*** Official ASUS A7N8X/Deluxe (nForce2) Thread ***

[Lawton]

Help!!!

 

[Lawton]

OK... I have a new BIOS chip on the way. Anything I need to know about replacing a BIOS chip (pitfalls to avoid, etc.).

Thanks!

 

[Rcoplien]

Hello I have the A7N8X deluxe motherboard I recently purchased new with soundstorm Nforce 5.1 digital sound mobo vers 2.0. My sound was running fine until last week i reinstalled windows 98se because of a display adapter problem. The problem I am having now is the sound on my my computer crackles and skips when the computer starts up with the windows music, when I listen to audio from any website and when I watch mpeg short movie clips the sound is distorted and the movie moves at twice the speed as it should. I have even noticed a freezing of one of my online games when the game is started. I never had this problem before? It even seems to skip as well. Would you know what the problem is. I am really wanting to use the onboard sound and don't want to revert back to a sound card again.
Here are my current computer stats:

Windows 98SE
Athlon 2200 XP 1.8ghz 266fsb
Gigabyte ATI 9700 pro vid card 128mb ddr
Asus A7N8X Deluxe board with Sstorm 5.1 sound
512 mb DDR pc2100 ram
30 Gig Maxtor 7200 rpm HD

thanks Rick

 

[guigui27]

was ur os 98SE before reinstalling
Because I have some friends who did have issues with sound under 98 with some codecs installed
an upgrade to 2k solved all their problems

 

[Rcoplien]

yes I had Win 98 Se before. I went into dxdiag and changed the hardware acceleration to basic and all seems well now. Kinda stinks I can't have it at full acceleration.

 

[XNice]

This board works fine, but my temps are a bit high. Using a SLK-700 w/Thermaltake 80mm 37cfm fan w/ Arctic Silver III I get 43 degrees idle at stock speeds. When I boot my xp2500 in windows @ 3200 speeds, My temp's are around 60 degrees celsius.

Am I missing something or is Asus PC probe just off with the temparatures?

[Update]: FIxed it, now running 2.16ghz @ 47C idle[/Update]

 

[Mercurien]

Originally posted by: Conor026
Does anyone know if the Zalman flower CNPS6000-Cu hit off the Northbridge heatsink or PSU
when attached to the ASUS A7N8X

The Zalman 6000 works fine with this board.

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: pelikan
My A7N8X-Deluxe had the audio crackling issue. I tried about 10 different fixes. Nothing worked, except buying another mb.

i have that problem when I do gaming..
but seems to play fine with normal audio CD or MP3 ...
or any other application like MPEG and movies....

its really weird..
at first I thought it was the new platform causing the problem ( ver. 2.45)
but after I rolled back to ver 2.03..

the cracking sound still happens off and on...

damn...

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: XRdirtHead
If I only have one stick of Ram does it matter what slot I put it in?

u will be using single channel mode anyways,
won't matter which slot u put that mem

 

[chorner]

hey guys; I just picked up the A7N8X non-delux version 2.0 (with the 400FSB support), and I cannot seem to be able to change the FSB! Its messed ....

I'm running an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core, and in the bios the only options for the frequency are 100,133,166,200 .. I thought you were supposed to be able to change it in 1mhz increments? It says in the manual, and everywhere I've read .. I just flashed to the latest bios as of today and while it works great; I can't tweak the FSB.

Any ideas? Stumped

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: chorner
hey guys; I just picked up the A7N8X non-delux version 2.0 (with the 400FSB support), and I cannot seem to be able to change the FSB! Its messed ....

I'm running an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core, and in the bios the only options for the frequency are 100,133,166,200 .. I thought you were supposed to be able to change it in 1mhz increments? It says in the manual, and everywhere I've read .. I just flashed to the latest bios as of today and while it works great; I can't tweak the FSB.

Any ideas? Stumped

change settings to user defined instead of leaving it as auto...
then u can change in increments of 1 Mhz

 

[chorner]

hahaha ... how odd is that, you have to switch all the settings below to menu before it will allow you to change in 1mhz increments ... guess its to protect newbs lol, too funny. Of all the boards I've ever used, none of them have hid the FSB options.

