Official DO's and DON'T for ASUS A8N-SLI (PREMIUM)

[Rudee]

If one decides to avoid the ASUS software driver bundle all together and chooses to install the Nvidia Forceware 6.66 drivers, is it still recommended to avoid the SW IDE drivers and just use the Windows drivers? What is the issue?

 

[openwheelformula1]

I had truobles w/ 6.66 SW IDE drivers, so I recommend everyone to leave it alone. Plus, windows drivers are excellent in terms of performance. Why fix something that ain't broken?

 

[virtualrain]

I slipstreamed the full set of 6.66 drivers into my Windows install (including IDE) when I got my nForce4 machine and haven't looked back. YMMV.

 

[goldilox]

I had some initial hassles with this board and an Athlon 64 3800+ X2, which disappeared after I bought a new power supply and faster RAM. I flashed to 1007 before installing, and used all the latest drivers (as of 01Oct05). I had to manually set the RAM timings (auto was wrong) and boost the voltage to 2.7V. After this I ran memtest86+ for 24 hours without errors. I also slightly boosted the FSB to 201MHz, as recommended elsewhere here, to avoid PCI bus synch problems, although I think one of the BIOS revisions fixes this problem.

The BIOS setup reported no SATA drives, but these were recognised by the RAID setup utility and I was able to create a bootable RAID0 set. However, I also had my old PATA drive installed and after an XP install, I couldn't boot to RAID. I solved this by re-installing XP without the PATA drive, and adding it after installing XP to the RAID0 set.

I'm running the NF IDE drivers, with no problems so far. I'm not using the firewall stuff, since it's been reported as flaky just about everywhere.

I had some application hassles, mainly to do with multi-processor incompatibility. I have managed to solve all of these using the Windows Compatibility Kit (V4.1) - the SingleProcAffinity fix does the trick. MS also provide a single processor affinity fix for broken interrupt device drivers (intfiltr), but I haven't needed this (yet?).

Overall, I'm very happy with this setup. I was expecting some problems, given that dual core is fairly new to the desktop scene, but the effort has been worthwhile.

A8N SLI Premium
Athlon 64 3800+ X2
Corsair TwinX 1024 PC3200XL @ 2-2-2-5, 2.7V
2 x WD2500KS SATA II as RAID0 set on NVRAID controller.
Antec Neo-Power 480
1 x ST34416A (till I get everything I need off it!)
1 x ASUS Extreme 6600GT

 

[Pl0p]

This is a DO and a DON'T from Corsair themself:

Dear Valued Customer,

There is a limitation with the Athlon 64 which causes the memory controller which is built on to the CPU to run memory at DDR333 when more than 2 banks are filled. This is a limitation on the processor itself and not the memory. The basic steps you can take to attempt to get past this are as follows:

1. Upgrade to the latest BIOS available for your motherboard which can be found at the website of your mainboard company.

2. Set the Memory Frequency to DDR400 manually while setting the command rate of the memory (found in memory configuration) to "2T".

3. Make sure the memory voltage is set to at least 2.8 when running 4 modules.

Here is a view on my inverted working setup:
Picture of heatsinks and video modding

Done a LAN party last week-end and it worked without a single hitch on 4/5 games of which one was revolt
1600*1200*32*FULL in UT2K4 perfectly!

 

[DVad3r]

Don't buy a zalman 9500 HSF if you have a premium because you can only mount it NORTH/SOUTH and not EAST/WEST so it can blow the air into your cases exhaust fans, just a heads up.

 

[simonk83]

Jeez, why can't anything ever be easy?

Ok, I'm thinking of buying this board to go along with:

X2 4400+
x1800XT
OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum (2.3.2.5), NOT revision 2

Is someone able to tell me exactly what NOT to install As far as I can tell, I should avoid the FIREWALL and ACTIVE ARMOUR and the IDE drivers from the install disk? How about the chipset drivers.. should I install to stock first, then download and install the 6.65 drivers, then update my BIOS (which BIOS version?)

Sorry for all the questions, but I thought I'd made a good choice with this board until I read this thread

Thanks guys,

Simon

 

[wanderer27]

Don't install the Drivers on the CD, download the 6.65 Drivers from their Site.

You'll have a choice of three Drivers. Install the SMBus, and I think the other is the Ethernet (could be wrong). Don't install the IDE.
When the install is running, it'll prompt for the Firewall & Armour, just say no to these.

