*** Official ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4) Thread ***

[byMaX]

guys are they giving up on us? there are no new bios releases for almost 2 weeks now...

 

[TMI]

why 4 gb?

 

[MrVeedo]

Originally posted by: byMaX
guys are they giving up on us? there are no new bios releases for almost 2 weeks now...

they better not give up this quick, theres bound to be a lot of people going the dfi direction...and i cant say i havent thought about it, but we might be in the same boat with that board too.

 

[d3fc0n5]

hey guys ive been ocing with this board for a few days now with the 1003 offical bios. ive been trying to run somthing like 2.4-2.5 i can get there but when i try to bring my ram up to 200Mhz i crash. has anyone else had this prob

 

[bdoubledee]

Hey Pandemik

Try unplugging from the wall and reseting the CMOS then replug and reset CMOS again. Also try 1 stick of RAM in B1. Let me know if this works.

 

[JMag]

Originally posted by: mofrack

Originally posted by: Tripp17
Any new good news for the A8N-SLi deluxe, i havent posted for awhile and wanted to know if there is any new bios that makes for better than 245/50 fsb?? Thats what im stuck at and most people are too......any news???

Not that I've seen. I'm running the latest beta bios (1004.001) and I seem to be topping out at 250x9, with 2-3-3-6 1T timings on my RAM.

This bios also makes my Maxtor NON-NCQ drive disappear for some reason. Still not reverting to a previous bios, though. Screw it, I'll just grab it's twin outta my PowerMac G5 and make a RAID 1 array out of em on the Sil3114 controller till Asus gets off their ass and releases a less-janky bios that can improve/fix these 2 remaining niggles.

According to your sig you are running mem at 204... Now you are saying you can run it at 250mhz 1t... Prove IT!

... or are you using a DDR333 divider?

 

[Morpheous]

Hi everyone, I?m glad I found this forum for the Asus A8N-SLI I think the new BIOS really helped!!!

I know the frustration many of us are experiencing with this MOB, specially after 1-2 weeks of getting no where and 2 or 3 thousand dlls later ughh, so I wanted to share some of my experiences with this MOB too.
At the beginning I was not even able to post or boot to the BIOS I had no video at all. All fans and internal components were powered on, but no video either thru DVI or VGA. I removed all accessories/cards and left only the basics (VC and memory) but no go. After a few days I read somewhere that every time you remove or change something internally you need to clear the CMOS (some how the MOB gets locked) so I did that and BAM !!! I finally got some BIOS video. The main offenders though were an old CD drive and the PSU. I removed the CD player but still I was getting PC hangs or no boots. I had an Enermax 550 watts power supply ATX EG-651P-VE (20 pin with 24 pin adapter ATX V. 1.3) it should have done the job ok but apparently it didn?t. I replaced it with an Enermax Coolergiant EGP 480AX, 480-watts ATX V.2.0 and so far no power problems any more. I think due to the fact it is designed as an ATX 12V v2.0 MOB, featuring a 24-pin power connector and dual 12-volt rails coming from the power supply it is better to stick to that to avoid the guessing.
After no more hardware/power problems, one of the first things I did was to upgrade the BIOS to the latest non-beta release, which is 1003. Then I did a fresh install of XP Pro on my SATA RAID 0 drives and make sure to have XP SP2 installed. After all that, install the latest NVIDIA chipset drivers and then NVIDIA Force Ware drivers (get them directly from ASUS downloads) in this same sequence install them.
Once all device drivers have been installed, proceed to install device drivers for any other components.
One week so far and working like a champ (about 10 hrs every day)!!! It?s fast ? fast - fast I?m glad I didn?t give up too soon.

My Specs:
A8N-SLI DLX.
Antec aluminum DLX case
AMD 64 3800+ with stock AMD heat sink and fan.
Mem - PC3200 DDR400 Mhz CMX Corsair (4 sticks 1 Gig each).
Enermax Coolergiant EGP 480AX, 480-watts ATX V.2.0 (24 Pin)
1 NVidia GeForce 6800 GT SLi type VC (I?m going 2 VC next week !)
2 SATA WD Raptor HD 74 Gig
SB Platinum Audigy ZI 2
Sony dual layer DVD burner combo.
ATI TV/tuner recording card
DVI Apple cinemadisplay

 

[Shaga]

I got everything working on from the beginning(1½ months ago). I even put just cool'n'quiet + AI N.O.S enabled(%8), I had 227mhzx10.5 before changing. Now getting 0.5fps less with doom3 and getting 60c for cpu under torture, 38c when idling. Smooth action Not even a single problems. Best motherboard I've ever used. This combination is very fast for gaming+windows. No complains. And all with stock coolings+closed case(nexus breeze silent technology). I'm thinking on buying zalman cpu+gpu coolers for even higher performance anyway

 

[kki000]

Thnx for everyone for all the great info here, im currently sitting on a a8n, waiting for this wknd till i have time for the build.

