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When Nvidia first released the nForce chipset in June 2001, many people were hoping that this would be THE chipset for the Athlon processor. But as happens there were lengthy delays and nForce based motherboards didn't appear until some months later. The performance of the chipset, while good was not earth shattering, and the late release helped dampen much of the enthusiasm that people had about the nForce chipset. The other factor in its less than stellar sales was the fact that the first north bridge released were the ones with integrated graphics, which drove up the price of the motherboards based on them. This increase in price of these boards wouldn't have mattered much, but the target group for the higher priced motherboards, the enthusiast, for the most part already had a good video card and didn't want to waste money on something they would never use.
While there were many presentation problems with the nForce chipset, it also had some very useful and high quality technologies included in it. Such things as the integrated Dolby Digital encoder/decoder, allowed for high quality onboard audio, thus perhaps saving a PCI slot for something else. Another very interesting feature is one of the first uses of AMD's high speed Hyper Transport technology in a product, which Nvidia used to connect the north bridge (IGP) to the south bridge (MCP) to allow for more bandwidth than the normal north/south bridge PCI bus design (800MB/s - 266MB/s). Lastly and most importantly was the inclusion of 'Twinbank' which basically allowed for two 64-bit DDR DIMM's to be used as one 128-bit DIMM thus doubling the theoretical memory bandwidth without increasing memory speed (IE Rambus, 72 pin SIMM's), this was not a new idea but it was one of, if not the the first, to offer this implementation for the Athlon platform with DDR memory.
When the nForce 2 was launched in July of 2002 it was met with a more guarded optimism as it looked to only offer some basic improvements over its previous version. There were some minor improvements to both the SPP/IGP and MCP. The MCP had one major improvement, the inclusion of integrated networking, as well as the ability to have dual onboard network cards (3COM/Nvidia). Most of the technology behind the nForce 2 was covered by Hubert in his nForce 2 preview and his review.
Chaintech has only recently gotten into the process of making nForce motherboards. They have only started using the nVidia based chipsets, starting with the nForce 2. So how is their implementation of the nForce chipset, do they do a good job with one of their first attempts at making an nForce 2 motherboard?
Chaintech 7NIF2 Board
This board is not one many would consider, as it is a µATX case. But does it have any interesting features that help it stand out and make it an eye catching motherboard? Let us look at the board to see. To see the exact specifications of this motherboard, please look at
Here is an itemized list of what was included in the box:
- The Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard
- 1 - 80 Pin IDE cable, 1 - Floppy cable
- 7NIF2 Specific back plate
- Manual and Addendum
- Quick Reference Guide
- Driver CD
Next Page - The Board Continued
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Chaintech 7NIF2 nForce 2: We take a look at Chaintech's latest nForce 2 implementation, the 7NIF2. The board not only features the nVidia IGP, but it's also based on the Micro-ATX form factor.
