*** Official ASUS P5W DH Thread ***

[phile]

Originally posted by: jim1976

Phil it was the problem with the optical drives reverting in PIO mode with this mobo.. Everything that I have remotely read in the entire net does not work in my case.. Problem remains at Vista as well so it is surely related somehow to hardware?

Well, I'm not sure what to suggest. Best way to start is to explain what you have tried, to date.

-phil

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: jim1976

Phil it was the problem with the optical drives reverting in PIO mode with this mobo.. Everything that I have remotely read in the entire net does not work in my case.. Problem remains at Vista as well so it is surely related somehow to hardware?

Well, I'm not sure what to suggest. Best way to start is to explain what you have tried, to date.

-phil

Well the fact itself that it creates the same problem in Vista means that it is hardware or drivers related..

What have I tried? Almost everything available..

1. All the combinations of master/slave possible
2. That includes both the intel blue ide and the Jmicron port..
3. Registry hacks
4. Deleting of course the channels in device manager was the first thing I tried..
5. Tried each optical drive alone with any combination
6. Reinstalled Windows XP
7. Removed the Daemon tools which sometimes creates issues

Is there anything else?

I hate this crappy mobo.. I couldn't use my IDE HDDs on either channel also.. Ok maybe one of the 2 ports can be defective.. But both? And aSUX replies to me with childish answers.. FFS I will never buy an ASUS product again.. It's the second time I'm buying an ASUS board and I can't get basic stuff to work properly :|

 

[phile]

I've seen a few people have chronic PIO mode issues with their optical drives, but it's not a widespread problem with this board. Perhaps, your board is faulty, in which case you may wish to RMA the board through ASUS. Have you tried other optical drives with your board? Have you tried your optical drives on another board.

In the meantime, have you verified that your IDE ports have no bent, pushed-in, or missing pins? I've seen at least 3 people have PIO mode issues due to bent or pushed-in pins. Also, the board comes with two IDE ribbon cables: a 40-wire for opticals, and a 80-wire for HDDs. Have you tried using the 80-wire with your opticals?

-phil

 

[imported_mlt]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: mlt
Hello guys, I'm new here and I'll shoot away immediatelly with my question:

I finally updated my bios when installed 64bit Vista business, and I have a problem.

With the new 1707 bios my CPU fan (zalman 9500) is now in full RPM all the time, with the older bios version it operated silent with the same overclocking. I tried all kinds of QFAN settings Optimal / silent / performance but they dont seem to work at all.

With default bios settings the cpu fan was silent, but when you overclock it's noisy

And there is no Fan Speed Controller included in the 9500 AT zalman package

Any suggestions to get the RPM down?

If QFAN isn't working properly for you, just disable it and order a Zalman Fanmate controller.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118217

-phil

I already have one fanmate controller left over from some old zalman, but the problem is that it's only 3-PIN, as the 9500AT connector is 4-PIN.. I dont know is the new controller (which you pasted) a 4-PIN, or wont the fan controllers work at all with the 9500AT.

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: phile
I've seen a few people have chronic PIO mode issues with their optical drives, but it's not a widespread problem with this board. Perhaps, your board is faulty, in which case you may wish to RMA the board through ASUS. Have you tried other optical drives with your board? Have you tried your optical drives on another board.

In the meantime, have you verified that your IDE ports have no bent, pushed-in, or missing pins? I've seen at least 3 people have PIO mode issues due to bent or pushed-in pins. Also, the board comes with two IDE ribbon cables: a 40-wire for opticals, and a 80-wire for HDDs. Have you tried using the 80-wire with your opticals?

-phil

Yeah I forgot to mention both of those solutions.. They are so many.. I have a Plextor drive, which also doesn't work in UDMA2 with this mobo, and I've tried 2 80-wire IDE cables, the one that comes with the mobo and one I had spare.. And as I said one of my IDE HDDs doesn't work as well properly..Actually this is a problem that many users face with their optical drives and ide hdds.. A google easily finds many issues.. It probably has to do with the Jmicron controller, but I can't understand why I'm having issues with the Intel one too.. Oh now that I remember I had updated and the Intel Matrix storage drivers.. Dunno, I may have to RMA it..

 

[GollyJer]

I currently have a XFX 7600GS (silent) as my primary video card.

