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

[user1234]

Anyone running linux on this sucker ?

 

[byMaX]

Any new bios release after 1004-001? Last call b4 I finally give up and go for MSI?

 

[imported_slippy]

I am dual-booted with windows xp and Red Hat Fedora and I'm loving it. There is a ton of crap you have to piddle through to configure linux on the system, but in the end it was quite worth it to experiment with an open source os, and the piddling only took a day or so.

If you choose fedora, make sure to do it after your windowsxp install, and make sure you have some unpartitioned space to use for that installation. Basically when I first installed windows on my 120 gb drive I partitioned it to 40 gb because I knew I was going to be trying to move to a linux os. Fedora had 80 gb of space to play with, and it formatted the whole 80 for itself... this is why I tell you to do it after windows, because windows asks you to partition your drive, but fedora automatically takes however much space you have left. I threw some dummy partitions in so that I could put some other linux on in the future if I should choose.

The cd from http://www.sysresccd.org/ is pretty freakin awesome for setting up partitions. You have to boot your computer with this in as you would with knoppix. Once it says boot, press enter... once it gets to the command line typer run_qtparted Once your done with your partition tweaking you close out of qtparted and to shutdown your system, type halt

When you turn the comp back on, be ready to take your cd out before it boots.

About the qtparted program... any changes you make have to be commited with the commit button before they will actually be created and take effect. I didn't use this to mess with my xp partition, since I had already decided when I installed xp what its size was going to be, so be careful if you decide to mess with that.

You should experiment with Linux by downloading or buying the Knoppix cd if you haven't already.

But yes, I'm running linux, using a i386 distro (don't really care to fiddle with 64 bits yet), I installed the nvidia linux graphics drivers, and I'm starting to get used to using a command line for a few tasks here and there.

Oh, and Fedora autaomatically sets up a dual boot program so you don't have to worry about that.

I have a lot to learn, but I'm already finding I'm using Linux twice as much as windows.

 

[Robbidoo]

NEW PROBLEM

Well, new for me.

My system is running slowly. No crashing or any problems like that, but it is really really slow.

Spec:

A64 3000+ Winchester @ stock speed/voltage
A8N-SLI Deluxe 1003 BIOS
2x256 Corsair 3200LL (2-3-2-6)
Obviously there are more things in the machine, but these are all that should affect CPU scores, I would imagine.

The thing is, it was very fast for the first few days I had it. I've benchmarked it in Sandra, and my CPU figures are way way down on what they should be, to the tune of 30%!

Dhry: ~7600
Whet: ~3700

I've seen other guys posting on here with 10000 odd for Dhrystone, so something is definitely amiss.

Rolled back to SMBus driver 4.45 (from the CD), with no change. I then rolled the BIOS back to 1002, and still very very poor scores. (Around 7600 Whet).

I don't really know what to try now, short of a full reinstall of XP.

All the speed settings in the BIOS are on Auto. Multiplier is 9x, HT is 2x1005, RAM is 200.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone reading with a 3000+ Winchester could post their scores, that would be great.

Thanks in advance.

 

[QicRic]

Hi Folks,

Well after posting this in the wrong place (I Think!)

Has anyone had any joy with NCQ and the latest NVidia drivers? (Maxtor drives would be a bonus!)

Thanks in advance

Rich

 

[Robbidoo]

Originally posted by: QicRic
Has anyone had any joy with NCQ and the latest NVidia drivers? (Maxtor drives would be a bonus!)
Rich

My system runs slow, but yes, I can vouch for the new driver and NCQ with a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB. 4 days of solid use with no problems.

HTH

 

[QicRic]

Thx Robbidoo!

4 Days of solid use is a good enough test for me!

I'm building my rig tonight - So if that runs slowly I'll swap notes with you!

CPU AMD fx55
HDD1 WD 74gb Raptor (For O/s - Will probably raid with another after tests)
HDD2 Maxtor DM10 300gb
HDD3 Maxtor DM10 300gb (Raid 1 with HDD2)
2GB Corsair XMS Ram
6800 ultra GPU

** Note for others - Corsair ram is tall and an xp120 won't fit if you use the new XMS with led's***

Cheers

QicRic

 

[QicRic]

Just a quick thought... What bios are you using Robi?

Cheers again..

