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

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: annimossity99
I got my little brother a new pc last night to build. Specs are

Asus A7N8X-VM Motherboard
athlon 2600 XP
512 Meg stick of DDR ram
40 gig WD hard drive
SBlaster audigy2
Picking up a 9800 Pro today or tommorow depending if i can get this thing going. heres the problem i hooked everything up hard drive, cd rom, floppy and sound card. I turn it on everythings fine. So i get my XP installation CD and fire it up. It converts it to NFTS then i proceed to copy installation files. Well at about 15% i get this error http://www.hostedimage.com/usr/687/winxp1.jpg

Now i press enter and it works, then another one comes up but theyre all different files. They eventually all do it and i have to cancel installation or it just freezes. Other times i get these errors http://www.hostedimage.com/usr/687/winxp2.jpg Now i dunno what to go by from that. Memory management? i cant find anything in my BIOS to change that would help it. I also got this error one time http://www.hostedimage.com/usr/687/winxp3.jpg

After screwing with this till 2 am i decided to just try n put good ol Win98 on it. Well after reformatting takin NFTS off i put hte boot disk and 98CD in and start installation. As soon as it starts i get the 2 same errors right after eachother every time The 1st one is http://www.hostedimage.com/usr/687/win981.jpg 2nd one is http://www.hostedimage.com/usr/687/win982.jpg I cant think of anymore stuff to try. I got the newest bios for my mobo and still does the same thing. Can anyone help me or give me some more things to try? This is my brothers Bday/Xmas present and hes dyin to get online so we can both play diablo2 and CS together lol. Besides i wanna see what this rig can do. Ive read the sticky and tried as much as i could also, if anyone can help me my brother and i would really appreciate it thanks.

Try taking out one stick of ram at a time and see if that helps. If you can get it working with one stick in then it's a stick of ram, if it still happens with one stick in and one stick out and once again with the other in other out I'd try returning the motherboard.

 

[casey1968]

My barton 2500+ with Asus A7n8x VM isnt overclockable from the bios but i thought all nforce 2 mobos where supposed to be if this is true why isnt mine and how do i get it that way

 

[BigEdMuustaffa]

Originally posted by: casey1968
My barton 2500+ with Asus A7n8x VM isnt overclockable from the bios but i thought all nforce 2 mobos where supposed to be if this is true why isnt mine and how do i get it that way

Try just setting the fsb to 200.

 

[casey1968]

I have never oced before how do i do this sorry

 

[BigEdMuustaffa]

In your BIOS, oh and by the way, turn on your private messages...

 

[DarreninIllinois]

Can I connect the spdif wire from my dvd player to the a7n8x board? The spdif connection from the dvd is 2 wire and the spdif connection on the motherboard is 6 pin. The manuel lists spdif in, +5v, spdif out and 2 gnd pins. Someone suggested that I try the spdif in and gnd connection, but it didn't work. Any suggestions? Thanks...

 

[casey1968]

my bios on my -VM model doesnt have any setting for multipliers ect

 

[Wigwam]

Originally posted by: Jim123
A Poll, What nForce Drivers are you using

-Original 1.16 from Asus

or

-The New 3.13 from NIVIDA

And what has been your experiences with them

the original ones from ASUS. there always seemed to be too many "warnings" about 1 thing or another using the NVIDIA ones so i didnt bother. dont know what the advantages of updating are so i too would be very interested to know.
why not ask it as a new thread rather than buried in this huge one? sorry if you already have i just saw it here

 

[adams828]

using nvidia all-in-one drivers myself. can't complain, everything is stable (although never used the asus ones, so i can't compare)

 

[Viperoni]

What are the differences between the A7N8X-X and regular A7N8X?
As far as I can tell, the X doesn't have onboard LAN or dual channel support.
Does the X still overclock as well as the regular version, it does state it supports 400mhz CPU's anyhow.
I would assume the X also supports Barton's.

Thanks

 

[adams828]

just got a a7n8x-x about a week ago, been running my 2500+ at 200 fsb continuous for the past 2 days, including about 7 straight hours of prime95 as well.. so i'd say it OCs just as well

 

[Dedpuhl]

SATA is driving me NUTS!