Can I throw another nVidia PCIe video card in the 2nd PCIe slot and use it to run a 3rd and 4th monitor?

The reason I ask is that installing a PCI video card (Matrox P650) doesn't seem to be supported.

Thanks.

 

[michale]

I have the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe with the latest (as of 20 Dec 2006) BIOS..
Running a Duo Core 2 E6600, 2 gigs of RAM and an EVGA 8800GTS Video Card.


Is there anything I need to do, hardware wise, to prep the Motherboard for a 64-bit XP insttallation??

Thanx,


Michale

 

[PHICTION]

i hope you can help and apologies if this has been posted before, i am having problems with my dvd-r drives

my system is

e6700 dual core processor
asus p5w dh
2 x 1 gb corsair dominator ram
x1950 pro 512 mb gpu

1 x 260 gb wd sata hd
2 x 200gb ide hd
1 x nec 2500a dvd writer
1 x pioneer 110d dvd writer

all seems to be working fine except the dvd writers, when i try to burn a disc using nero/alcohol 120 or dvd decrytper it just spits the disc out straight away with a error message, now both of these drives where working fine on my old system

to start with i'd like to double check my setup

i have the sata hd plugged into sata 1 via the red cable
2 x ide hdd on the jmmicron ide (blacK slot) via the 80pin lead

now for the dvd writers im happy to only get one working, i have it plugged into the blue ide conencter using the supplied cable (blue part of the cable into the blue slot, then the black into the dvd writer , leaving the grey one free), i have the jumper off on the dvd writer at the moment, so the first thing i'll do when i get in later is try putting the jumper onto cs and test it from there.

is this setup correct?

i've tried uninstalling all the s/w and the dvd drive and reinstalling but this has made no difference, should i try reinstlling the ide drivers?

or is the issue something else? any help would be greatly appreciated


btw it reads dvd's and cd's ok as ive installed from the same drive, it just doesnt burn dvds, not tested burning cd's

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: PHICTION
i hope you can help and apologies if this has been posted before, i am having problems with my dvd-r drives...

I see nothing wrong with how you have your devices connected. Have you inspected the blue IDE port, to make sure none of the pins are bent or pushed-in? Also, are you using the 40-wire ribbon or the 80-wire? One of each came with the board, the 80-wire labelled as HDD. Give that cable a try. Other than that, I'm at a loss for ideas. I assume you have tried to get each drive working separately, configured as master.

-phil

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: michale
I have the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe with the latest (as of 20 Dec 2006) BIOS..
Running a Duo Core 2 E6600, 2 gigs of RAM and an EVGA 8800GTS Video Card.


Is there anything I need to do, hardware wise, to prep the Motherboard for a 64-bit XP insttallation??

Thanx,


Michale

The only thing I would suggest would be to flash the BIOS to 1707.

-phil

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: GollyJer
I currently have a XFX 7600GS (silent) as my primary video card.

Can I throw another nVidia PCIe video card in the 2nd PCIe slot and use it to run a 3rd and 4th monitor?

The reason I ask is that installing a PCI video card (Matrox P650) doesn't seem to be supported.

Thanks.

I theory, I would say that you should be able to do that.

-phil

 

[PHICTION]

i've tried both cables as wasnt sure which one to use, i'll play around with the jumpers, trying cable select and master, yes tried both drives as well

i will also double check the pins

 

[nmlss2007]

I have an interesting situation.
I have a 1.03G revision board, it seems to be very recent, with an E6600 installed. I installed BIOS 1707. To make a long story short, I cannot seem to get this board above 350 in any way. With cheap memory, I could do 350 FSB with all the settings on 'auto' and the memory at 1:1 4-4-4-12. As soon as I went to 360, orthos would complain.
So I bought OCZ Platinum, supposedly 6400 4-4-4-15. Well, the SPD says otherwise and sure enough, at anything above 350 I need to put it at 5-5-5-20 (!) and get the voltage to 2.20 to get it to work, so the RAM is very much NOT capable of running at its stock specs. Even with this RAM though, the machine will not even POST past 375 and it won't be benchmark-and-orthos stable at anything above 355. Changing voltages other than RAM from Auto to anything will not help in any way. Since everyone seems to be going well above 400, I am wondering what I'm doing wrong. For reference, the power supply is an (expensive!) PC Power And Cooling Silencer 750, I disabled hyperpath3 and manually specified PCIexpress and PCI frequencies. No luck. Help.

