ASUS A8V DELUXE

[teddyv]

ASUS A8V DELUXE

After a lot of looking I've settled on this board, a number of things sealed it. First, I'd rather wait for 2nd-gen PCIe so will stick with a new AGP card for now, has front and back panel firewire, good layout, and the clincher, I can hook up all four of my pata hard drives as well as both my optical drives. Most important for me is stability and reliability and ASUS seems to have a good reputation for this. Not going to overclock, no intensive gaming, just need a good stable board for office work and some graphics and video.

So any final comments before I pull the trigger? Going for the new AMD 3000 Venice for the proc, and have no idea on a good value RAM that works well with this board.

Thanks-

 

[ryanv12]

I think that will be the board for you then. I haven't really seen any horror stories, just people prefer the Neo-2 Platinum because it overclocks better. I don't really care too much about that either, so that's why I got one as well. I just wanted stability and liked the passive heatsink

Maybe someone else has a story. I think in general though, it's been a good board. Their latest bios for dual cores is having a couple of annoying quirks, but that should be of no concern for you.

 

[Squally Leonharty]

There is a known issue with VIA chipsets and ATI cards running at AGP 8x. I'm suffering from this. The PC always crashes during DirectX games, but never during OpenGL games, which I can play for hours continually. I've tried many solutions given at the board of www.viaarena.com but none of them worked, so I'm going to sell this MB and the GPU and go for PCI-E.

So basically, if you're a gamer, get an nVidia card for this board and pray you don't get this problem, or use a different board like Asus A8N, which is similar to A8V in terms of generations, and uses PCI-E. This other board won't have any problems. If you want absolute stability in Windows or whatever OS you want to use and you don't play games (often), then Asus A8V Deluxe is definitely the board for you. My board has always been rockstable in everything (except in DirectX games ;_; ).

 

[teddyv]

Is it only ATI cards or ATI chips? The video card I was looking to buy is the Saphire Radeon 9600XT 128M DDR AGP 4X/8X for just under $100 - will this conflict and do you have a better recommendation for a vcard? Also do you have a recommendation for a good value RAM?

Thanks!

 

[amplemind]

There is some Corsair ValueSelect 1GB ram at newegg for 80.25$

 

[amplemind]

And u def want a PCIe board. Asus is best

 

[teddyv]

Have the bugs been worked out of PCIe (and can you recommend a good under $100)? Is there an ASUS with a secondary PATA? and lastly - I've heard horror stories of the nForce chipsets, truth to it or am I being paranoid?

Thanks again

 

[Squally Leonharty]

Originally posted by: teddyv
Have the bugs been worked out of PCIe (and can you recommend a good under $100)? Is there an ASUS with a secondary PATA? and lastly - I've heard horror stories of the nForce chipsets, truth to it or am I being paranoid?

Thanks again

nForce4 is basically the king of the chipsets right now for AMD CPUs. I'd go for that one instead. I know I am going to get that one now after selling my MB and GPU.

Originally posted by: teddyv
Is it only ATI cards or ATI chips? The video card I was looking to buy is the Saphire Radeon 9600XT 128M DDR AGP 4X/8X for just under $100 - will this conflict and do you have a better recommendation for a vcard? Also do you have a recommendation for a good value RAM?

Thanks!

I'm not sure myself if it's ATI's fault. It's more likely VIA's anyway. With PCI-E you'll never have problems with it, and the technology has matured a lot now, with most bugs worked out, if not all of them. ;p There's also that A8V-E Deluxe board, which is based on A8V, but uses PCI-E instead of AGP. You won't encounter any problems with the graphics card there, I'm sure, but its VIA KT890Pro chipset *might* be troublesome when you want to upgrade to a dual core AMD CPU. It is announced that there's a bug in the chipset that prevents the usage of the Athlon X2 CPUs. Later revisions of the chipset don't have this problem.

As for the graphics card, you might want to take a look in the Video forum. There are plenty of those threads about which one is better. Personally, I'd recommend an nVidia 6600GT PCI-E, which can be had for around $150, and is better than the ATI card you want in most areas, but just take a look around here and look at some reviews.

 

[imported_Starman]

Originally posted by: Squally Leonharty
There is a known issue with VIA chipsets and ATI cards running at AGP 8x. I'm suffering from this. The PC always crashes during DirectX games

That's terribly false. I don't know what you've done to your system but I'm running an A8V Deluxe alongside an ATI X800Pro (at AGP8x) and loving every minute of it with zero stability problems. Don't mislead this guy :thumbsdown:

I would highly recommend the Asus A8V Deluxe :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

[The Pentium Guy]

A8V-E Deluxe = Crap. Read the horror stories on that.
A8V Deluxe should be pretty good. That board's been out for quite a while now, and most of the kinks should have been worked out.

