edplayer: OK, I can believe that the SPDIF connector is required for certification, but I was referring specifically to the Asus motherboard used in this article. From the article (page 9):

> Two mainboard are going to participate in today’s testing: Soltek KT400A and ASUS A7N8X. The first mainboard features a VIA VT8235 South Bridge and an AC’97 VIA VT1616 codec. The second one is based on the nForce2 MCP-T with the integrated APU SoundStorm and an AC’97 Realtek ALC650 codec.

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So, the unit being tested has to be a A7N8X Deluxe, because they're testing the MCP-T, according to this quote. And Sergey says it's a SoundStorm board, while Nvidia's webpage says it isn't. I guess my question really is, do all MCP-T motherboards give you all of the SoundStorm features, e.g., the Dolby encoder, even if they're not "certified?"