Asus A8V. Either VIA sucks or I do.

[Phantronius]

Last night was probably one of the most fustrating PC builds ever. I began to build my new Athlon 64 setup wtih the following parts

AMD Winchester 3200+
Asus A8V Version 2 1008 BIOS
Corsair 1 gig XMS 3700 3-4-4-8 standard timings
eVGA 6800GT
Audigy 2
2x SeaGate 160gig SATA drives
Antec NeoPower

After the usuall ripping out old equipment and setting up the new stuff I booted the machine. All seemed good. I changed some stuff in the BIOS turning off uneccassary junk. Rebooted and threw in the XP Pro SP1 disc.

First problem I ran into is that I apparantly didn't have the correct VIA drivers on my floppy. So I took the ASUS CDROM and ran the Makedisk utility and tried again. This time it took and started the Win XP install.

Ok, after full format and intially loading, reboot and off I went into the XP installing screen. All of a sudden, reboot. Mkay....trying again.

Back into loading screen and then a blue screen. WTF. Try again and blue screen repeteadly. Take out old SATA cables and install new ones and wipe drive and try again. Crashes during installing of intial files. WTF????

Rewipe drive and try AGAIN. NOw it gets through the intial Windows installing and I get to my CD Code typing and then starts loading the drivers. And then outa NOWWHERE the machine starts bitching about drivers not being Windows certified? WTF???? I have NEVER seen XP do this during intial install.

Pissed off, I ripped out the corsair ram and threw in a single stick of Corsair value RAM 256 meg. Rewiped drives and tried again. This time the install went without a hitch and I finally had windows. I started doing Windows updates and all my drivers. I popped out the Corsair Value RAM and put the corsair XMS back in and increased the VDIMM to 2.8v.

Machine booted and I continued loading stuff until during a reboot, spontanous crash. ARRRRRRGHHH!!! Reboot again and went into windows. Started Audigy 2 install but 95% through the install it crashed saying " Catostrophic error blah blah blah" Rebooted and the sound worked. Then during Windows updates, farking BSOD!!!!!!!

Furious and nearly out of energy, I ripped out the SATA drivers and threw in my orginal Western Digital IDE drives and started all over. This time not a single hiccup during windows install and I ran out of energy to start doing drivers and what not again.

So what the hell am I dealing with here? Is VIA's SATA controllers this shitty, or have I done something wrong during install? My Corsair RAM ran perfectly fine in my Intel setup so unless this mobo is being REALLY bitch about the RAM, im having a hunch its VIA's controller. ANyone have ANY suggestions on what else to check or change in the BIOS or something I missed to figure out why the hell this thing is throwing such a temper tantrum? Thanks for any incite.

 

[echelonphoto]

I had problems too...go this link and follow sapphires directions..works like a charm

http://forums.viaarena.com/mes...2587&enterthread=y

 

[asustech]

It took me a week almost with some 20+ Formats to my WD 160 GB SATA to come to know that i needed SATA drivers on floppy to enable XP detect my drive.

Your experience is only 1 night, imagine me bitching my new PC not knowing about SATA drivers.

Well i have a K8V(which is now toast), use the VIA drivers and not any Promise or Silicon image drivers.

For me, WinXP never detected my floppy having Promise SATA drivers so i just went for the VIA ones.

Go to any other PC, use your mobo CD and copy the folder completly having the SATA drivers for XP.

Format HD again(make partitions through the WD's CD if u want).. boot PC with WinXP CD and when the blue screen appears, press F6 to load the SATA drivers in your floppy.

WinXP will detect VIA SATA for sure and thats what i recommend cause OCing with SATA isnt going to help anyway.

Don't take out anything.. ram or any other stuff.. You may be messing a couple of options in the BIOS.

Disable the 3rd Party SATA boot Roms for faster Boot-up and enable the VIA SATA boot room.

Lastly, VIA doesnt suck cause they earn Millions every month, with that said, read your topic heading again to know what i am trying to say.

 

[Phantronius]

What problems where you having Eche? I figured out how to do the SATA F6 thing, the stability is the big issue now.

 

[bob661]

Do you have another stick ram to test with? Also, did you change any bios settings before performing the install?

 

[Skoop]

Answer to question: VIA does not suck.

 

[Peter]

Maybe your troubleshooting skillz do.

First things first. How are your voltages and temperatures? Does the setup pass memtest86 (www.memtest.org)? Before you're sure about those, there's little point in even attempting to install an operating system.

 

[Phantronius]

I turned off a couple of uncessary stuff in BIOS like the seriel, Parellel, Legacy USB, onboard sound ect..ect...

The RAM works fine as it worked without a hitch in my Intel setup so I know the RAM itself is not bad unless this AMD board simply doesn't like it but im still not trusthworth on the VIA SATA......