Here is my system:

A7N8X rev2 w/ 1007 BIOS
Athlon XP 3000+ (400Mhz)
1028 mb PC3200 DDR RAM - Corsair XMS LL
36 GB Western Digital Raptor (SATA)
200 GB Western Digital (IDE)
Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB
Sony DRU-120A
Lite-on 48/16/48
Windows XP Pro

Here is my problem:

I started having some windows problems and decided that it was time to reinstall windows. When I set the system up, I thought that I unplugged the IDE drive (to avoid conflicts) and installed Windows XP on my SATA drive.

When I do that now and plug in the drive, I get a BSOD (unmountable boot volume or something like that). I unplugged the IDE drive (after shutdown) and restarted. The Windows install is now corrupted and I have to format and reinstall again. This time I plug in my IDE drive.

The 200 gb drive is partitioned. When I install windows on the SATA drive, It recognizes it as the D drive and not C. This is also annoying as hell. I found a page how to edit the registry and successfully messed up the install again.

My question is: What will be the most effective way of doing this?

Should I leave the IDE drive unplugged, install windows, d/l sp1, install all other drivers, then plug in IDE?

Should I change the channel the IDE drive is on (currently master on secondary)? My cd and dvd rom drives are on the primary ide channel.

 

[Jim123]

Driver information
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This fixed the problem I was having with Audio drivers. I got it at nForcersHQ.com. Sorry about the links, not sure how to make them work here, these posts are on the third page under nForce Drivers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Re: Windows update killed my sound control panel....please h

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jer wrote:
Hello all, I just ran windows update, restarted after it installed new audio drivers, and now every time I try to launch the audio control panel it causes an error and closes itself. I used to have sound driver version 6.14.0348.0. Now I have 6.14.362.6 after update. What should I do to fix this???? I created a restore point before installing all the updates, should I fall back to this or is there an easier fix?? I didn't expect a windows update to screw up the control panel.

Any suggestions very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Jer.


Simple to fix go here and download this driver and install it over the top of the driver you have installed

To download the file the use this
user name: drivers
password: all

3.62 audio driver

_________________
Abit NF7-S Ver 2.0 Win XP pro Sp1 Athlon XP 2500+ Barton @ 11.0 x 200 MHz FSB 3200+ Corsiar PC2700 DDR XMS Series BIOS 1.9 RADEON 9100 128 MB SAMSUNG 120 GB ATA/133 LG CDRW/DVD 32x SONY 48x CD-ROM SLK-800A Case 17°C CPU 29°C load CPU 5625 RPM Case 3214 RPM




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now this next post, I have yet to work up the nerve to do yet, but perhaps it can help someone here. I also got this at nForcersHQ.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





New Nemesis nForce 3.28 Remix out

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Nemesis nForce 3.28 Remix with no display drivers for Windows Xp and 2000 Eniglish only Looking for the ultimate combination in audio and video performance and quality? This driver was created with that in mind. It uses the 3.66.7 sound drivers off Windows Update. that has great sounding MP3s and gaming performance that you like to have.This driver has no display drivers for people using Ati cards and Dial-up users. Try this nForce remix drivers which have been created to make you finally feel good about your NVIDIA nForce hardware! Eniglish only Version No display drivers Enjoy!

Audio driver 3.66.7 (WHQL) + w/EAX support
Audio utilities 3.75
Ethernet driver 3.39 (WHQL) + TOT.nvu
GART driver 3.43 (WHQL)
MemCtl driver 3.38 (WHQL) + TOT.nvu
SMBus driver 3.43
IDE In-the-box 3.44 and 2.70


Download my remix driver

Here is the new remix for Windows 2000/XP to download it the username and password are

user name drivers
password all

Here is the new remix for Windows 2000/XP

1. Fixed IDE SW driver that corrupts some hard drives with the 3.44 driver when it asked to install the SW IDE driver say Yes! to install. To install the 2.70 in the box say NO



If you have trouble with the Ide 3.44 driver you can manually update it without reinstalling here is how. I you have no trouble with the 3.44 then leave it as it is you will get better benchmarks with this driver.

