, I've heard both good and bad, so I guess it's really a crap shoot if you plan on getting an nForce board. I'd stick with the usual big names, Asus, Abit, Tyan etc.

Hi btw :D

[Slice]

I actually thought that the new boards were going to be based on the geforce4 architecture? Plus I thought I read somewhere that the on board video was going to be a Ti4600?

[WillyTrombone]

the nforce2 has an option of having an integrated geforce4 MX. It will probably run a good 10-20% slower than a non-integrated board, if the past is any indication. Even at that, it would probably outperform my current geforce2 GTS.

All I want to do is get a really small, quiet computer. If I use my current rig without wearing headphones, everything in my right ear sounds muffled for a little while due to all the whitenoise it spits out (my rig sits on my desk to the right of the monitor.) The problem is, all the microPC's available come with really crappy SiS integrated video or similarly crappy laptop video chips. I thought the nforce looked cool because it would allow me to build a small computer seeing as how everything is integrated (there would be no need for accessory cards with sound, net, and vido onthe motherboard. A case ould only need enough additional room for drives and cpu cooler.) But as I read more about it, it seems wholly unlikely that form and function will ever cease to be mutually excllusive design features.

ehh... it was just a thought anyway.

[OUTLAWS The Machine]

I want one but I want the model without the integrated graphics. I want it because of the memory bandwidth and the AGP8x.