*** Official ASUS M2N-E Thread ***

[geokilla]

Everyone. A new BIOS has been released by Asus.

" M2N-E 1202 BIOS
1.Do not use EZ-Flash to flash BIOS if M/B BIOS version is below 0203.
2. Please use AWDFLASH to flash BIOS."

This was released on Tuesday. I think this is the one that will support the AM2+ processors.

Anyways, BIOS can be found here.

Someone willing to test out this new BIOS? If you do upgrade to this new BIOS, please post if you see any different between this BIOS and the older BIOS, such as new features, tighter timings, more vdimm, or just stable performance.

 

[SeeManRun]

I downloaded and installed it earlier, as I want a Phenom tomorrow. It was working fine, and then all of a sudden the computer died, rebooted, and then wouldn't load back into vista. It would get to just the point where you can see the vista splash screen (as it faded in so it was quite dim) and thats it. No HDD activity, no nothing. I tried loading a Ubuntu liveCD to get the old bios on a USB key, but even that would stall about 10 seconds after POST. Even the ASUS live CD did the same thing, booting into freedos. I couldn't use EZ-flash from the bios to load the default bios from the asus cd because it complained too many files in the same dir (the SLI and the regular are in the same dir on the CD). The only reason I managed to fix this was I have a second computer, and loaded the bios from the CD onto a USB stick, flashed the bios back to version 305 (I think that was the version). After that it booted right up. I have since flashed back to 802, and its back to normal. But now I don't know if I should buy the Phenom... Anyone have a similar experience?

 

[kylleron]

Originally posted by: PAStheLoD
Hi kylleron,

What other devices do you have plugged into your board? What kind of PSU do you have? What is your OS? And what games are your having some difficulties? And what kind of cooling do you have?

How come not even the reset button working? My knowledge is that the reset button almost phisically interrupts the power for a very short time, although it's still wired onto the mobo, so maybe the ultimately freezing of the board is possible, but I'm more than interested in this "not even the reset works" phenomenon.

Finally, do you set anything in the BIOS that can cause your system to be overclocked? (AI NOS?)

PAStheLoD,
Thanks for the help.

No other devices, just the video card. I have an Huntkey 450W with 32A in the 12V rails, i don't think is a power problem because i'm able to play some games, actually they freeze in specific places (this is the funniest thing). Im using windows XP SP2 fully patched.

Well, here is a small list Crysis, Dirt, Portal, HL2: Episode Two, CoD4. But like i said, just some parts of the games, like Portal i can't look directly at any portal or my computer is doom to crash! CoD4 for now it appears that it's not crashing anymore, but who knows.

I know! I'm also surprised, let's say, my computer crashes, now my scren goes black, or blue, or pink... I then move my finger to the reset button and press it, look the screen is blinking in the color that it was, and no boot, no post nothing... if i let this for a while and then turn it off and on, i get that famous BIOS message that something was wrong and you need to enter BIOS to check it.

Nop, no type of oc, actually i set everything manually to standard, FSB 200mhz, Multiplayer 10x, vcore 1.4, vdimm 1.8.

Any ideas, is the problem with my video card?

I almost forgot, my last video card was a 7300GS, had no problem except that games run to slow, you know budget card, and i can run every single benchmark test avaliable and everything returns OK!

 

[PAStheLoD]

That's more than strange. It's looks like that your vga and the board is conflicting somehow. The ereased BIOS indicates some kind of motherboard problem, and the Portal thing can be a driver issue. Do you have the latest 163.75 driver for the VGA?

The 8800 has a power connector, you plugged in the extra power, did you? Sadly nothing else comes to my mind ..(but that might has something to do with my hangover )

Hmm, I'm just wondering, what is your BIOS version?

 

[kylleron]

Im positive sure that it's not a driver issue, since i tested a LOT of drivers, i had the latest 163.75 driver, but now i'm using the 169.04 beta driver, no matter the driver i use my computer hangs.

LOL... yes the pci-e power is plugged!

My bios is 0802, should i upgrade to a beta?

Sadly nothing else comes to my mind either, the funniest thing that this errors only occurs during game play, and no benchmark software gives this problem, or any problem.

