Asus A8V Deluxe

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The Old Man

I am thinking of upgrading to an AMD64 processor from my current AMD XP2500+
Barton running nicely at 3000+ speed out of the box. In terms of
motherboards I wanted to stick with Asus as they've always been great
boards.

The Asus A8V Deluxe got 85% and a silver award in the UK based PC Format
magazine Motherboard comparison feature. It said it was a biatch to set up,
needing floppies that didn't come with it. They said it was "amazingly
powerful and versatile in the right hands". "...system freezing, locking up
when restarting and numerous spurious errors, this is one of the most
frustrating installations of Windows we've ever seen.". "Windows refused to
see the SATA drives without a driver diskette which isn't provided.". After
some time and struggling with he clumsy driver setup they got it running,
with memory throughput the highest they had seen on any platform - 6,195
MBps, attributed to automatic overclocking cleverness. Only recommended for
those going down the 64 bit route who can handle inevitable BIOS upgrades
and awkward set up.

I was upset about this as I won't buy a potentially unstable Board that's a
bitch to configure and consumes time when trying to build systems for
friends. Will Asus be releasing an Nvidia based motherboard for AMD64 CPU's?
They also reviewed the MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum which is an Nvidia Nforce 3
solution but it got 79%. PCF said it "was lacking the features or
performance to stand out from the crowd".

Is there a powerful and reliable motherboard solution yet to owning an AMD64
CPU? Will Asus be providing it or do they already? Will AMD64 CPU based
motherboards be compatible with the AMD64-FX range of CPU's or is it best to
hold off on a 64bit solution until the FX comes down in price?

Input welcome!

Graham.
 
bill@micro$oft.com (The Old said:
I am thinking of upgrading to an AMD64 processor from my current AMD
XP2500+ Barton running nicely at 3000+ speed out of the box. In terms
of motherboards I wanted to stick with Asus as they've always been
great boards.

The Asus A8V Deluxe got 85% and a silver award in the UK based PC
Format magazine Motherboard comparison feature. It said it was a biatch
to set up, needing floppies that didn't come with it. They said it was
"amazingly powerful and versatile in the right hands". "...system
freezing, locking up when restarting and numerous spurious errors, this
is one of the most frustrating installations of Windows we've ever
seen.". "Windows refused to see the SATA drives without a driver
diskette which isn't provided.". After some time and struggling with he
clumsy driver setup they got it running, with memory throughput the
highest they had seen on any platform - 6,195 MBps, attributed to
automatic overclocking cleverness. Only recommended for those going
down the 64 bit route who can handle inevitable BIOS upgrades and
awkward set up.

I was upset about this as I won't buy a potentially unstable Board
that's a bitch to configure and consumes time when trying to build
systems for friends. Will Asus be releasing an Nvidia based motherboard
for AMD64 CPU's? They also reviewed the MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum which is
an Nvidia Nforce 3 solution but it got 79%. PCF said it "was lacking
the features or performance to stand out from the crowd".

Is there a powerful and reliable motherboard solution yet to owning an
AMD64 CPU? Will Asus be providing it or do they already? Will AMD64 CPU
based motherboards be compatible with the AMD64-FX range of CPU's or is
it best to hold off on a 64bit solution until the FX comes down in
price?

Input welcome!

Graham.
Click to expand...
Well, I am surprised about the build problems. I built a PC with the A8V
and a 3500+ in August. I have installed both XP Pro and X64 on 2xSATA and
IDE HDDs. I have played with RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 1+0. The only problem
I have had has been with Promise drivers for non RAID, 2 x SATA drives on
X64.

The driver disk referred to is explained in the A8V manual and is
available from the enclosed CD.

Overall, I have had no problems with the A8V, no set up problems except
for a beta OS driver issue, and everything loaded and started OK,
including a DOS BIOS upgrade. I am very pleased with it and am just
loading it, now I've played with it, to be my #1 PC on a network.

Hope this cheers you up :-)


John

Please remove "NO-SPAM" if sending email.
 