Roll back the Ide if you want the driver you had before or in the device manager right click on the ide controller then click update driver then point it to this location C:\NVIDIA\nForce3.14 * Remix\IDE\WinXP\ITB . High light the in the box INF file driver click open then click ok then reboot should be fine after
that.

If you have ever had issues with any of the SW ide driver then alway say no!

Were the * is substitute A B or C depending what version you have installed



2.Fixed NIC driver spikes CPU when using 3.63 driver. By using the 2.45 NIC driver

3.Fixed MP3 sounds muffled with the 3.66 driver by using the 3.62 driver from MS update with the Audio utilities control panel from 3.66

4 Fixed EAX support with the 3.62 audio drvers thanks to a partnership with blooduk


5. Soon Version C with added gart and smbus for better gaming

If you want great sound this is the driver for you enjoy


Disable your Anti virus software before installing this driver. The file is a self extracting compressed Winrar archive. It will begin the installation automatically upon extraction into C:\NVIDIA folder Enjoy.


This has been tested on WIndow XP PRO with SP1 the best way to install this driver is an on the top install over 2.45.

If you encounter a "would you like to Overwrite existing" message while installing this driver select the "yes" option to proceed.


For Windows XP and 2k

thanks to the great people at http://www.nforcershq.com/forum for all the input

Enjoy



Thank you to all of them for being the hosts
I any body else would like to host the file please post mirrors as I don't want to over whelm these guys servers thanks[/quote]

_________________
Abit NF7-S Ver 2.0 Win XP pro Sp1 Athlon XP 2500+ Barton @ 11.0 x 200 MHz FSB 3200+ Corsiar PC2700 DDR XMS Series BIOS 1.9 RADEON 9100 128 MB SAMSUNG 120 GB ATA/133 LG CDRW/DVD 32x SONY 48x CD-ROM SLK-800A Case 17°C CPU 29°C load CPU 5625 RPM Case 3214 RPM

Last edited by Morpheus1 on Sun Dec 14, 2003 7:19 am; edited 83 times in total



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Last it looks like people are having no problems with the NIVIDA 3.13 drivers if installed during a clean install of Window. Hope this helps anyone in need of a driver problems solution.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Richard98]

I have an A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with an Athlon XP 2100+ processor. Currently, I'm using 2 sticks of 2100 memory (it was either very cheap or free after rebates). Would I see any noticeable performance increase by upgrading the memory? I was thinking about the Kingston 512MB 400MHz DDR PC3200 DIMM CL2.5, $82 after rebates:
http://www.shop.kingston.com/12kvr/default.asp?bannersource=anand468

If I went for the 512MB stick, I'd only buy 1 stick and would not use dual channel memory. Would this kill the performance?

Any recommendations on another reasonably priced alternative for faster memory, or is an upgrade unnecessary?

 

[BG4533]

Originally posted by: Richard98
I have an A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with an Athlon XP 2100+ processor. Currently, I'm using 2 sticks of 2100 memory (it was either very cheap or free after rebates). Would I see any noticeable performance increase by upgrading the memory? I was thinking about the Kingston 512MB 400MHz DDR PC3200 DIMM CL2.5, $82 after rebates:
http://www.shop.kingston.com/12kvr/default.asp?bannersource=anand468

If I went for the 512MB stick, I'd only buy 1 stick and would not use dual channel memory. Would this kill the performance?

Any recommendations on another reasonably priced alternative for faster memory, or is an upgrade unnecessary?

Is your 2100 a TBred A, B, or Palomino? If it is a B and you are willing to overclock then by the memory. The processor should be able to run at a 200FSB. If it is an A you might be able to get a 166FSB. If you dont want to OC the memory wont help. Running the memory faster than the FSB gives little to no performance increase. Dual channel on the Athlons only helps a very small amount. Faster memory with a faster FSB would outweigh that by a lot.

