together with GeForce 6100/6150 series northbridges to form a chipset with integrated graphics. The combination is a follow-up to the popular nForce2 IGP chipset. Driver Availability Nvidia offers nForce4 chipset driver downloads for NT-based Windows versions from 2000 up to and including Vista in the "Legacy" product type category on their download page. However, there is no official support for Windows 7 or newer, but Windows 7 has a built-in driver for the nForce 6 chipset, which is very similar. Flaws Nvidia's nForce4 chipset suffers from several unresolved issues. The ActiveArmor hardware firewall is nearly non-functional, with many unsolved bugs and potentially serious instability issues. Installing ActiveArmor can cause BSODs for users of certain software, especially peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Some programs, such as μTorrent, go so far as to have warning messages about using Nvidia's firewall in combination with their software. ActiveArmor also has a high probability of causing corruption of file downloads. Nvidia has been unable to solve these issues and points to hardware bugs within the chipset itself, problems which they are unable to work around. There have also been data corruption issues associated with certain SATA 3 Gbit/s hard drives. The issues can often be resolved with a firmware update for the hard drive from the manufacturer. The nForce4 chipset has also been blamed for issues with PCI cards, relating to Nvidia's implementation of the PCI bus. RME Audio, a maker of professional audio equipment, has stated that the latency of the PCI bus is unreliable and that the chipset's PCI Express interface can "hog" system data transfer resources when intense video card usage is occurring. This has the effect of causing audible pops and clicks with PCI sound cards. Gamers have noticed this effect, especially with Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi and Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound cards. Compatibility issues between these sound cards and nForce4 motherboards have been ongoing, including reports of serious and irreversible damage to crucial motherboard components. Driver updates were also found to be unsuccessful. Latency issues are more readily apparent with sound cards than other addon cards because of the direct user feedback the audio problems demonstrate. See also Comparison of Nvidia chipsets NForce 500 References External links Nvidia: nForce4 Anandtech: nForce4: PCI Express and SLI for Athlon 64 Techreport: Nvidia's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset Nvidia chipsets