A8N-SLI BIOS sent to me by Asus

[TantrumusMaximus]

I sent this to Asus yesterday when I found a thread on another site that discussed problems with the A8N SLI Deluxe and IO instability with SATA devices. The thread had a direct email address to a specific person at asus so I jumped on it.

Hello Jack,

I got your email address from a web forum where some owners of A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboards were complaining about instability and problems when adding or using the SATA controller on the mobo. I too recently added 2 SATA Seagate drives to my system and now my system is very sketchy. I am an enthusiast so I do overclock my CPU slightly and had wonderous results prior to having to use the SATA controller. Now the system won?t run at anything above and beyond stock settings and I have Corsair DDR500 quality ram to boot, plus a 680W powersupply. A lot of people on Anandtech are saying that the SATA bus does not lock as you raise the front side bus or HTT. Can you comment on whether this is true or whether a BIOS revision will be released? If I remove the SATA drives and disable the SATA controller all is good. I have tried many different SATA drives so it isn?t the drives.

Thanks,

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Response
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Dear Rob,

For the SATA problem, you may try the attached BIOS to see if it helps. (as it updates the SATA bootrom of both Nvidia and Silicon Image controller.)

As for the frequency lock, I suppose you may be overclocking the system from windows instead of from BIOS itself.

You can try to set the CPU frequency in BIOS to a non-standard value (so BIOS will treat it as overclocked), then the frequency should be locked, and you will be able to overclock the system even using windows based overclocking tools.

As I am normally out of the office, for any further questions, please feel free to contact my colleagues in ASUS UK office at: support@asustek.co.uk

And they will be able to provide you with further supports to your questions.

Regards,
Jack


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The revision sent to me is 1007-002. [Edit: I just noticed that there was a thread already that posted availability of this bios but apparently it is difficult to obtain.] I did not see this available on the site. If anyone is interested in this BIOS please PM me and I'll email it to you. Obvioulsy use at your own risk as I'm sure this is not a final release version.

 

[ajmiles]

Even though that BIOS is now widely available from the German and Taiwan FTP there is one big of good news in there.

This is the BIOS that includes the updated SATA Boot ROM I was promised in an email to ASUS about two weeks ago.

This was in response to my magically disappearing 300gb Maxtor Diamonmax 10s. They said this Boot ROM would fix it. I've bee using it since it came out, and while it normally takes a few days for drives to disappear, I haven't lost one yet.

It really would help though if ASUS actually told us what they were doing in Beta BIOSes!

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

I'm glad it seemed to have resolved your issue. I am however amazed at their swift replies to email. The person I am dealing with responds almost as if I was in an IM session with him.

I can't wait to try this 1007-002 BIOS tonight when I get home from work.

 

[mofrack]

Sweet. This is great news. Finally, I have a good enough reason to upgrade from the 1005 beta I'm running now.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

Fixed nothing for me....argh!

There are more options in the bios:

Under RAM timings there are a few more. Under Jumperfree there is the ability to lock the PCI to 33Mhz. The SLI config changed to the front page.

But other than that I see nothing different as far as stability or performance.

 

[ajmiles]

I'm almost convinced this has fixed the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 issue. I was doing some rather extreme 2T overclocking last night, and kept killing my machine, and that is normally when the drives disappear.

Everything stayed solid, system reboots, all drives appear and I boot as per normal. Well, that's the DM10 issue gone (for me at least), just 1T to go.

 

[MeatHead88]

I was having the same issues with my DiamondMax 9 hard drives. I called Maxtor, they sent me 2 bios updates for the DiamondMax 9 and 1 for my new Diamond Max 10s.

I would call them, then need some codes off the drives to make sure they send you the right firmware.

Call them, its worth it.
1-800-262-9867.

 

[MeatHead88]

Oh, and to add, I had just received my DiamondMax 10 drives and already there was updated firmware for them. So if your are more than 2-3 weeks old, the firmware has been has been updated already.

 

[imported_starfury6]

Is the firmware readily available for the DM10's?

 

[MatrixVPR]

Ok so i just updated to 1007.002 and now i can't get my memory timings as tight? I would much rather not risk screwing up my Raptor but was just wondering if anyone else had to relax their mem? If i didn't tone down the mem then i would get a message that my windows config file was corrupt and then after the relaxation of timings the file was no longer corrupt? WEIRD!!??

 

[MatrixVPR]

Never mind!!! I'm a Tard! I looked at my own sig. after my last post and realized that i was trying to make my timings even tighter than I had them before! I now am running the new Bios and it is better! My computer is even booting faster and I have increased bandwidth with all setting how they were when I was running 1005 Beta. Asus is doing their job and the A8N seems to be a better performer as the updates continue. Now they just need to fix the 1t 250 barrier.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

Glad to hear it. For now I am personally stuck at stock 3000+ speeds (but with a lot more HD space)

It's really urking me because my buddy just built an AGP based 3000+ system that has an X800 that scores 72,000 in Aquamark and I'm stuck at a piddly 58,000 with my stock settings when I had 69,000+ before adding the 400GB in SATA drives to the mix. Like my other thread says.... I am so Fricking bummed. It's real hard for me not to pull the trigger on the DFI board but I'm still going to hang out and see if Asus comes back with anything.

Their latest response....

Dear Rob,

Mind to confirm two bits of details for me?

1. Which SATA connector did you connect your SATA HDDs to?
2. What PSU has been used inside this system?

Please kindly confirm these two pieces of info to help me analyse the problem for you.

Meanwhile I have asked HQ team to help checking if there is any frequency difference with SATA interface when overclocked (through it shouldn?t, it is still worth while to check)

Regards,
Jack

My response:

Jack,

Good questions:

1) After reading a lot of forums on the SATA issues I tried connecting the drives on both ports 1+2, and 3+4 together.
2) I have 3 different power supplies that I?ve tried:

a) Thermaltake Purepower 680W 24pin (This is my main normal used PS)
b) Antec TruePower430W 20pin (I?ve had the best results with this believe it or not.)
c) BFG Technologies 530W 24pin (This came with a bundle with my 6800GT PCI-E video card)

Also, I have not tried or ever used the NVRaid controller ports yet. Can these be used in a normal non-Raid configuration? (I would be willing to try the 2 SATA in a RAID 0 and let you know but I won?t be able to give you any feedback until probably Monday on that one.)

Thanks,
Rob

Haven't heard back yet.

 

[MatrixVPR]

Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus


Also, I have not tried or ever used the NVRaid controller ports yet. Can these be used in a normal non-Raid configuration? (I would be willing to try the 2 SATA in a RAID 0 and let you know but I won?t be able to give you any feedback until probably Monday on that one.)

Thanks,
Rob

Haven't heard back yet.

I've got my SATA Raptor hooked up the the black SATA #3 and i disabled the Silicone RAID Controller since i don't use it and I got good results and a much quicker boot time. The Boot skips the part where it is checking the Silicone RAID and thus decrease the boot time! Apparently if your using only two Drives or less then you should use port 3 & 4

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

Yeah I have the SATA NVRaid controller disabled.

Tried both 1+2, and 3+4 either way my results suck.

 

[MatrixVPR]

That sucks and I don't understand why your stuck. I seems that many are seeing improvements. Maybe you missed something in the BIOS.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

I think I prob brought this on myself. I should have left my system alone and been happy with the 2 IDE drives I had.