a7n8x-dlx glitches

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bushy
  • Start date Start date
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Bushy

long time reader, first time poster.

I am quite interested in the a7n8x boards, more specifically the deluxe
version. I hesitate to purchase it though as the budget is tight as a
dolphins butt at the moment, and it would mean cpu and ram and case
and.....the whole shebang really (I am running a k6-2 350, yes yes, very
funny. solitaire is exciting, shutup!)

anyway, the point is, lots of people have been posting little things
screwing up.....sata drivers, sound issues, etc. am I just getting the wrong
impression because all I read are problems, that is, rarely will people post
how good a new purchase is, they tend to just tell us their problems.
comments anyone?

the other thing I wonder about is this dual channel memory thing. some folks
are saying it is worth the effort, others say it is not that big of a
difference. once again, comments would be nice.

cheers all
Bushy
 
i have one..
actually 3 (2 are non deluxe)
had a bios death on one but otherwise solid boards.
Been with Asus for 5 years not one dud.
 
i have one..
actually 3 (2 are non deluxe)
had a bios death on one but otherwise solid boards.
Been with Asus for 5 years not one dud.
Click to expand...

Same here. I have one of the revision-2 A7N8X Deluxe boards. Aside from
the fact that Asus still refuses to let slow CPU fans spin up without having
the Winbond Wench scream about it, the board is flawless. Luckily, she can
be BIOS-muzzled.

I've also been using Asus boards since the P5A, and they've never failed me.
 
anyway, the point is, lots of people have been posting little things
screwing up.....sata drivers, sound issues, etc. am I just getting the wrong
impression because all I read are problems, that is, rarely will people post
how good a new purchase is, they tend to just tell us their problems.
comments anyone?

the other thing I wonder about is this dual channel memory thing. some folks
are saying it is worth the effort, others say it is not that big of a
difference. once again, comments would be nice.
Click to expand...
I went to a the deluxe about a month ago after my A7V333 died and have
been happy with it. I don't use any SATA drives though. I have noticed
a slight speed increase with the dual channel memory, but the emphasis
is heavily on slight.

I am still amused (in a geeky way) by having a PC that hasn't got any
PCI slots being used that works great.
 
Same here. I have one of the revision-2 A7N8X Deluxe boards. Aside from
the fact that Asus still refuses to let slow CPU fans spin up without having
the Winbond Wench scream about it, the board is flawless. Luckily, she can
be BIOS-muzzled.

I've also been using Asus boards since the P5A, and they've never failed me.
Click to expand...

I'm on my 5th Asus board since I first tried them in the socket-7 days,
I expect this one (A7n8x non-dlx v2) to outlive its usefulness just like
the last four I had. Have had other brands die on me in 9-12 months, USB
problems, AGP stuck in 2X mode, Ram timings that didn't work, etc, etc.

My first homebuilt PC (July 29,1996)
Asus P55TVP4 & AMD K590 ...... $299
32 Megs of EDO RAM ........... $300
Matrox Millenium 2 Megs ...... $245
Teac 3.5" Floppy Drive ....... $35
Heat Sink & Fan .............. $10
Shipping ..................... $12
TOTAL ........................ $901

Vendor - Motherboards for Less, they seen me comin! LOL! $901 OMG!!!

Ed
 
Bushy said:
long time reader, first time poster.

I am quite interested in the a7n8x boards, more specifically the deluxe
version. I hesitate to purchase it though as the budget is tight as a
dolphins butt at the moment, and it would mean cpu and ram and case
and.....the whole shebang really (I am running a k6-2 350, yes yes, very
funny. solitaire is exciting, shutup!)

anyway, the point is, lots of people have been posting little things
screwing up.....sata drivers, sound issues, etc. am I just getting the wrong
impression because all I read are problems, that is, rarely will people post
how good a new purchase is, they tend to just tell us their problems.
comments anyone?
Click to expand...