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: nmlss2007
I have an interesting situation.
I have a 1.03G revision board, it seems to be very recent, with an E6600 installed. I installed BIOS 1707. To make a long story short, I cannot seem to get this board above 350 in any way. With cheap memory, I could do 350 FSB with all the settings on 'auto' and the memory at 1:1 4-4-4-12. As soon as I went to 360, orthos would complain.
So I bought OCZ Platinum, supposedly 6400 4-4-4-15. Well, the SPD says otherwise and sure enough, at anything above 350 I need to put it at 5-5-5-20 (!) and get the voltage to 2.20 to get it to work, so the RAM is very much NOT capable of running at its stock specs. Even with this RAM though, the machine will not even POST past 375 and it won't be benchmark-and-orthos stable at anything above 355. Changing voltages other than RAM from Auto to anything will not help in any way. Since everyone seems to be going well above 400, I am wondering what I'm doing wrong. For reference, the power supply is an (expensive!) PC Power And Cooling Silencer 750, I disabled hyperpath3 and manually specified PCIexpress and PCI frequencies. No luck. Help.

There's a well-known issue with this board and many kits of DDR2, where SPD timings must be enabled inorder to exceed 360. Apparently, it has something to with certain advanced memory timings that need tweaking, but are not available in the P5WDH BIOS. This may, or may not, be what's holding you back.

More info can be found throughout this thread:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=110193

-phil

 

[nmlss2007]

Originally posted by: phile
There's a well-known issue with this board and many kits of DDR2, where SPD timings must be enabled inorder to exceed 360. Apparently, it has something to with certain advanced memory timings that need tweaking, but are not available in the P5WDH BIOS. This may, or may not, be what's holding you back.

Yes, I forgot to mention, that was done. For giggles, I even set them ludicrously high - 6-6-6-20 - to see if that would improve the situation. No luck. 5-5-5-20, no luck. 4-4-4-15, which are on the sticker for 800MHz operation.. no luck.
Now, the CPU runs 350 for literally days at a time *at stock voltage*, so I can't imagine that it wouldn't be able to run 375. I tried Vcores as high as 1.55 (!!!)... no difference.
Edit: I am an idiot! 'Enable SPD timings' implies leaving them on auto, correct? I did the opposite and always kept it on manual assuming that that was what the problem was. Oh well: more tests tonight then.

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: nmlss2007

Originally posted by: phile
There's a well-known issue with this board and many kits of DDR2, where SPD timings must be enabled inorder to exceed 360. Apparently, it has something to with certain advanced memory timings that need tweaking, but are not available in the P5WDH BIOS. This may, or may not, be what's holding you back.

Yes, I forgot to mention, that was done. For giggles, I even set them ludicrously high - 6-6-6-20 - to see if that would improve the situation. No luck. 5-5-5-20, no luck. 4-4-4-15, which are on the sticker for 800MHz operation.. no luck.
Now, the CPU runs 350 for literally days at a time *at stock voltage*, so I can't imagine that it wouldn't be able to run 375. I tried Vcores as high as 1.55 (!!!)... no difference.
Edit: I am an idiot! 'Enable SPD timings' implies leaving them on auto, correct? I did the opposite and always kept it on manual assuming that that was what the problem was. Oh well: more tests tonight then.

A few comments:

Where overclocking is concerned, each individual component has unique characteristics. From what I have observed, some E6600s can achieve very nice overclocks with little added voltage, while others - like mine - are way too hungry for volts to make extreme overclocking manageable. That being said, I highly doubt your E6600 would be load-stable at 350 with vcore at auto. Have you done any load testing? If not, grab a copy of Orthos Stress Prime (http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm) and run the Blend test for a few hours minimum.

Also, if you have not run a memtest86 diagnostic (http://www.memtest.org) on your memory, you might want to do so, just to confirm that your mem is fine.

The bottom line: there is no guarantee that any individual combination of hardware will be able to achieve any particualar overclock. My rig (see link) should be able to do 400, in theory. However, anything beyond 333 either requires too much vcore, or simply will run stable. I have tried every combination/permutation of BIOS settings, without any success. It has been suggested by many that my CPU is the likely culprit. Since it comes from a known weak batch (week 24), I tend to agree.