Hi, I am sure if you check the CD there is a program there that will make
you a floppy SATA driver disk, guess they are saving money, some
manufacturerers included the floppy. I just built a FX53 on this board and
customer loaded Red Hat Linux enterprise 3 update 3 on it just fine using
SATA drives. Make sure you are using a good power supply on it, 400W and up.

Doug
www.lynncomp.com
 
I've got one, A8V Rev 2. Which mainboard revision did PC Format review?
(I'd guess one of the older ones, due to publication lead times.) I've only
had the A8V for a few weeks, but it seems to be robust.

The board does not come with floppies for the Via or Promise drivers. Floppy
creation utilities are on the installation CD, but obviously that would be
of little use unless you have access to another Windows PC with a floppy
drive. (That doesn't strike me as a major problem for non-hermits.) I did a
SATA RAID 0 installation; I don't know whether any drivers are needed for a
non-RAID SATA installation on the mainboard's Via SATA controllers. (I
haven't used the Promise controllers at all, so far.) I'd hope not, as they
weren't needed on my previous system, using an Asus P4P800 mainboard (P4,
865PE chipset).

Windows XP didn't seem to be any more difficult to set up than on the Intel
system. I had some awkwardness with drive letter assignments, as I was
setting up a SATA Raid 0 array as the boot drive. (At the first go, the XP
installer wanted to assign the lower drive letters to the optical drives,
which were ATAPI types. I went through much the same thing with the P4P800.
I'll have to understand that better, some day. In both systems, I got the
array to be assigned C: after a little messing around. That is to say, I
don't recall exactly how I got there.)

I know little about such things, but the memory controller built in to the
A64 CPU is supposed to give better performance than the separate one in the
mainboard chipset as used in Intel systems. That is *without* resorting to
"automatic overclocking cleverness". It is supposed to be genuinely better
than the admirable Intel 975.

As regards the FX CPUs, there have been two types that I've read of: Socket
940 and Socket 939. I believe that they're moving to 939 only, as the 939
boards don't require the more expensive (but slower) registered DDR memory.

The FX chips may come down in price, but they may not be called FX CPUs. For
example, the FX-55 has just been announced. The Socket 939 FX-53 has been
demoted to an A64 4000+. The 4000+ and the FX-53 are supposed to be
identical, except that the FX-53 permits the use of multipliers above its
nominal (12X). I have read that the 4000+ will be like my 3500+, which only
permits the use of multipliers at or below its specified one (11X for the
3500+). That is of no relevance if you don't overclock.

Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) likes the MSI Neo2 Platinum K8N (nForce3 250
Ultra) board, claiming better performance than the Via K8T800 Pro boards. I
decided to stay with Asus.

Speaking of overclocking, I'm running my 3500+ at 11X220 MHz, or a hair's
breadth above stock 3800+ performance. (I admit that I've replaced the stock
AMD heatsink & fan with a Thermalright XP-120 monstrosity. Incidentally, an
XP-120 won't fit the MSI board.)

I believe that the A8V Rev 2 is ready for prime time. Its life in the market
may not be long, though, if things like PCI Express graphics slots, DDR2
memory, and NCQ (native command queuing) SATA drives become regarded as the
industry standards. It appears impossible to escape the influence of Intel,
even if you don't buy their products.

HTH.

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
Bob Knowlden said:
I've got one, A8V Rev 2. Which mainboard revision did PC Format review?
(I'd guess one of the older ones, due to publication lead times.) I've
only had the A8V for a few weeks, but it seems to be robust.

The board does not come with floppies for the Via or Promise drivers.
Floppy creation utilities are on the installation CD, but obviously that
would be of little use unless you have access to another Windows PC with a
floppy drive. (That doesn't strike me as a major problem for non-hermits.)
I did a SATA RAID 0 installation; I don't know whether any drivers are
needed for a non-RAID SATA installation on the mainboard's Via SATA
controllers. (I haven't used the Promise controllers at all, so far.) I'd
hope not, as they weren't needed on my previous system, using an Asus
P4P800 mainboard (P4, 865PE chipset).