 

[Viperoni]

Got my chip OC'ed

Tbred A 1700 1.46ghz, running at 200x9.5 = 1900mhz. Memory @ 133mhz. Seems pretty stable too

 

[Richard98]

Is your 2100 a TBred A, B, or Palomino? If it is a B and you are willing to overclock then by the memory. The processor should be able to run at a 200FSB. If it is an A you might be able to get a 166FSB. If you dont want to OC the memory wont help. Running the memory faster than the FSB gives little to no performance increase. Dual channel on the Athlons only helps a very small amount. Faster memory with a faster FSB would outweigh that by a lot.

I found from wcpuid that it's a Tbred (Model 8), but how would I determine whether it's an A or B. I found this:
T-Bred A = Model 8, CPUID 680
T-Bred B = Model 8, CPUID 681
Is there a shareware program which would read the CPUID? Thanks for the help.

EDIT
I figured out that it's a Tbred A. Would the Kingston 400MHz DDR PC3200 DIMM CL2.5 be overkill?

 

[unbiased]

Originally posted by: casey1968
my bios on my -VM model doesnt have any setting for multipliers ect

yes casey, A7N8X-VM BIOS has no settings for overclocking and cannot be changed to overclockable.
If you like to overclock change your board.

 

[casey1968]

DANG I HAD always been told ALL nforce 2 boards where ocable why is this one different or is there perhaps a change of bios to help me or something

 

[BG4533]

Originally posted by: Richard98

Is your 2100 a TBred A, B, or Palomino? If it is a B and you are willing to overclock then by the memory. The processor should be able to run at a 200FSB. If it is an A you might be able to get a 166FSB. If you dont want to OC the memory wont help. Running the memory faster than the FSB gives little to no performance increase. Dual channel on the Athlons only helps a very small amount. Faster memory with a faster FSB would outweigh that by a lot.

I found from wcpuid that it's a Tbred (Model 8), but how would I determine whether it's an A or B. I found this:
T-Bred A = Model 8, CPUID 680
T-Bred B = Model 8, CPUID 681
Is there a shareware program which would read the CPUID? Thanks for the help.

EDIT
I figured out that it's a Tbred A. Would the Kingston 400MHz DDR PC3200 DIMM CL2.5 be overkill?

I highly doubt it could do 200FSB, but 166 is a possibility. The price difference between PC2700 and 3200 is so small it is often stupid not to get 3200. Why dont you first try to see if you can increase the multiplier of your processor and decide if it is worth overclocking. If it is, get new RAM and increase the FSB. On the NF2 it doesnt matter if you dont hit exactly 166 since the AGP and PCI bus is locked anyway.

 

[batmanuel]

After trying them both ways, I have to agree that the 3.13 drivers work a lot better if you do a clean install. The IDE driver works great is you aren't updating, and of course will often kill your XP box is you do update them from the old drivers. Thank the gods for Go Back.

I'd still go for the new Forceware over the original drivers. After having my A7N8X for almost a year, I have to say there are a LOT of weird little gremlins that the driver and BIOS updates have fixed. For one thing, the audio is a bit better.

One odd thing I noticed with my board is that my system used to be a bit flaky running a AXP2000+ Palimino with my PC2700 RAM underclocked to PC2100 to keep the FSB synchronous, but now that I've upgraded to a 2500+ Barton and am letting my RAM run at 333 MHz, my system is stable as a rock now. Strange. I know the processor wasn't bad, because I slapped it into a Shuttle SK41G that I gave to my wife's grandmother and that little box ran solid with some free after rebate PC2100 RAM. I just don't now what was wrong all that time.

 

[unbiased]

if you like to overclock, stay away from boards having a VM after their name.These are usually 'Value Models' having onboard graphics of various denominations, aimed at casual or corporate users who do not, as a rule , go foe overclocking.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

I just dled the 3.13 nforce drivers and i kept hearing that they'll kill my machine if its not a fresh install. I was wondering would've using driver cleaner be sufficient enough cause i dont really want to do a fresh install. I was also wondering if this sovles the no agp cat/omega 3.10 problem with my 9600.

 

[madmaxr6]

nice read bump

 

[arsbanned]

Bump? For a stickied thread? Oooook then.