Strange question, but does anyone have buyers remorse on seeing all the reviews for the dfi board?

 

[MrVeedo]

Originally posted by: kki000
Thnx for everyone for all the great info here, im currently sitting on a a8n, waiting for this wknd till i have time for the build.

Strange question, but does anyone have buyers remorse on seeing all the reviews for the dfi board?

a little. i think a lot of people are thinking of switching to the dfi. i havent had the problems that most people are having with the asus, but from what i have read, the dfi will do high htt speeds at 1t. currentyly the a8n is maxing out at around 250 1t. this irks alot of us overclockers. but the dfi board is in its early stages too, so who knows what kind of troubles that board will bring. i am thinking of picking up a dfi nf4 board, but i keep thinking back to my first dfi board, the nf2 ultra infinity....

 

[coyrls]

I thought I had a similar problem with all USB ports being 1.1, as I had no USB root hub shown as 2.0 in Device Manger. I would have expected to see a 2.0 USB root hub under the ?Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller? and a standard USB root hub under the ?Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller?. In fact under both I have a hub called ?USB root HUB?. BUT sure enough, when I plug in USB 1.1 devices, they go under the standard controller and when I plug in USB 2.0 devices they go in under the enhanced controller. So maybe it?s all OK. It?s just that the Windows distribution that includes Service Pack 2 doesn?t use different labels for 2.0 and 1.1 Hubs. The report below from Sandra confirms that one controller is version 1 and the other is version 2 with the higher supported speed. But does anybody know how I can confirm that the Windows drivers for the root hub will support High speed operation, as there?s still a nagging doubt in my mind that is should say ?2.0 USB root Hub? in device manager (it does on my other XP sp2 machine, but that?s with an nforce 2 mother board and a version of XP that has had the service packs applied manually).


USB Controller 1
Model : ASUSTeK Computer Inc ??? (005A)
Version : 1.00
Interface : OHCI
Channels : 10
Supported Speed(s) : Low (1.5Mbps) Full (12Mbps)
Legacy Emulation Enabled : No

USB Controller 2
Model : ASUSTeK Computer Inc ??? (005B)
Version : 2.00
Specification : 1.00
Interface : EHCI
Channels : 10
Companion Controllers : 1
Supported Speed(s) : Low (1.5Mbps) Full (12Mbps) High (480Mbps)
Addressing Support : 32-bit
Legacy Emulation Enabled : No

 

[Tripp17]

Well everone, ive come to say good-bye.....ive been going to this thread for awhile now and have had ups and downs with my board, mostly ups i will say. I have had the A8N-SLI for about 3 months and have gotten my fsb to 245 tops, with a 1:1 ratio on the mem at 1T.....but, im an overclocker at heart and you just cant keep a good overclocker down! Dont consider me a traider as i was one of the first to come along and grabe one. I wish everyone nothing but the best of luck and i hope those "magical" bios that fixes all the problems finnally comes out. I do. I have gone to the DFI Ultra-D Nforce 4 boards and it should be here tomorrow. I didnt want to do this, but look at my sig.....i didnt buy the best parts you could buy to get a mediocre overclock, just not happening. Im gonna go for a 300 memory overclcok at 1:1 at 1T and bring my FX_55 from 2.9 to 3.0(the 2.9 is on air and no extra voltage, so i feel good about getting more out of it). Anyways, good luck boys and keep your fingers crossed that Asus will get that bios out that everyone wants. And maybe soon Nvidia will have some unified driver set out for Nforce 4.......but dont hold your breath waiting on it. Peace.

 

[Thorsson]

Sandra says identically in mine and also this time I have a new XP with SP2. However all of my devices are on the USB 1 version. There are not 2 hubs, but one with legacy support or no, and there are only 10 ports in all. Also enabling or disabling legacy support in the BIOS has no effect on what Sandra reports.

Something is clearly SNAFUed.

 

[olternat]

Please forgive my newbieness but is there anyway to confirm if my system is running the memory in dual channel mode?
For instance is there a setting in the bios that actually says that memory is running in dual channel mode?
I mean besides simply filling the slots with matching memory.

I am using 4 gigs or corsair value select 4 x 512mb using all 4 slots.
Also, some people say corsair value select is great for this board and some people say its not so great.
Some people say you shouldn't overclock this and some people say you can get some overclocking out of this memory.