I love mine, I have two, the first one I got did suffer a bios death (whilst
trying a stupid overclock), so I bought another and 'hot-flashed' the dead
bios, bit scary but fixed the problem. I have since built another pc using
the 2nd board I bought and replaced both boards' cmos batteries and had no
further problems. The battery fix is well documented but not proven, some
of the stock batteries were only giving 2.9v and replacements give 3.2-3.3v.

Overclocks a dream now, and with the replacement batteries I haven't managed
to lock the bios doing anything stupid (which I do from time to time). Next
is a few volt mods / watercooling ;)

It's a good board with good onboard sound, the firewire and sata raid did it
for me.
the other thing I wonder about is this dual channel memory thing. some folks
are saying it is worth the effort, others say it is not that big of a
difference. once again, comments would be nice.
Click to expand...

I have only run the board in dual channel, so can't compare it to using one
stick.


--

Ian

A7N8X Deluxe v1.04
Uber Bios 1006 + Sata Bios
2700 TB @ 2310MHz
Corsair Twinx1024-3200LLPT
210 x 11.0
ATI Radeon 9700Pro
2 x Maxtor 120GB 8MB SATA RAID 0
 
I'm on my 5th Asus board since I first tried them in the socket-7 days,
I expect this one (A7n8x non-dlx v2) to outlive its usefulness just like
the last four I had. Have had other brands die on me in 9-12 months, USB
problems, AGP stuck in 2X mode, Ram timings that didn't work, etc, etc.

My first homebuilt PC (July 29,1996)
Asus P55TVP4 & AMD K590 ...... $299
32 Megs of EDO RAM ........... $300
Matrox Millenium 2 Megs ...... $245
Teac 3.5" Floppy Drive ....... $35
Heat Sink & Fan .............. $10
Shipping ..................... $12
TOTAL ........................ $901

Vendor - Motherboards for Less, they seen me comin! LOL! $901 OMG!!!

Ed
Click to expand...

My first PC was an XT clone that ran at a blazing 6 or 10 mhz (there
was a turbo switch for that option) and cost about $2800. I slowly
replaced parts until all that was left of the original was the case.

The turbo switch was necessary because games and stuff assumed that
all PCs ran at 6mhz so they ran too fast at 10. They'd run real quick
now I bet.
 
My first PC was an XT clone that ran at a blazing 6 or 10 mhz (there
was a turbo switch for that option) and cost about $2800. I slowly
replaced parts until all that was left of the original was the case.

The turbo switch was necessary because games and stuff assumed that
all PCs ran at 6mhz so they ran too fast at 10. They'd run real quick
now I bet.
Click to expand...

My first was a whitebox Intel 486-25DX, it had that turbo switch too,
IIRC it cost me like $2900, no CD or sound, 14", 100 MB HDD. Then had a
486-DX66, been building/upgrading my own since then with the exception
of my last6 Intel, a PII-400 Compaq ($2600 retail), my work place paid
for 1/2 of it, trying to get them to pay for a 9800 pro now! ;p

Cheers,
Ed
 
I'm pretty sure that there are lots of ASUS users who don't even know
that these forums exist because the systems work just fine. The
interesting thing to me, and I say this as a computer designer of many
years, is that it is so easy for an amateur to put a really powerful
and complicated computer together and have a high probability that it
will work just fine in the end.

Considering that this board cost me $130 new, it boggles my mind that
such a complicated printed circuit board could be had for that low a
price. If we had built this board at HP it would probably cost us (not
the customer) over $1000.

If you are careful and methodical, buy good components, and bring the
board up in well-defined steps where you only change one thing at a
time, then you've got a good chance of it coming up just fine.

arnie
 
I've had 3 machines based on Asus boards and I've currently got a A7N8X
dlx rev1 at home and a rev2 at work, both worked great from the first
install. I can't say the same for a gigabyte kt600 mb I was forced to buy at
work. After 3 days of trying to get winxp pro to installed (7 attempts in
total, it even crashed in the installer!) without self destructing after 2
hours, I went out and got the a7n8x rev2 instead, it was that or my sanity.
The problems could have been the ram, psu (I was forced to buy a £30 case
not my original choice) or even the hdd but they all work great with the
asus and so far not one bluescreen or reset. They may cost more some brands
but you get a lot more for your money.