Windows XP didn't seem to be any more difficult to set up than on the
Intel system. I had some awkwardness with drive letter assignments, as I
was setting up a SATA Raid 0 array as the boot drive. (At the first go,
the XP installer wanted to assign the lower drive letters to the optical
drives, which were ATAPI types. I went through much the same thing with
the P4P800. I'll have to understand that better, some day. In both
systems, I got the array to be assigned C: after a little messing around.
That is to say, I don't recall exactly how I got there.)

I know little about such things, but the memory controller built in to the
A64 CPU is supposed to give better performance than the separate one in
the mainboard chipset as used in Intel systems. That is *without*
resorting to "automatic overclocking cleverness". It is supposed to be
genuinely better than the admirable Intel 975.

As regards the FX CPUs, there have been two types that I've read of:
Socket 940 and Socket 939. I believe that they're moving to 939 only, as
the 939 boards don't require the more expensive (but slower) registered
DDR memory.

The FX chips may come down in price, but they may not be called FX CPUs.
For example, the FX-55 has just been announced. The Socket 939 FX-53 has
been demoted to an A64 4000+. The 4000+ and the FX-53 are supposed to be
identical, except that the FX-53 permits the use of multipliers above its
nominal (12X). I have read that the 4000+ will be like my 3500+, which
only permits the use of multipliers at or below its specified one (11X for
the 3500+). That is of no relevance if you don't overclock.

Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) likes the MSI Neo2 Platinum K8N (nForce3 250
Ultra) board, claiming better performance than the Via K8T800 Pro boards.
I decided to stay with Asus.

Speaking of overclocking, I'm running my 3500+ at 11X220 MHz, or a hair's
breadth above stock 3800+ performance. (I admit that I've replaced the
stock AMD heatsink & fan with a Thermalright XP-120 monstrosity.
Incidentally, an XP-120 won't fit the MSI board.)

I believe that the A8V Rev 2 is ready for prime time. Its life in the
market may not be long, though, if things like PCI Express graphics slots,
DDR2 memory, and NCQ (native command queuing) SATA drives become regarded
as the industry standards. It appears impossible to escape the influence
of Intel, even if you don't buy their products.

HTH.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies and the clarification over the floppy, one point well
made about the need for a second PC with floppy drive. Will we ever be free
of these damn things?!

I checked the website and their review isn't on there yet. I look at the
photo but the revision isn't available.
I have to say that things are not as straight forward at the moment if you
want to go for the AMD64.
When the nForce2 chipset came out its what everyone was told to buy,
whatever board manufacturer you went with. I love the A7N8X range.

I think I may end up waiting for the Asus introduction of a PCI-Express /
revised AMD64 pin compatible board. I was just reading how the next batch of
'affordable £150 region GeForce 6600 cards' will be released first in PCI-E
format with AGP versions to follow later in the year. A good indication of
the way things are going.
 
Yup. If you're looking into Athlon 64 CPUs, then waiting for Nforce 4 is
probably the best move. You can get socket 940, PCI Express, and a
(resumably) faster chipset. Not to mention, something more future proof.
If I hadn't had a system board go down I would have probably waited a couple
of months myself.

On the other hand, if you don't mind Nforce 3, AGP 8x, and socket 754, then
you can get some great deals on that hardware.
 
ocbwilg said:
Yup. If you're looking into Athlon 64 CPUs, then waiting for Nforce 4 is
probably the best move. You can get socket 940, PCI Express, and a
(resumably) faster chipset. Not to mention, something more future proof.
If I hadn't had a system board go down I would have probably waited a
couple of months myself.

On the other hand, if you don't mind Nforce 3, AGP 8x, and socket 754,
then you can get some great deals on that hardware.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't heard about the Nforce4! I'll certainly be
sticking with the Nforce solution after the excellent Nforce2 on the A7N8X
range. Think I'll wait a while first being a gamer. However for average home
users buying a AMD64perhaps a current board would be suitable.
 
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