The real reason Nvidia drop SoundStorm from NForce 4?

[AthlonXP1800]

I think Nvidia see no point to use SoundStorm in NForce 4 and without the chip, it save money, Nvida heard from a new startup company called Bionic FX created a revolutionary software called Audio Video Exchange (AVEX) (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20040903132159.html) that the software use Nvidia GPUs as audio effects processor by receive video data, write and convert it into digital audio data and vice versa.

New Nvidia GPUs are getting more and more programming and also more powerful than CPU, Nvidia GPUs got plenty of power to spare to calculate and processing digital audio. I think soon we will see the end of onboard audio on motherboards that rely on CPU power to calculated and processed audio data. :)

[nutball]

New Nvidia GPUs are getting more and more programming and also more powerful than CPU, Nvidia GPUs got plenty of power to spare to calculate and processing digital audio. I think soon we will see the end of onboard audio on motherboards that rely on CPU power to calculated and processed audio data. :)

SS doesn't rely on CPU power to do the audio processing. That's the point of it surely.

[MUYA]

I couldn't agree more.

The point is the soundstorm would add say .50 cents US to a mobo. Given te volumes, the nForce4 will ship..in the millions, that's a lot of money saved by the OEMs. That is the key....and a shame :( becasue we are not given the choice.

[sabrewulf165]

Man, that's lame... I was thinking about buying an nf4 if they had soundstorm again, but if not, I'm not really in that big of a hurry to get PCI-E

[kahloq]

I dunno about any of you....but I DONT want my GPU being used to do sound. I want all that GPU power doing video stuff :) I dont buy a $500 graphics card to have it also doing sound. NO thanks!

[superklye]

I dunno about any of you....but I DONT want my GPU being used to do sound. I want all that GPU power doing video stuff :) I dont buy a $500 graphics card to have it also doing sound. NO thanks!

I second this.

They should make an SPU on mobos.

[Lezmaka]

This has nothing to do with replacing sound cards.

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040902_135943.html

Cann's invention is purely software-based and is not capable substituting a sound chip.
Instead, it's all about using the massive specialized processing capabilities of graphics cards to do complicated calculations as required with professional audio (musicians) as well as other things.

General-Purpose Computation Using Graphics Hardware (http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/Scientific%20Computing/?_start=11)

Stuff like:

- Dense Matrix Algebra on the GPU
- Simulation of Cloud Dynamics on Graphics Hardware
- Hardware Accelerated Ice Crystal Growth
- Sparse Matrix Solvers on the GPU: Conjugate Gradients and Multigrid
- Simulation and Animation Using Hardware Accelerated Procedural Textures
- A Multigrid Solver for Boundary Value Problems Using Graphics Hardware
- A GPU-Based, Three-Dimensional Level Set Solver with Curvature Flow
- Implementing Lattice Boltzmann Computation on Graphics Hardware
- Physically-Based Visual Simulation on Graphics Hardware
- Fast Matrix Multiplies using Graphics Hardware
- General Mathematics in Graphics Hardware

[superklye]

This has nothing to do with replacing sound cards.

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040902_135943.html


Instead, it's all about using the massive specialized processing capabilities of graphics cards to do complicated calculations as required with professional audio (musicians) as well as other things.

General-Purpose Computation Using Graphics Hardware (http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/Scientific%20Computing/?_start=11)

Stuff like:

- Dense Matrix Algebra on the GPU
- Simulation of Cloud Dynamics on Graphics Hardware
- Hardware Accelerated Ice Crystal Growth
- Sparse Matrix Solvers on the GPU: Conjugate Gradients and Multigrid
- Simulation and Animation Using Hardware Accelerated Procedural Textures
- A Multigrid Solver for Boundary Value Problems Using Graphics Hardware
- A GPU-Based, Three-Dimensional Level Set Solver with Curvature Flow
- Implementing Lattice Boltzmann Computation on Graphics Hardware
- Physically-Based Visual Simulation on Graphics Hardware
- Fast Matrix Multiplies using Graphics Hardware
- General Mathematics in Graphics Hardware

That's why they should make an SPU