Oh well .. I found it

 

[SoSolid]

Since I replaced my Gigabyte GA-7VTXE+ with an Asus A7n8X Deluxe rev 1.xx I've been experiencing missing textures in C&C Generals as well in the main menu of the game. But much more worse than the current missing textures problem as stated on EA/Westwood forums. I'm experiencing missing texture already from the beginning in the main menu and not only when the microwave tank appears wether I use the latest patch 1.06 or without. On nFORCEHQ I read that the rev 1.xx boards might cause flaw/bad vga output resulting in drop-out's corruption of the images and other game related problems. Does anyone knows if this is correct and/or tell me if there's already a solution for the problem?

I know my other hardware works fine since the problems only started to occur when I replaced the motherboard. Further more my winxp install is totally up to date with sp1, using the latest ati catalyst drivers and the motherboard features the latest bios update, 1007. So it's also no software problem. It's the board probably in combination with the ATi Radeon 9000-LE

 

[unbiased]

My mobo rests in an Antec Sonata Case.The chassis fan is not connected to the mobo but directly to the power connector.

I initially connected the lead of my power fan to the connector shown in the manual for this purpose.Then BIOS hardware monitoring system used to show power fan speed but asus probe used to show chassis fan speed(same speeds)

I thought probably I had connected to the wrong connector and therefore connected my power fan lead to other connector marked as for chassis fan.

Now bios Hardare monitoring showed neither power nor chassis fan speeds but asus probe showed power fan speed.

Again changed back to the original.But now Bios doesn't show either of the two but asus probe shows chassis fan speed.

I am BAFFLED.What may be the reason? Please help!

 

[SoSolid]

If you connected the three pin's molex cable to the motherboard it should work. If you connected the fan with a four pin's molex cable directly to the Power Suppy you won't get info by bios/asus pc probe because the info isn't being sent anywhere (correct me if I'm wrong).

Something else, (in my opinion) you could better use an other fan monitor application such as MBM. Asus PC Probe makes some systems instable and slow. I experienced that many time already.

 

[XNice]

I use asus pc probe and i find i like it better than mbm. configuration is easier for us asus owners and it uses less resources on my system. I like the sinlge click try icon to bring up the temps and other info in one quick screen.

but as far as your instability issues, exactly what would happen when you used pc probe?

 

[SoSolid]

Originally posted by: XNice
I use asus pc probe and i find i like it better than mbm. configuration is easier for us asus owners and it uses less resources on my system. I like the sinlge click try icon to bring up the temps and other info in one quick screen.

but as far as your instability issues, exactly what would happen when you used pc probe?

Most known issues are that the system becomes slow because of the application. But also an other problem known is that the program interferes with the OS resulting in booting safe mode for the user. I also installed PcProbe when I received my Asus A7N8X Deluxe. After installation I rebooted the system and after that windows became very slow. It took three minutes before I could click the start button and start up explorer which also appeared after almost a minute. Deinstalling the application returned everything to normal.

But I do have to say not everybody does have problems with the application, but if you have it could be becomes of PcProbe. Also I took a look in my taskmanager finding out that MBM doesn't use much resources than MSN Messenger for example. The cpu load is zero and memory useage is around the 3,000. Windows even has services working on the background that take more memory usage.

 

[chemwiz]

I'm trying to run a Promise FastTrak 100 TX2 with mine, but the promise card initializes before the sATA and I'd like to use the serial ATA as my boot drive (running XP). Is there any way to make the sATA initialize first, so it sets that as the C: drive?

 

[AMDBarton2500]

I just hooked up my system with XP2500 Barton and Geil 3200 400mhz 512mg ram. I was little scared about the RAM but everything worked out fine. It even runs at 400mhz which is suprising.

When I first booted it didn't recongize my Barton....changed the FSB to 166 and it recognized it as 1.83Ghz XP2500.

Still have few questions though....I read the Asus manual and it says not to upgrade the bios unless you know it will fix a specifoc problem....is this right. Should I leave it if it runs fine. Does "if it aint broke...don't fix it" apply to the bios...???

Also I noticed a Aggresive setting in the Bios...what does that do?? Should I chage it??

And do you guys have any other settings I should turn off that I wouldn't be using? Like Raid screen for example...I really dont need that to come up on the boot....which other settings should I adjust.

AI found Asus instruction booklet to have rather very low amount of info in it....still cant figure out few things. For example HDD LED...Im not really sure where to plug that in. It doesnt say anthing about that. I guess that the Led for HD activity. Where should I hook that up or what would it be called in ASUS instrucitions....