 

[Christobevii3]

Make sure the ram voltage is set right, like 2.7v and not 2.5v like most stock settings are.

 

[bob661]

Your board should work correctly without tweaks. If it doesn't you need to RMA it. BUT first make sure it is the board. Reset your bios to defaults (not performance or whatever), pull a stick of ram, try different ram slots, disconnect all non essential drives and connections. If you can, borrow a stick of ram from a friend (doesn't matter if it's DDR333 or not) and use that to test. Install a PATA drive and put windows on that and see what happens.

 

[housecat]

I dont know if VIA sucks now.. but they always used too.


I for one, am glad there are now alternatives on the AMD-front. Thankfully the KT133/A/266/A ect days and their virtual monopoly are over. Even the SIS735 was better IMO...

VIA should always be last on the list unless you really save a whole lot of money, and even then, its not worth it IMO.
The competition has probably forced their newer boards like you have to be a bit better.

But I'd wager your troubleshooting skills cant be any worse than VIA quality has been over the years. So yes, VIA sucks.

edit- Grab a non-VIA board and tell me if it was VIA or not. LOL
VIA and its supporters want people to think its their fault they dont spend the extra time necessary for most of VIA's crappy chipsets to get working correctly with various memory brands, and the various different configs that Nvidia and even SIS boards seem to handle fine...
so I'd invite you to take the "gamble" and try any competitor's board.

I'd gleefully concede the loss if I'm wrong, but I'm trying to help you out, and I'd bet you'd come back happy as hell with a Nforce3. I've been through the same **** with my VIA boards, and many others have as well.

With that thread title your going to attract alot of VIA zealots (theres not really many dedicated ones around, because they did suck horribly for many years and most got burnt, but the noobs like the price of their newer boards and supposedly they are better).

But yeah, besides ppl defending their own purchases... VIA doesnt really have any fanboys (for a reason, the one thats within your title).

 

[Skoop]

Nsist on Nvidia!

Spoken like a true fanboy.

Check out the the threads for help on the A8V, the AV8, and the Neo2. And any of the others. Nearly all of the issues are user error, unfamiliarity, and failure to read the manual. Every board and chipset has quirks and requires particular tweaks. They are all variations on the similar themes. To suggest that one sucks and another doesn't is just juvenile.

Phantronius, as for your memory, 3448 is pretty relaxed stuff in terms of timings. I recommend hard setting the timings in BIOS rather than using the "Auto" settings. Also, give it a bit more voltage. Go to 2.7. And run Memtest. What worked on an Intel part may not be suitable with an A64 which has the memory controller on die. It's a different ball game.

Your problem description totally suggests a memory issue, not a controller one. You really should consider a higher quality (in terms of timing) RAM. Once you match a suitable RAM to this motherboard, you'll have no complaints.

FYI: A8V, 1GB Corsair 2555, A64 3800+. Running just fine at tightest timings on SATA drives.

 

[housecat]

Originally posted by: Skoop
Nsist on Nvidia!

Spoken like a true fanboy.

And proud btw.. Nvidia is the singlemost reliable company I've came in contact with in my 20 years of dinking with computers. Great video cards (even the Edge3D wasnt bad ), great chipsets.. and generally consistent (ya the FX series overall sucked). and most importantly, great support with even very old products.

So I see no reason not to proudly promote their products when people need something stable/reliable.
/shrug

Check out the the threads for help on the A8V, the AV8, and the Neo2. And any of the others. Nearly all of the issues are user error, unfamiliarity, and failure to read the manual. Every board and chipset has quirks and requires particular tweaks. They are all variations on the similar themes. To suggest that one sucks and another doesn't is just juvenile.

FYI: A8V, 1GB Corsair 2555, A64 3800+. Running just fine at tightest timings on SATA drives.

Thats a nice system indeed. Wish i could get my wife to let me have a 3800+.. i think i'm going with the 3000+.

i have plenty of experience with VIA, tho i am sure they've gotten much better over the years.. i still have relatives with machines i built with VIA chipsets and they work fine... jsut sometimes pickier on memory ect.

thats kind of undeniable as you even said in yoru own post.

 

[bob661]

I guess you never used the NForce1 boards, huh? Tell me about reliability again for that chipset. Dude, user error accounts for the majority of problems computer related. Just because you can't figure out what causes a problem doesn't mean you're not at fault. People are fallible and will always remain so. I've used VIA and NVidia and both are fallible. NVidia has more quirks and issues becaue they are new to the chipset game. As time goes by they will become better and IMHO will outdo VIA. I think their engineering team is more knowledgeable. At work, we have 28 A64 machines (soon to be 38) with VIA chipsets running CAD applications and they're stable as hell without having to do memory tweaks and such. The bios is at default settings with the exception of parallel and serial port settings and disabling the Promise controller.