Which is it?

 

[mofrack]

Originally posted by: JMag

Originally posted by: mofrack

Originally posted by: Tripp17
Any new good news for the A8N-SLi deluxe, i havent posted for awhile and wanted to know if there is any new bios that makes for better than 245/50 fsb?? Thats what im stuck at and most people are too......any news???

Not that I've seen. I'm running the latest beta bios (1004.001) and I seem to be topping out at 250x9, with 2-3-3-6 1T timings on my RAM.

This bios also makes my Maxtor NON-NCQ drive disappear for some reason. Still not reverting to a previous bios, though. Screw it, I'll just grab it's twin outta my PowerMac G5 and make a RAID 1 array out of em on the Sil3114 controller till Asus gets off their ass and releases a less-janky bios that can improve/fix these 2 remaining niggles.

According to your sig you are running mem at 204... Now you are saying you can run it at 250mhz 1t... Prove IT!

... or are you using a DDR333 divider?

DDR333 divider, my good man. I guess I should have figured that he's talking about 1:1 ratio while trying to run 250 at 1T. My bad.

 

[mofrack]

Originally posted by: Tripp17
Well everone, ive come to say good-bye.....ive been going to this thread for awhile now and have had ups and downs with my board, mostly ups i will say. I have had the A8N-SLI for about 3 months and have gotten my fsb to 245 tops, with a 1:1 ratio on the mem at 1T.....but, im an overclocker at heart and you just cant keep a good overclocker down! Dont consider me a traider as i was one of the first to come along and grabe one. I wish everyone nothing but the best of luck and i hope those "magical" bios that fixes all the problems finnally comes out. I do. I have gone to the DFI Ultra-D Nforce 4 boards and it should be here tomorrow. I didnt want to do this, but look at my sig.....i didnt buy the best parts you could buy to get a mediocre overclock, just not happening. Im gonna go for a 300 memory overclcok at 1:1 at 1T and bring my FX_55 from 2.9 to 3.0(the 2.9 is on air and no extra voltage, so i feel good about getting more out of it). Anyways, good luck boys and keep your fingers crossed that Asus will get that bios out that everyone wants. And maybe soon Nvidia will have some unified driver set out for Nforce 4.......but dont hold your breath waiting on it. Peace.

Dude... if I was running the hardware you're running on that board, I would try the DFI too. Hell, I may move to the DFI camp myself, soon. If Asus doesnt move on the remaining bugs by the time the price settles on the SLI DR boards, I'm swapping mine out for sure.

Anyhow, dont feel bad, man. Overclockers should have no brand loyalty, they should go with the hardware that provides the best performance. DFI certainly looks to be the top performing Nforce 4 board around right now. I'm sure you wont regret switching.

 

[mofrack]

Originally posted by: Morpheous
I had an Enermax 550 watts power supply ATX EG-651P-VE (20 pin with 24 pin adapter ATX V. 1.3) it should have done the job ok but apparently it didn?t.

Wow. I have this same supply and my system has been a rock for almost a month now... with and without the 24-pin adapter. *shrug*

 

[quik]

Originally posted by: mofrack

Originally posted by: Morpheous
I had an Enermax 550 watts power supply ATX EG-651P-VE (20 pin with 24 pin adapter ATX V. 1.3) it should have done the job ok but apparently it didn?t.

Wow. I have this same supply and my system has been a rock for almost a month now... with and without the 24-pin adapter. *shrug*

Using the same PSU (24pin version) as well, not probs at all with it.

By the looks of the earlier post, it was the bios update that fixed your post probs and other things....

Cause soon as i went to 1003 final never had a post prob again.

 

[mlc]

Please forgive my newbieness but is there anyway to confirm if my system is running the memory in dual channel mode?

when your system posts and displays how much memory you have.. it should also display on that same string something to the effect of "dual channel" and "128 bit mode"

I am using 4 gigs or corsair value select 4 x 512mb using all 4 slots.

1) I believe the controller limits your speed to DDR333 if occupying all 4 slots
2) Corsair recommends TWINX 3200XL or 4400C25 with this board... Usually VALUE memory is not meant for overclocking

 

[hedrums]

Has anyone successfully gotten NVidia RAID (0, in my case) and an Audigy 4 (or 2, for that matter) to work? Earlier reports on this forum indicated a conflict resulting in disk corruption. I can vouch for the disk corruption

If you have it working, which slot is your sound card in?

For those of you using NVidia's RAID and some other sound card with no problems, which sound card do you have (and which slot)?

Thanks.