QicRic

 

[rockstar]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy

Originally posted by: ColSpr
I just bought this board along with Antec True power 550. I was currious about the 24 pin requirement so I called Asus. Here's what I was told....you can use the 20pin or a 20-24 pin adapter power supply such as the TruePower 550. But he mentioned that 550 is the MINIMAL and that over time, especially if you add more peripherals, the performan and stability will degrade. He recommended changing to the NeoPower480 despite the lower wattage rating. I just rma'ed my TruPower for the NeoPower.

Opps.Not a good move IMHO

The antec works fine on this board and has 30a+ on the 12v rail. I have one and its been rock solid for 2 months now.

The neopower is a dual rail with an 18a rail that supplies the motherboard, and a 16a rail which supplies everything else, which is not enough to run two high end graphics cards and all your drives, fans etc. Numerous problems have been reported on these forums running this PS with dual graphics cards. If you never intend to run SLI it will be fine.

Antec makes a 24pin version the EPS 550 true that has 36a on the 12v.

And the OCZ modstream models seem to do well on this board

best price performance is probabally the Athena Power 550 EPS at newegg for $84

I know a lot of people are saying the same thing about dual rail power supplies. I had a True Power 430W and was hoping it would be enough. It didn't have enough connectors for everything, especially since the PCI-E cards take up two 4 pin molex each with the adaptor. Since I had everything else, I decided to go with the best local option I could find which was the NeoPower 480. I made sure to keep the vid card power connectors as separate as possible. I haven't had any problems with the NeoPower 480. I just thought I'd add my 2 cents. Thanks to all for the great info about the A8N on these forums!

 

[Robbidoo]

Originally posted by: QicRic
Just a quick thought... What bios are you using Robi?

Was 1003, then rolled back to 1002. Check the full details of my problem on page 74

Cheers again..

No probs mate.

 

[quik]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy

Originally posted by: ColSpr
I just bought this board along with Antec True power 550. I was currious about the 24 pin requirement so I called Asus. Here's what I was told....you can use the 20pin or a 20-24 pin adapter power supply such as the TruePower 550. But he mentioned that 550 is the MINIMAL and that over time, especially if you add more peripherals, the performan and stability will degrade. He recommended changing to the NeoPower480 despite the lower wattage rating. I just rma'ed my TruPower for the NeoPower.

Opps.Not a good move IMHO

The antec works fine on this board and has 30a+ on the 12v rail. I have one and its been rock solid for 2 months now.

The neopower is a dual rail with an 18a rail that supplies the motherboard, and a 16a rail which supplies everything else, which is not enough to run two high end graphics cards and all your drives, fans etc. Numerous problems have been reported on these forums running this PS with dual graphics cards. If you never intend to run SLI it will be fine.

Antec makes a 24pin version the EPS 550 true that has 36a on the 12v.

And the OCZ modstream models seem to do well on this board

best price performance is probabally the Athena Power 550 EPS at newegg for $84

Enermax has a nice 550w 24pin single 12v rail with 36a on it for 120$ on newegg... i think 124$ on zipzoomfly for 124$ (free shipping)

 

[SPtheALIEN]

The True Power is exactly the PSU that I am using.

I am running 2 6800 video cards, three fast hards drives, 2 sticks of memory, and two optical drives, as well as a slew of USB devices.

And I have been burning it in -- over 8 hours of 3D Mark 2005 benchmarking.

So far, so good.

 

[Nevermiss]

I've been running my system off and on for about a week now. I've only done a couple of benchmarks so far, and am wondering how much "burn in" time is required before attempting to O/C my system. Any recommendations?

 

[MrVeedo]

Originally posted by: Nevermiss
I've been running my system off and on for about a week now. I've only done a couple of benchmarks so far, and am wondering how much "burn in" time is required before attempting to O/C my system. Any recommendations?

i dont think 'burn in' is necessary. only time ive seen or heard of better overclocking results after running something for a while is memory. i wouldnt worry about burning anything in.

 

[user1234]

Not sure if you saw this review at T-break, but A8N woops the gigabyte and MSI SLI boards.

 

[coyrls]

Originally posted by: Robbidoo
NEW PROBLEM

Well, new for me.

My system is running slowly. No crashing or any problems like that, but it is really really slow.