 

[syconub]

Originally posted by: Phantronius
Last night was probably one of the most fustrating PC builds ever. I began to build my new Athlon 64 setup wtih the following parts

AMD Winchester 3200+
Asus A8V Version 2 1008 BIOS
Corsair 1 gig XMS 3700 3-4-4-8 standard timings
eVGA 6800GT
Audigy 2
2x SeaGate 160gig SATA drives
Antec NeoPower

After the usuall ripping out old equipment and setting up the new stuff I booted the machine. All seemed good. I changed some stuff in the BIOS turning off uneccassary junk. Rebooted and threw in the XP Pro SP1 disc.

First problem I ran into is that I apparantly didn't have the correct VIA drivers on my floppy. So I took the ASUS CDROM and ran the Makedisk utility and tried again. This time it took and started the Win XP install.

Ok, after full format and intially loading, reboot and off I went into the XP installing screen. All of a sudden, reboot. Mkay....trying again.

Back into loading screen and then a blue screen. WTF. Try again and blue screen repeteadly. Take out old SATA cables and install new ones and wipe drive and try again. Crashes during installing of intial files. WTF????

Rewipe drive and try AGAIN. NOw it gets through the intial Windows installing and I get to my CD Code typing and then starts loading the drivers. And then outa NOWWHERE the machine starts bitching about drivers not being Windows certified? WTF???? I have NEVER seen XP do this during intial install.

Pissed off, I ripped out the corsair ram and threw in a single stick of Corsair value RAM 256 meg. Rewiped drives and tried again. This time the install went without a hitch and I finally had windows. I started doing Windows updates and all my drivers. I popped out the Corsair Value RAM and put the corsair XMS back in and increased the VDIMM to 2.8v.

Machine booted and I continued loading stuff until during a reboot, spontanous crash. ARRRRRRGHHH!!! Reboot again and went into windows. Started Audigy 2 install but 95% through the install it crashed saying " Catostrophic error blah blah blah" Rebooted and the sound worked. Then during Windows updates, farking BSOD!!!!!!!

Furious and nearly out of energy, I ripped out the SATA drivers and threw in my orginal Western Digital IDE drives and started all over. This time not a single hiccup during windows install and I ran out of energy to start doing drivers and what not again.

So what the hell am I dealing with here? Is VIA's SATA controllers this shitty, or have I done something wrong during install? My Corsair RAM ran perfectly fine in my Intel setup so unless this mobo is being REALLY bitch about the RAM, im having a hunch its VIA's controller. ANyone have ANY suggestions on what else to check or change in the BIOS or something I missed to figure out why the hell this thing is throwing such a temper tantrum? Thanks for any incite.

its not you. I know, i almost ripped off my scalp trying to get it to work.

 

[bob661]

Another thing. Microsoft Windows. Windows is a quirky beast all by itself. Some problems that I've read that people have could be Windows related. People don't use the correct drivers for the chipset sometimes. Or they don't install the drivers at all. Also, the ACPI HAL causes a lot of instabilities because it forces your hardware to run on a single or a few IRQ's. The ACPI HAL will also randomly shuffle your IRQ's around to different hardware which your hardware may not like. Some hardware (including onboard motherboard components) isn't designed for IRQ sharing and will cause instabilities. I usually run the Standard PC HAL which does not try to force the hardware to share one IRQ or change IRQ's. You can actually change your HAL's during the Windows install (recommended) or afterwards.

HAL info.

 

[bob661]

its not you. I know, i almost ripped off my scalp trying to get it to work.

Given what's listed, it could STILL be user error.

 

[housecat]

Originally posted by: bob661
I guess you never used the NForce1 boards, huh? Tell me about reliability again for that chipset. Dude, user error accounts for the majority of problems computer related. Just because you can't figure out what causes a problem doesn't mean you're not at fault. People are fallible and will always remain so. I've used VIA and NVidia and both are fallible. NVidia has more quirks and issues becaue they are new to the chipset game. As time goes by they will become better and IMHO will outdo VIA. I think their engineering team is more knowledgeable. At work, we have 28 A64 machines (soon to be 38) with VIA chipsets running CAD applications and they're stable as hell without having to do memory tweaks and such. The bios is at default settings with the exception of parallel and serial port settings and disabling the Promise controller.

if you would have read my post in its entirety, you'd notice i switched from via to nvidia first through the nforce1.. much better.

i laughed when i read your post about acpi issues. i was forced to turn that off in an effort to get many VIA boards stable.

not so with the nforces. just put it in and go.

you dont see too many posts about nforces with issues like this gentleman is having. they just work right.
theres no question they are better engineered.

use VIA if you want, and great if it works for you.. but for myself (and multitudes on the web throughout the years) and this guy have found out otherwise.

in general, via sucks.

the only reason they werent wiped out from the chipset market is because they had a virtual monopoly on the amd chipset market for years.. now they are generally considered the bargain basement alternative that they were originally anyway.