I'd recommend moving to PCI-E with nForce4 though:
-ASUS A8N-E
-EPOX 9NPA+ Ultra

I heard those were pretty good stable boards, with the edge given to the ePox (anandtech gave it some sort of award) - the ePox overclocks well too .

 

[BigCoolJesus]

Get it, ive been using it for a year now, never had a single problem (such as lock-ups, reboots, etc)

 

[halfpower]

The only problem I had with it was when loading Windows. Windows XP does not have the VIA SATA drivers. I had to download the drivers from viaarena.com and load them from a floppy in order to install Windows to a SATA drive. Not difficult, but it's an extra $20 for the drive.

One good thing though is the Asus WiFi@home card. I got an Asus WiFi-g card for only $30. It has a fair number of features and gives much better reception than a PCMCIA card.

 

[teddyv]

Does SP2 come with the drivers? I thought I read somewhere it did?

 

[uberowo]

I bought the Asus A8V Deluxe a week ago or so.. Refused to work for me. "System failed CPU test". Google that and you'll find I'm not the only one who has experienced that issue. I had to send it back. Bought an Epox instead.

 

[teddyv]

Jeez, no kidding.

I have to say this whole process is so frustrating. I really want to build my own, and really want the power of an AMD but it seems every single board or chipset I look at has some wicked problem or flaw. I don't mind spending $150 for a mobo if only I could find one that was consistently bug-free, easy to set up and stable. I'd even convert to PCIe and sata HD's.

Last thing I wanted was to buy another Dell but it's looking better every day

 

[halfpower]

Originally posted by: teddyv
Does SP2 come with the drivers? I thought I read somewhere it did?

No. Not the Via SATA controller drivers. There are is also two Promise SATA connector on the board. I'm not sure if those are included in WinXP SP2.

I could not comment on whether or not it is possible to install drivers from a CD.

 

[ryanv12]

I just installed this A8V Deluxe system without a single hitch. I installed everything and it all booted right away. Had to install the VIA raid drivers to install XP on my WD SATA RAID 1 array, but there was absolutely no problem. System is very quiet (partially thanks to the passive NB heatsink), very stable and working smoothly. I just went through a "torture test" of sorts playing BF2 for about 8 hours (my gosh, that ranking system really does get you addicted) and not a problem. Of all the computers I've put together, this one has been one of the smoothest.

 

[uberowo]

I had trouble finding an AGP board that appealed to me as well (other then the A8V that I thought looked good on paper) so I converted to a PCIE based card when I returned the Asus. Check out the Epox 9NPA Ultra+ if your considering doing the same thing, think it even won a recent mobo-test here on Anandtech.

 

[wseyller]

Actually I was searching for a thread similiar to this because my friend has an A8V and an ATI radeon 9800 pro 256mb card. It is crashing alot in Battlefield 2. He heard about this problem from another source. I was trying to find more info about it. I think he is going to buy a 6800 card.

 

[wseyller]

http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=62265&STARTPAGE=1


Found more info on the problem with via chipset and ati cards.

 

[teddyv]

Can anyone recommend a non-ATI card with similiar performance as the 9800 but still under $100?

 

[teddyv]

Looks like the The GeForce 6600 GT is the way to go - beats the 9800 Pro (http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/533/) and is in the same price range.

Y'all recommend the 6600GT over the 9800Pro?

 

[mrtbig]

I was possibly interested in purchasing the A8V Deluxe so I could keep my EvGA 6800GT AGP card.

I saw in specs that the board said 1.5v AGP and I thought the 6800GT is 3.0v.

I searched for answers but can't find one. I saw where someone on forum had this card installed.

Can anyone help me confirm whether the 6800GT will run 8x AGP on this board?

Thanks,

Terry

 

[Sparky19692]

MrBig
That is the same setup I am running and yes the 6800GT is 1.5v. I have had this board about 9 months, mine is even the "bad" rev 1 I have Never had a single problem with it. The only thing I may have liked and do not know if I would use anyway is a FBS of higher than 300 if you can call that a draw back? I don't. I have used Asus a few times now and after this one I'm sure I will buy anouther.

 

[mrtbig]

Can this board use the X2 Processor? I think I saw on the Asus site where they had the bios update for this but I want to make sure.

Thanks!