How much Memory are you looking at ? I ask because four sticks seem to cause problems, and not just for ASUS MBs.

What's up with OCZ rev 2 ? Maybe something I should know for the future

This is a good MB, though there can be some challenges to initially setting it up. There's lots of help here for just about anything you run into though.

BTW - welcome to the boards

 

[simonk83]

Thanks mate

No, there's nothing wrong with the Revision 2 RAM. It's actually superior, and most people have it as it overclocks better, but unfortunately I only have Rev 1

I have 2gb RAM, but its 2 sticks so I should be OK

Now I just have to wait for the x1800 to be released hehe

Thanks again

 

[Martyuk39]

I've put together the following:

Asus A8N-SLI Premium (bios 1007)
AMD X2 4200+ (edit - left this out!)
2x1024MB Crucial CT2KIT12864Z40B
Gigabyte 7800GT
2x Samsung Spinpoint Sata II (seperate drives at the moment)
Antec Sonata II case
Sony DVDRW
Sony DVDROM
Windows XP Pro SP2

Absolutely no problems EXCEPT it takes about 2 minutes to get into Windows, that's 2 minutes of Windows splash screen. Oh, and Futuremark 05 hangs. I haven't overclocked yet. All temps in the 30s.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: Martyuk39
I've put together the following:

Asus A8N-SLI Premium (bios 1007)
AMD X2 4200+ (edit - left this out!)
2x1024MB Crucial CT2KIT12864Z40B
Gigabyte 7800GT
2x Samsung Spinpoint Sata II (seperate drives at the moment)
Antec Sonata II case
Sony DVDRW
Sony DVDROM
Windows XP Pro SP2

Absolutely no problems EXCEPT it takes about 2 minutes to get into Windows, that's 2 minutes of Windows splash screen. Oh, and Futuremark 05 hangs. I haven't overclocked yet. All temps in the 30s.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Is Windows a fresh install? If not, they may be your problem.

 

[Martyuk39]

Yes it is a fresh install

 

[wanderer27]

Sounds similar to this. You may want to check it out:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=34&threadid=1704577&enterthread=y

 

[KingCheeba]

edit:
sorry wrong post

 

[Babbler]

Hello all,

My first post - mostly thanks to the wonders of the SLI Premium board :|

I bought this board about a month ago. It ran for 2 weeks without a problem - everything running like a dream with upgraded drivers (never used the firewall as I use zonealarm).

Then it all went wrong. Overnight the computer rebooted twice, and then did so again when I was looking at it. When I tried to install anything the system would crash. Sent the report to Microsoft and the reply back was that it was a memory problem (the crash report thingy).

Tested the memory overnight using windows mem checker and it failed 5 out of the 6 tests over and over. Got in touch with OCZ (who are amazing for customer support - they replied straight away even thought it was Sunday!). Did everything they said (they have a whole thread about this MOBO and their memory!). No luck - still failed. So was told it was a memory problem and to RMA it. That is currently being done with the re-supplier. (off topic - my Archonis backup was corrupted on both the 2nd hard drive and the DVD - even though it was checked when created! Have yet to get a good backup using Archonis )

I am now having doubts it was the memory causing the problems from what I was reading here. It may have been the bios settings (I hope not as I will have to pay for the postage to get my mem back!). I am reletively new to the whole memory timings/voltage thing and have no idea how to set these up in the bios (can never find the thing in my bios to change!).

Anyway - getting to the point. My hard drive now occasionally fails to get detected on re-boot even though I am running my old PC memory now (while the OCZ is RMA'd). It is the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300Gb SATA drive. When I go into the bios, change nothing, save and exit it gets re-detected and boots fine! No idea why - anyone have any ideas I could try? May be NCQ? I have the IDE and RAID drivers installed which I may remove now. The HDD light is constantly on as well (wasnt the case before I had all the mem problems).

Really thinking I should not have bought this motherboard based on reviews online and in a magazine - don't think I can get my money back now its used or get an exchange

Hopefully the memory will come back ok and that will be another problem solved.

Thanks in advance,

D

 

[Babbler]

One other thing - the AMD 64 3700+ isnt listed as a supported CPU but seems to work fine. Could this be the problem? It is a reletively new CPU I think so that may be why its not listed?