-phil

 

[nmlss2007]

Originally posted by: phile
Where overclocking is concerned, each individual component has unique characteristics. From what I have observed, some E6600s can achieve very nice overclocks with little added voltage, while others - like mine - are way too hungry for volts to make extreme overclocking manageable. That being said, I highly doubt your E6600 would be load-stable at 350 with vcore at auto. Have you done any load testing? If not, grab a copy of Orthos Stress Prime (http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm) and run the Blend test for a few hours minimum.

Well, there are some observations of my own: first, the most curious part, which is that with all the voltages except the RAM at 'auto' (CPU-Z shows 1.175V for Vcore, but see below) Orthos will, indeed, run for hours on end at 350MHz. No problem. I even ran 3DMark 06 for a few hours (on 650/900 7900GTs in SLI) with no problem. All well and good... except that as soon as I raise the clock to 360, the benchmarks start complaining and anything over 360 is not even boot-stable.

Also, if you have not run a memtest86 diagnostic (http://www.memtest.org) on your memory, you might want to do so, just to confirm that your mem is fine.

That I didn't think of doing. I usually do, but I figured that I paid for premium RAM for a reason and the memory seems fine if underspec at 350. I think I'll give it a shot.

The bottom line: there is no guarantee that any individual combination of hardware will be able to achieve any particualar overclock. My rig (see link) should be able to do 400, in theory. However, anything beyond 333 either requires too much vcore, or simply will run stable. I have tried every combination/permutation of BIOS settings, without any success. It has been suggested by many that my CPU is the likely culprit. Since it comes from a known weak batch (week 24), I tend to agree.

I realise that, but if you read *every single* review out there, it seems that the E6600s will run 400FSB on a bad day and be MB-limited at 450 on a good one, with 400FSBs being commonplace even with stock coolers. Now, we all know perfectly well that the chips that get sent to reviewers are very, very carefully picked: there is no doubt about that and there hasn't been for at least seven years (I'm being generous). Still, even on the forums, anything below a 400FSB seems to be the exception, not the rule. Therefore, when my CPU seems to have a solid wall at 350-355, I start to suspect that I'm doing something wrong myself.

A few extra considerations:
- enabling SPD only helped marginally: I could boot at higher speeds, but XP would BSOD within 30 seconds of getting to desktop at anything over 370. 360 was still not benchmark-stable, but I could run Orthos for half an hour or so.
- Enabling Hyperpath3 creates a solid wall at 333.
- Clearly OCZ's RAM is not performing to spec: they advertise 4-4-4-12 @ 400, the RAM won't even do that at 333 AND the SPD is indeed programmed for 5-5-5-15 (the MB hten decides to do 5-5-5-20 for some reason). I am back to my (very) long held belief that premium RAM only makes sense for long-term reliability in a server environment and that there is exactly one brand to buy for that, Crucial. For the rest, the Nanya/Elpida chipped generics often are significantly better than 'enthusiast' RAM.
- There must be something going on with my Vcore: with the auto setting, I get 1.185 idle and 1.288-1.296 under load out of CPU-Z, whereas if I set the Vcore manually to anything I get 1.213V *regardless* of the setting. Now, either CPU-Z 1.38 is lieing through its teeth, or my motherboard is doing something very innovative.
BTW, CoreTemp reports the core temperatures as 58-60C under Orthos load.. indefinitely. I am using a Noctua UH-12F cooler. Curiously again, if I set the Vcore manually to something out and out ridiculous, like 1.55, the load temperature goes way up and like every Conroe I've used, as soon as CoreTemp hits 80 or above, problems surface very rapidly.
I have to assume from the above that CPU-Z is reporting the manual Vcores incorrectly. Even with this said, however, I don't understand how or why overvolting the hell out of everything won't even get me 10 extra FSB MHz. This seems inconsistent with what everyone is saying.