So far I've detected absolutely no improvement from running in dual
channel mode in my home or work pc's, it may do if you use lower speed ram.
The sata connection is still corrupting data on my system with the new
drivers and bios, had to resort to the 681 versions to get it to work
(available on the asus website as beta drivers) thankfully I'm only using
them for data storage. As for the sound, provided you use the newest drivers
from nvidia, not the asus varity, then the sound is fine. I can't remember
the last bluescreen or reset I had.

Steve
 
Considering that this board cost me $130 new, it boggles my mind that
such a complicated printed circuit board could be had for that low a
price. If we had built this board at HP it would probably cost us (not
the customer) over $1000.
Click to expand...

Just got the A7N8X 2.0 DLX rebuilt, from newegg for $59 delivered. I
would never go with rebuilt for a main desktop but this is just for a
cruncher.
 
LMAO, yeah, anything that came from HP when I was working as an
engineer always cost 5-10 times what it should have cost. I remember
an HP spectrum analyzer that cost more than my home at the time.
However, I will also say anything HP was also of the highest quality
in the test equipment field.

--
Best regards,
Kyle

| I'm pretty sure that there are lots of ASUS users who don't even
know
| that these forums exist because the systems work just fine. The
| interesting thing to me, and I say this as a computer designer of
many
| years, is that it is so easy for an amateur to put a really powerful
| and complicated computer together and have a high probability that
it
| will work just fine in the end.
|
| Considering that this board cost me $130 new, it boggles my mind
that
| such a complicated printed circuit board could be had for that low a
| price. If we had built this board at HP it would probably cost us
(not
| the customer) over $1000.
|
| If you are careful and methodical, buy good components, and bring
the
| board up in well-defined steps where you only change one thing at a
| time, then you've got a good chance of it coming up just fine.
|
| arnie
|
| > long time reader, first time poster.
| >
| > I am quite interested in the a7n8x boards, more specifically the
deluxe
| > version. I hesitate to purchase it though as the budget is tight
as a
| > dolphins butt at the moment, and it would mean cpu and ram and
case
| > and.....the whole shebang really (I am running a k6-2 350, yes
yes, very
| > funny. solitaire is exciting, shutup!)
| >
| > anyway, the point is, lots of people have been posting little
things
| > screwing up.....sata drivers, sound issues, etc. am I just getting
the wrong
| > impression because all I read are problems, that is, rarely will
people post
| > how good a new purchase is, they tend to just tell us their
problems.
| > comments anyone?
| >
| > the other thing I wonder about is this dual channel memory thing.
some folks
| > are saying it is worth the effort, others say it is not that big
of a
| > difference. once again, comments would be nice.
| >
| > cheers all
| > Bushy
 
As for the sound, provided you use the newest drivers
from nvidia, not the asus varity, then the sound is fine. I can't remember
the last bluescreen or reset I had.

Steve
Click to expand...

But the funny thing is that there are probably lots of folks using the
Asus drivers that have no problem with the sound. That's what makes it
all so much fun.
 
|
| > As for the sound, provided you use the newest drivers
| >from nvidia, not the asus varity, then the sound is fine. I can't
remember
| >the last bluescreen or reset I had.
| >
| >Steve
| >
|
| But the funny thing is that there are probably lots of folks using
the
| Asus drivers that have no problem with the sound. That's what makes
it
| all so much fun.


I started out using the Asus audio drivers and all worked fine, in
fact, I've tried 3 different audio driver versions and they all worked
properly AFAIK, I did not take full advantage of the Dolby features
tho, don't have a surround sound setup, just a 4 speaker setup.
 
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