 

[lumpeh]

Another new A8N-SLI user here. Installation went pretty well. No driver was required in order for XP to install afresh onto the SATA drive. Biggest problem was the rear fan that i added was screwing with the reception of my belkin 54g wireless card. I also had to force it to channel 6 in the network properties as it was incredibly laggy on the channel 4 it had selected. Fortunately the system runs cool enough without the extra fans. I haven't noticed the 'noisy' chassis fan as such, though 8000rpm is a little imho! Greatest annoyance is the 6800 which is rather loud and is creating some vibration that is aggrivating.

Performance is incredible - Doom 3 in ultra high with 4x AA ran faster than my P4 setup . BF1942 on the other hand does not appear to run a single frame faster though. No complaints about stability as of yet, but then i only got it running last night and have yet to put it through a Saturday afternoon of Forgotten Hope.

Is it good to run the Quiet & Cool technology & the ASUS fan control at the same time? I've noticed that upon boot the ASUS monitor says its not running yet i can see it spinning with the case off, then after a short while it picks it up and the rpm goes from 2000 - 8000 - 200000!!! Pretty nuts i say, though it flattens out at 1000-2500rpm depending on whether its idle or running Doom 3.

Will Artic Cooling's GPU solution for the 6800 be fine on this board? Can i expect it to play host to two of them later on if i plan so? I've a Enermax 600w so there *should* be enough juice.

 

[iscsidude]

Originally posted by: hedrums
Has anyone successfully gotten NVidia RAID (0, in my case) and an Audigy 4 (or 2, for that matter) to work? Earlier reports on this forum indicated a conflict resulting in disk corruption. I can vouch for the disk corruption

If you have it working, which slot is your sound card in?

For those of you using NVidia's RAID and some other sound card with no problems, which sound card do you have (and which slot)?

Thanks.

I'm using the below configuration (Raid 0) with an Audigy Platinum Ex in Slot 2. No corruption problems at all.

Did you turn off Command Queueing (if your drives support it) in Device Manager? That caused data corruption in my case.

 

[wspano]

Okay so here's my story.

After messing around with XP 64 bit for a while (couldn't find my XP media) I said hell with it and installed the 32 bit (I found it in a box)

Install went really well, then I started to install SP2 from another disk and like a dumbarse, hit the reset button in the middle of it.

Ooops. Re-install from scratch as the whole thing was farked.

Okay, so after the re-install, I am up and good. (Even got my audigy 2 ZS installed with no issues. The trick may be to disable the AC97 (?) sound card function in the BIOS)

Here is my question. I have a Segate 160GB SATA II (with NCQ (yes I know)) hard drive. During post it reads it as an ATA 133 Hard drive. Is that right? I thought the Segates were 150 or 300?

Whee.

 

[iscsidude]

Originally posted by: lumpeh
Is it good to run the Quiet & Cool technology & the ASUS fan control at the same time?

I've turned of Cool and Quiet in BIOS based on previous recommendations. Overclocking guides I've seen suggest turning it off as well. While I haven't done any OC'ing as of yet, I plan on doing so next week.

Originally posted by: lumpeh
Will Artic Cooling's GPU solution for the 6800 be fine on this board? Can i expect it to play host to two of them later on if i plan so? I've a Enermax 600w so there *should* be enough juice.

I just installed the Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 last night on my eVGA 6800 Ultra. Quieter by only 3Db which tells me the chipset fan is still the culprit. Yes, I have a Db meter. GPU is 3 degrees cooler at idle and 5 degrees cooler when running 3DMark05. Based on the stock heatsink on the eVGA memory chips, I'm sure they are much cooler with the NV 5. Just be sure you get the "Revision 2" version of the NV 5 which come with 2 PCI brackets. One with the slots for the exhaust. One with the Dual DVI / S-Video openings. You will use these to replace the existing double width bracket on the 6800 Ultra.

I'm assuming your 6800 Ultra has the double wide bracket like mine did.

Lastly, the NV 5 fan sits directly above the NF4 SLI chipset/fan. This eliminates any possibility of using a heatsink, like the Zalman, to replace the existing 8K RPM fan. Hopefully, Zalman, Arctic Cooling or ThermalTake will be developing an alternative for this beast. It appears the DFI has an even larger fan which may interfere with the NV 5 itself. So maybe the OEM's will be motivated.

 

[Whitewolf]

For anyone that didn't see tha other topic, nvidia has released the nforce4 drivers in their website. They are the 6.39. Please try them as soon as possible and let's hope they fix the issues we are having especially the one with the NCQ drives like the Maxtor.

Info: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21081
Download: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp_6.39