 

[bob661]

You are right.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Oh please, as far as I know the topic starter has done NOTHING to troubleshoot the problem following the suggestions posted here. Blue screens point to memory compatibility most of the times and what do we have? A chipset discussion.

You can say whatever you want about VIA being crappy and nVidia being better, but this is definately not an example of it, at least until we get some more feedback from the topic starter. I've been let down bu VIA chipsets, and by nVidia chipsets too. I skipped the nF1, my NF7 (nF2) was great but I had to live with crappy IDE drivers until the board "died" after 4 months (BIOS corruption). My first build of an A64 system was with the K8N Neo (nF3) and I had to try 4 different types of memory (all brand memory) from a local shop to find ONE to be capable of running at DDR400 on that board.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything as you all have your personal preferences, but I do have two things to say:

1) if you need help and actually want to be helped, don't try to start a flamewar, specially if you're a newbie. Just create a topic describing the problems you had and what you did to fix it;

2) if you see someone who needs help, try to actually help them instead of turning a thread into a chipset discussion.

 

[JRez]

Originally posted by: Phantronius
Last night was probably one of the most fustrating PC builds ever. I began to build my new Athlon 64 setup wtih the following parts

AMD Winchester 3200+
Asus A8V Version 2 1008 BIOS
Corsair 1 gig XMS 3700 3-4-4-8 standard timings
eVGA 6800GT
Audigy 2
2x SeaGate 160gig SATA drives
Antec NeoPower

After the usuall ripping out old equipment and setting up the new stuff I booted the machine. All seemed good. I changed some stuff in the BIOS turning off uneccassary junk. Rebooted and threw in the XP Pro SP1 disc.

First problem I ran into is that I apparantly didn't have the correct VIA drivers on my floppy. So I took the ASUS CDROM and ran the Makedisk utility and tried again. This time it took and started the Win XP install.

Ok, after full format and intially loading, reboot and off I went into the XP installing screen. All of a sudden, reboot. Mkay....trying again.

Back into loading screen and then a blue screen. WTF. Try again and blue screen repeteadly. Take out old SATA cables and install new ones and wipe drive and try again. Crashes during installing of intial files. WTF????

Rewipe drive and try AGAIN. NOw it gets through the intial Windows installing and I get to my CD Code typing and then starts loading the drivers. And then outa NOWWHERE the machine starts bitching about drivers not being Windows certified? WTF???? I have NEVER seen XP do this during intial install.

Pissed off, I ripped out the corsair ram and threw in a single stick of Corsair value RAM 256 meg. Rewiped drives and tried again. This time the install went without a hitch and I finally had windows. I started doing Windows updates and all my drivers. I popped out the Corsair Value RAM and put the corsair XMS back in and increased the VDIMM to 2.8v.

Machine booted and I continued loading stuff until during a reboot, spontanous crash. ARRRRRRGHHH!!! Reboot again and went into windows. Started Audigy 2 install but 95% through the install it crashed saying " Catostrophic error blah blah blah" Rebooted and the sound worked. Then during Windows updates, farking BSOD!!!!!!!

Furious and nearly out of energy, I ripped out the SATA drivers and threw in my orginal Western Digital IDE drives and started all over. This time not a single hiccup during windows install and I ran out of energy to start doing drivers and what not again.

So what the hell am I dealing with here? Is VIA's SATA controllers this shitty, or have I done something wrong during install? My Corsair RAM ran perfectly fine in my Intel setup so unless this mobo is being REALLY bitch about the RAM, im having a hunch its VIA's controller. ANyone have ANY suggestions on what else to check or change in the BIOS or something I missed to figure out why the hell this thing is throwing such a temper tantrum? Thanks for any incite.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who experienced this 'quirk'. I've been building systems for a few years, but I've never seen a board that's been so damn finicky (sp?) about memory. I tried two known working power supplies, and a minimalist config. It ended up being the RAM - Geil PC3200 Value Ram that was rock-stable in two different prior Intel systems. Check ASUS' site on the A8V for the list of qualified memory. They've got some Corsair listed. The XMS 3700 isn't on there, but your ValueRam is. I've used the XMS PRO 4000 on a PC I built with a 3500+ and the Abit AV8. If Abit wasn't in the financial situation it's in now, I probably would have used that board again. Other memories may work just fine, but it seems that both you and I have stumbled across ones that are problematic.