Spec:

A64 3000+ Winchester @ stock speed/voltage
A8N-SLI Deluxe 1003 BIOS
2x256 Corsair 3200LL (2-3-2-6)
Obviously there are more things in the machine, but these are all that should affect CPU scores, I would imagine.

The thing is, it was very fast for the first few days I had it. I've benchmarked it in Sandra, and my CPU figures are way way down on what they should be, to the tune of 30%!

Dhry: ~7600
Whet: ~3700

I've seen other guys posting on here with 10000 odd for Dhrystone, so something is definitely amiss.

Rolled back to SMBus driver 4.45 (from the CD), with no change. I then rolled the BIOS back to 1002, and still very very poor scores. (Around 7600 Whet).

I don't really know what to try now, short of a full reinstall of XP.

All the speed settings in the BIOS are on Auto. Multiplier is 9x, HT is 2x1005, RAM is 200.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone reading with a 3000+ Winchester could post their scores, that would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Doesn't seem too far off, with the non-Deluxe version of the board the same processor and 1GB (2x512) of Kingston (3-3-3-3) I get:

Dhry: ~8300
Whet: ~3700

with everything on Auto

I checked Tom's HW guide Here

And they say:

Dhry: 8325
Whet: 3703

People posting 10000 must be overclocked, that's a 3500+ Winchester speed.

 

[coyrls]

Cheer yourself up by looking at the Doom3 benchmark on Tom's HW Guide at the link in my previous post, the 3000+ Winchester looks much better there, and I know what I'd rather be using my processor for!

 

[Dream Operator]

No luck with that link, but googled "nVidia 6.25" and found them at guru3d.

I shall try now!

Edit-
Not a lot of time to check it out, but they installed, and I was able to use the nVidia ethernet and get online.

Now if only my M-Audio cards would recognize the 64bit drivers I'll be set!

 

[FxSoap]

Okay guys. Hopefully my setup shows up. I can't seem to over clock this thing past 2.4 ghz whatsoever.

I'm using clockgen version 1.02 for nforce4. The Ram latency is 2-2-2-2-2.

Could anyone help me out with overclocking beyond 2.4?

 

[MrVeedo]

Originally posted by: FxSoap
Okay guys. Hopefully my setup shows up. I can't seem to over clock this thing past 2.4 ghz whatsoever.

I'm using clockgen version 1.02 for nforce4. The Ram latency is 2-2-2-2-2.

Could anyone help me out with overclocking beyond 2.4?
Thank you.

try increasing core voltage, and changing divididers to run your memory slower. otherwise it could be the chips limit.

 

[yeahright]

I built four identical systems using A8N-SLI mb, no problems at all !! One had a POSTing problem because one of the power connectors were lose. Connected it properly and it solved the problem. Had them for a month now and all are rock solid !!

All are Athlon64 3500+, 1 GB GeiL DDR 400 Ram, 160 SATA HDD, MSI 6600GT x1 and running on 420 W PSU s !!!!

 

[Waylay00]

Yes, I think this board is right for me. I have never built a PC (even though I know about all of the hardware pretty well) and I don't want to have to go through a bunch of troubleshooting to get it up and running.

 

[Barshow]

I am using a Pixelview Play Tv xp With no Problems
Processor
Model : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
Speed : 2.01GHz
Model Number : 3200 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR3015 (estimated)
Type : Standard
L2 On-board Cache : 512kB ECC Synchronous, Write-Back, 16-way set, 64 byte line size

Mainboard
Bus(es) : PCI PCIe USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
MP Support : 1 CPU(s)
MP APIC : No
System BIOS : Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1004-001
System : System manufacturer System name
Mainboard : ASUSTeK Computer INC. A8N-SLI DELUXE
Total Memory : 1GB DDR-SDRAM

Chipset 1
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 1005MHz (2010MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 1GB DDR-SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 201MHz (402MHz data rate)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Plug and Play Monitor
Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Home (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

 

[Shaga]

My
Dhrystone ALU is 10512
Whetstone FPU 3741 MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 4871

With my rig(reads in sig) without overclocking.

 

[FxSoap]

Okay, maybe this will better aid myself and others.

What setups have been most successful with overclocking?
Both Water cooling and Air.


And if anyone knows, what can I do to stop recieving BSOD msgs randomly? (And is that related to the SATA drives showing up "removable"?)