 

[wanderer27]

You didn't by chance install the NVidia IDE Drivers from the Chipset Drivers did you ?

THAT will make your HD disappear. I had that happen to me the one time I had them installed. It even had my SATA listed as a Removable Drive - sheesh.

Don't know if you're OCing, but if so make sure your SATA is on a locked port, 3 or 4 on the non-raid.

CPU's not an issue. You and I are not the only ones running this combo


BTW - if your Memory's bad, it's not this boards fault. Yes, there are some issues and there are some bad MBs. But that's true of every 939 MB out that I've seen. I looked hard and long, and this board has the least issues that I can see.

If you need help getting things running, people here will be more than happy to help out.

 

[Babbler]

Thanks for your swift reply wanderer

I did install the IDE drivers yeah - it was before I found this forum - oh no... are they easy to uninstall? Surprised it makes a difference before windows loads...

Also got the drive connected to SATA1 - will move it to 3. Not OC'ing at the moment - want to get things stable first!

Have sent the memory back now. 12- days to RMA and counting...

Will give the drive a try tonight. Have also got the slow windows boot problem so will be switching NCQ off as mentioned elsewhere on these forums. Will get there eventually I hope

Thanks,

D

 

[wanderer27]

I think if you go like you're going to install your Chipset Drivers, you can just select the IDE Drivers (uncheck the other two), and it should come up with the option to Uninstall them (I think).

I always just did a clean re-format & re-install of the OS this early in the game. Keeps some of the extra clutter/junk out of your System

 

[Martyuk39]

Currently I've got a bad back. So I'd left a CD in each of the DVD drives to save bending down. The first CD was XP, the 2nd CD was Nvidia. Co-incidentally the problem started after I installed the NV software, that is to say, after I put the CD in the drive. However now as long as I don't occupy both the DVD drives then it boots up swiftly.

I've never come across this before. Does anybody know anything about this? The optical drives are primary and secondary IDE masters. Oh, I have installed the IDE drives. I wonder if that's the reason. I'll carry on experimenting.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: Babbler
Thanks for your swift reply wanderer

I did install the IDE drivers yeah - it was before I found this forum - oh no... are they easy to uninstall? Surprised it makes a difference before windows loads...

Also got the drive connected to SATA1 - will move it to 3. Not OC'ing at the moment - want to get things stable first!

Have sent the memory back now. 12- days to RMA and counting...

Will give the drive a try tonight. Have also got the slow windows boot problem so will be switching NCQ off as mentioned elsewhere on these forums. Will get there eventually I hope

Thanks,

D

fyi - All of the SATA ports are locked. My system is oc'd and I have a SATA RAID 0 on ports 3 and 4, and a 3rd SATA HDD on port 2.

 

[Babbler]

Hello,

Have just checked and I have version 6.65 of the drivers installed - should I install 6.66? Would that help some problems?

Also - found it in the Add/Remove software console. No IDE listed there though :|

Cheers,

D

 

[openwheelformula1]

6.65 is in fine. Uninstall "Nvidia Drivers", there will be an option for you to click which drivers to uninstall (ethernet, sw IDE,.....) However you need to "thoroughly" uninstall SW IDE drivers by using a dedicated program. Maybe a proper windoes reinstall could help if you don't know what to do. Make sure your memory is error free using memtest. Before you change anything for the memory, try testing w/ SPD timing first.

 

[wanderer27]

D[/quote]

fyi - All of the SATA ports are locked. My system is oc'd and I have a SATA RAID 0 on ports 3 and 4, and a 3rd SATA HDD on port 2.[/quote]

All eight of them ? Or just the RAID ports and then 3 & 4 on the other group ?

This is the first I've heard of this - good info

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: Babbler
Hello,

Have just checked and I have version 6.65 of the drivers installed - should I install 6.66? Would that help some problems?

Also - found it in the Add/Remove software console. No IDE listed there though :|

Cheers,

D

6.65 is what you want, 6.66 just has added support for Windows 2003/Server, and it gives some people headaches.

It's not in the Add/Remove console. Act like you are going to Install your Chipset Drivers for the first time - it should be in the NVidia Chipset Driver package.

When you first installed them you had the option to install three packages- SMBus, Ethernet (I think that's the second), and IDE. Uncheck SMBus & Ethernet, and act like you're going to install the IDE Drivers. When you hit "Next", it should have an option to Uninstall I believe.