Does any of you guys have an 8800 GTS on your MOBO?!

 

[SeeManRun]

I have an 8800GTS (EVGA 320MB). Never had a problem. I also run the same bios as you. And whatever the newest drivers are available. I now run vistax64, but ran portal and all games on 32bit vista no prob.

 

[kylleron]

Originally posted by: SeeManRun
I have an 8800GTS (EVGA 320MB). Never had a problem. I also run the same bios as you. And whatever the newest drivers are available. I now run vistax64, but ran portal and all games on 32bit vista no prob.

There it goes, what i can do?!

I'm going to return this video card and grab another one, same model, but another card, don't know why but i think this problem related to the video card, it just seems odd that my mobo can't handle it.

 

[PAStheLoD]

So that's it for the sythetic benchmarks :|

Wish you luck with the VGA swap

 

[SeeManRun]

Anyone else tried the 1202 bios?

 

[PAStheLoD]

I was planning to, but after the aforementined I'll put this endeavour on hold before I kill my already not so healthy system

 

[kylleron]

Does anyone know what this 1202 bios is fixing?

 

[SeeManRun]

I assume it allows the Phenom processors to work on the board, since it came out 2 days after they were released. Not sure if the beta ones allow the Phenom. Stupid ASUS doesn't release details with these bios's. My next board will not be an ASUS.

 

[eddieTO]

Flashed to 1202 yesterday. When I checked if flashing retained my settings, there were at least 3 weird changes (ones that I noticed): the silly PEG-Link setting was set to auto (it was supposed to be disabled), HT link was set to X1 (wtf?), and onboard HD audio was set to auto (i disabled it since I have a xi-fi). These might cause problems for those who flashed (I flashed from 1101). In the BIOS all I notice that's different is now it shows the ram timings while at auto, and DDR1066 is now an available option.

So far I've been quite happy with the board. Aside from the 1.95volt ram limit (I wasn't able to boot on Ballistix, so I fell back on Renditions overclocked from 667 > 800). Had prime95 run blend for 14hours since flashing (no errors).

My gear:
M2N-E (HT, FSB, etc left stock)
5000+ Black Edition G2 @ 3.2ghz (1.4375volts) 200mhz X 16
*max I reached on the this board is 3.4ghz (60+degrees cent. are quite scary though)
8800GT EVGA SC
2 x 1gb Crucial Rendition 667 DDR2 @800mhz 5-5-5-15 (1.9volts)
650watt Antec Neopower Blue

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/1623/10479064sl6.jpg

Waiting for the SLI AM2+ boards

 

[kylleron]

Hey guys,

One question about my problem, do you guys think that maybe i'm facing an compatibility issue? Here are my specs.

Athlon 64 3200+
2x Kingston KVR533D2N4/512
M2N-E
XFX 8800 GTS Fatal1ty

My problem is that randomly in games my computer freezes, my screen goes black, yellow, green, blue, pink ... the sound enter in a loop and i need to turn it off and on, because reset doesn't work.

 

[SeeManRun]

What do you mean reset doesn't work? Like the button on the actual box doesn't work? I have never heard of that... If that is the case, sounds like a motherboard issue. There should be no computability issues with your hardware. The last thing you could try is lower the clock speed of the ram, and maybe even the video card by 20%, and see if that makes a difference. If that makes no difference, try removing each stick of ram independently. If neither works, sounds like the board is screwed up.

 

[eddieTO]

Originally posted by: kylleron
Hey guys,

One question about my problem, do you guys think that maybe i'm facing an compatibility issue? Here are my specs.

Athlon 64 3200+
2x Kingston KVR533D2N4/512
M2N-E
XFX 8800 GTS Fatal1ty

My problem is that randomly in games my computer freezes, my screen goes black, yellow, green, blue, pink ... the sound enter in a loop and i need to turn it off and on, because reset doesn't work.

This might be a case of overheating? My PC crashed a lot ONLY under a lot of continuous combined CPU and GPU load. Found out that I didn't seat my CPU HSF properly with the proper amount of Arctic Silver5. I was used to smoothing out a thin layer using a card on top of the CPU's heatspreader, but realized it was better dropping a rice-sized drop in the middle and just pushing the HSF straight down and twisting both ways a little and clamping it down.