TIA

 

[pelikan]

I'm glad to hear that geil worked out for you.
Here's some of what I'd do in bios: Turn off spread spectrum. Set cpu to aggressive. Set user define so you can select the exact FSB you want. Disable everything you aren't using (parallel ports, etc.). Raise vdimm to max and work on ram timings. When you do this boot into memtest86 and run test 5 without errors before going into windows so you don't hose it.

 

[SoSolid]

Originally posted by: AMDBarton2500
I just hooked up my system with XP2500 Barton and Geil 3200 400mhz 512mg ram. I was little scared about the RAM but everything worked out fine. It even runs at 400mhz which is suprising.

When I first booted it didn't recongize my Barton....changed the FSB to 166 and it recognized it as 1.83Ghz XP2500.

Still have few questions though....I read the Asus manual and it says not to upgrade the bios unless you know it will fix a specifoc problem....is this right. Should I leave it if it runs fine. Does "if it aint broke...don't fix it" apply to the bios...???

Also I noticed a Aggresive setting in the Bios...what does that do?? Should I chage it??

And do you guys have any other settings I should turn off that I wouldn't be using? Like Raid screen for example...I really dont need that to come up on the boot....which other settings should I adjust.

AI found Asus instruction booklet to have rather very low amount of info in it....still cant figure out few things. For example HDD LED...Im not really sure where to plug that in. It doesnt say anthing about that. I guess that the Led for HD activity. Where should I hook that up or what would it be called in ASUS instrucitions....

TIA

About the LED for HDD activity I have the same problem. I've been in the mood and tried almost every other LED only it works constantly (with no pauses) or it doesn't works at all.
But could you tell me which revision your board is and which bios you have? Do you have a revision 2.x? And is your bios 1007 or below?

 

[AMDBarton2500]

Im not sure which bios I have but Im almost positive its 1001-or 2......its rev2...and I havent tried even hooking HDD LED up yet.

 

[SoSolid]

Too bad for me I own a rev 1.03 which doesn't supports 400mhz fsb but on the other side I can't complain because if it wasn't for the nice supplier I would've given back a refurbishment of my Gigabyte GA-7VTXE+ No upgrade possibilities anymore with the Gigabyte board.

 

[AMDBarton2500]

I just installed the latest Bios 1007. I still cant boot up at 200x11 for some reason. Always comes up with a blue screen....

But 195 or 190 runs fine. It does read it as XP3200 though at 2.08GHZ for 190 and 2.15GHZ for 195.

I checked the temps in the bios (hardware monitor) and its running at CPU low 30s and MB at mid 20s...How would I check the temp in XP though or while running apps???

ANother question is....should I set my video memory in the bios to 128mb??? Its set to 64mb.....Im running ATI 9600 pro.

Also I noticed at the boot up screen it says Memory Frequancy at 195mhz...what does that mean??? I have Geil 512mb PC3200 400mhz....

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: AMDBarton2500
I just installed the latest Bios 1007. I still cant boot up at 200x11 for some reason. Always comes up with a blue screen....

But 195 or 190 runs fine. It does read it as XP3200 though at 2.08GHZ for 190 and 2.15GHZ for 195.

I checked the temps in the bios (hardware monitor) and its running at CPU low 30s and MB at mid 20s...How would I check the temp in XP though or while running apps???

ANother question is....should I set my video memory in the bios to 128mb??? Its set to 64mb.....Im running ATI 9600 pro.

Also I noticed at the boot up screen it says Memory Frequancy at 195mhz...what does that mean??? I have Geil 512mb PC3200 400mhz....

i want u want to try Asus probe, but they may or may not be really accurate at times..
but at least u got a temp check to refer on..

you are talking about graphics aperture size?
well with 512 MB of system memory,
I believe u can afford to have 128MB aperture size.. which means, allowing your Graphics card to use that amount of memory from your system if it needs to.

Memory Frequency at 195Mhz,
that means double pumped... your mem is running at 390Mhz DDR
you probably set your mem to run in Sync(100%).. for optimum performance,
that way, your memory speed will follow your CPU FSB.

your geil ram can run at 400 = 200 X 2. so u need to set to FSB 200Mhz in order to fully make use of your PC3200 Ram.

hope that answers your questions