For addtional fun and giggles: I own another P5W, 1.02G revision, one of the early ones, with 150x BIOS. It has an E6300 in it which has been running at 333FSB for half of forever with generic RAM at 1:1 (despite the RAM's ratings, it runs 350FSB at 4-4-4-12 without skipping a beat... which the OCZ premium does not). It works very nicely up to about 340FSB, stock Vcore (which is materially higher than the 6600 for some reason). It will not go higher than that and again, changing voltages does not gain me anything.
I own two P5B Deluxes, 1.02G, very very recent (I believe like the second P5W they're november boxes), with 804 BIOS. They both have E6300s in them and they both run 333 with the generic RAM in them (this generic has ELPIDA chips, the generic on the P5W has Nanya ones). I have not tried any further OC with these, because they're secondary desktop machines.
For further reference, all these machines run in Antec cases, with fanless Noctua or ThermalRight heatsinks and with PC Power&Cooling silencer PSs. All have 7900GTs and Maxtor SATA HDDs, no other peripherals. One of the P5Ws has an X-Fi in it.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for your reply!

 

[QuietRiot]

Originally posted by: nmlss2007

- There must be something going on with my Vcore: with the auto setting, I get 1.185 idle and 1.288-1.296 under load out of CPU-Z, whereas if I set the Vcore manually to anything I get 1.213V *regardless* of the setting. Now, either CPU-Z 1.38 is lieing through its teeth, or my motherboard is doing something very innovative.

Looking around the forums you'll see people claiming that CPU-Z does not report the voltages correctly in some cases.

What innovative thing the motherboard/cpu might be doing is activating C1E and SpeedStep. You sound rather knowledgeable and I would be surprised that you overlooked them, but stuff as such happens to us all.

Could you post your BIOS settings?


And, going back to your overclocking experience, indeed, it seems that there's something wrong there. As Phile mentioned each individual part is different, but it seems that Conroes can consistently achieve FSBs of 350+. Again, post your BIOS settings and let us take a look at it.

 

[VivienM]

Originally posted by: Butterbean
I have been debating pulling this board out for an Intel before I get Vista and I am assessing all the functions. ASUS doesn't have much on site about this except for a small feature description and 2 unanswered qestions in forum.

Any reason in particular you're considering switching the board?

(After my horrendous Vista experience, I admit that switching to an Intel board is tempting here too...)

 

[imported_browsing]

I've got a problem. Right now I'm using a 150gb raptor and four seagate .10 320gb drives. I've got them all hooked up to the P5W DH Deluxe with one on the jmicron and one on the easysata. I wanted to check the health of the drives with SeaTools but when I load it up via floppy, it freezes on 'detecting'. So I'm assuming its a problem reading from the jmicron or the ezsata. My question is, what pci sata cards are you using with your P5W and is there a difference in speed between the onboard jmicron and a pci port sata card that would meet my needs? (no raid)

 

[cpl edge]

i love this mobo. bios rev 1707. i run vista business ed. with the new bis rev. you have more options for vista and 64 bit OSes.

vista has sound options and x64 has ram options.

 

[mikepaul]

Originally posted by: VivienM(After my horrendous Vista experience, I admit that switching to an Intel board is tempting here too...)

This is a wonderful board for PCI MPEG-2 capture cards, but Vista is apparently ready to shut them down on me. I have too many VHS tapes still to convert so I'm researching what will likely end up being expensive USB replacement equipment. It's a shame that Dazzle is gone and Canopus has abandoned some of their equipment, but them's the breaks...

http://www.mikepaul.com/VistaCaptureSupport.jpg

 

[jazzpicker]

I've been using the 1602 bios on my P5W DH Deluxe and would consistently score near 111,000 on AquaMark 3 benchmark. For no good reason I flashed to 1707, reset the mem speeds correctly and noticed a decrease in performance to around 103,000.
This morning I went back to the 1602 bios and am back up to 111,000. Any reason for this? Am I doing something wrong other than screwing around with the bios on a perfectly performing computer?

 

[imported_browsing]

I'm running on 1801, the beta. What's the deal, are they ever going to make it an official version?

 

[iamdw]

Originally posted by: browsing
I'm running on 1801, the beta. What's the deal, are they ever going to make it an official version?

Perhaps it could be due to a possible skip straight to 1901 since that version is quoted here as "supporting" a FSB of 1333. IF you scroll down to the P5W DH Deluxe, you'll see 1901 as being the listed BIOS.

Unfortunately noone can find 1901 and test and 1801 has been around for some time now without going official. Seems we're in a bit of limbo now.