It's pretty much a case of trial and error ruling out which components are problematic. A fresh install of windows might help too? *shrug*

hmmm i really should make a sig:

---
My gear:
M2N-E (HT, FSB, etc left stock)
5000+ Black Edition G2 @ 3.2ghz (1.4375volts) 200mhz X 16
*max I reached on the this board is 3.4ghz (60+degrees cent. are quite scary though)
8800GT EVGA SC
2 x 1gb Crucial Rendition 667 DDR2 @800mhz 5-5-5-15 (1.9volts)
650watt Antec Neopower Blue

 

[toaderxxix]

I don't usually upgrade BIOS unless there are problems with a system. I've built 3 systems now on the m2n-e platform, and have had very few issues. One of my customers has this board and occasionally it'll stall on POST. Specifically when about to boot to the SATA hard drive. In any case, when he brings it to me, it always posts right away. Last time I upgraded to BIOS 0802, and had no problems. My customer recently had a power outage and couldn't get his system to boot. Of course, when he brought it in, I had no trouble posting the machine. Since I had it on the bench, I figured I'd upgrade the BIOS. Asus is notoriously bad about posting change logs with their BIOS updates, but it's usually a given that they've got bug fixes worked in with CPU compatibility etc. I flashed the BIOS and the system would not post period. Power up for 5 to 10 seconds with an FF post code, and shut down. Tried resetting CMOS, pulling memory, disconnecting drives etc. to no avail. What finally woke it up was to pull the video card and try to post once. Then it beeped crying it didn't have a video card. Shut it down, reseated the video card and every thing's fine. So just an FYI to you guys that if it fails to POST, try shutting down, pull the video card, power up, let it attempt to POST, shut down again, reinstall video card and you should be fine. This was an EVGA 7300LE pci-e video card BTW. Anyway, thought I'd have a heart attack at the prospect of having to spend $100+ on a new mobo but the crisis was averted.

ToadeR

 

[kylleron]

Guys it finally worked!
I really tried everything, tested the ram, tested the cpu, video card, hdd... EVERYTHING!

And the problem was in the video card! I don't know exactly what, but after replacing it for a new one (same model) the problem appears to be gone, every game is working properly, i have no issues whatsoever.

SeeManRun,
Just answering your question, imagine this, your computer freezes, you press the reset button and?! Nothing happens, it was completely dead, the only way to post it again, was turning it off and on.

 

[SeeManRun]

Originally posted by: kylleron

SeeManRun,
Just answering your question, imagine this, your computer freezes, you press the reset button and?! Nothing happens, it was completely dead, the only way to post it again, was turning it off and on.

That is certainly bizarre. I suppose the video card was just making the motherboard crash, not letting it respond to the reset signal. Very strange. I think I am gonna try a board by another vendor when I replace this one. Between the lack of detail on bios upgrades, and the lousy voltage settings on the RAM, I am not all that happy with this board.

 

[kylleron]

I bought mine because of the name Asus, and i must say, i'm a little disappointed.

Next time i upgrade my computer, i think i'm going for another brand, but who knows, Asus CROSSHAIR is really good, lots of features and awesome oc capabilities.

 

[geokilla]

Like I've stated before in this thread, I've had no problems with this problem. Probably it's because I picked the correct RAM to use with this board.

So I guess there hasn't been any significant difference between 1202 and 0802 besides the addition of DDR 1066?

 

[johnno]

Yeah, I've had zero problems and will be sticking with bios 802. Maybe a future Quad may see a bios upgrade.

 

[SeeManRun]

Does the Phenom not require the 1202 bios? Bloddy ASUS doesn't say what their bios update does. Their support is crap. I called in once and the guy didn't really help, and it was long distance...

 

[johnno]

ASUS AM2+ Ready Motherboards

 

[SeeManRun]

Tried my bios again, and the exact same thing happened. Maybe it is because I have all 4 RAM slots occupied, but that shouldn't matter with a proper bios. Even took the video card out and booted it up that way, because I read that removing the video card helped for some strange reason. Also took the battery out and left it out for a couple mins. No more ASUS boards for me.