* ASUS A8N-SLI experiences/results/issues

[joelslaw]

Nice story skybum. That's kind of what I did, about 2 years ago. My friends owned a computer shop. They convinced me to build a pc instead of buy prebuilt. So I went for it! Turns out I'm a natural (not ment to sound conceited) and 6 months later they offered me a job!

I just sit back in amazment sometimes, looking at the price people will pay for a prebuilt, just cause they don't want to slide I few cards into slots! I say stick it to the man (or skmuck ) !

Also, Bahb: Zalman has compatability charts on their site for all their products! I would have checked for you, but it looks like their are multiple 7700's and I wasn't sure which you had.

 

[SkyBum]

Originally posted by: bap4201
Hey skybum:

I don't see a cdrom drive in that rig. Is that right?

Nah, its there, just not plugged into the board at the time I took those shots. I was cleaning up the cabling and had not plugged the eide cable or the 24 pin back in. Soon I'll have some rounded cables for the DVD/RW that will be going in.

 

[SkyBum]

Originally posted by: bap4201
Skybum,

Damn, what a nice machine. Certainly a PROFESSIONAL setup! Nice!! I have the exos too, with a very roomy lan-li case. Going to try to emulate yours! Only cooling cpu for now.

Hey, What nvidia drivers are you using?

Thanks man.....It's still running stock bios (havnt even had time to look which vs. it it) I've been pretty busy lately and just have not had time enough to do more than install windows and GPU drivers to make sure it worked. At the moment, I'm still running my old (POS) rig because this new beast was proving to be too much of a distraction. This weekend I should be able to spend some "quality time" with it.

 

[flexy]

because AGP cards have reached their GPU limits.

this is so not right. the interface has nothing to do with the GPU.

the interface type (AGP/PCI) really does not influence performance *right now*..from that point of view it doesnt matter whether you get agp/pci. This might be relevant in, say, 2 years (?) or so when games/cards start to actually utilize pci-express bandwith.

The other reason is "upgradeablity"...eg you go better with pci-ex in terms of future purchases. And many manufacturers (obviously) stopped making AGP cards and will go pci-ex.

 

[joelslaw]

listen to the man, he's right! And if you don't believe either of us: check some benchmarks. Just make sure it's a fair comparison. To push pci-e alot of venders are clocking agp cards slower than their pci-e counterparts. Example: pci-e 6600gt's have ram that is clocked 100mhz faster than the agp 6600gt's (the exception is xfx, they went against the specs and gave both cards equal speed)

So, like flexy said, right now there is really no difference.

 

[Demo24]

Originally posted by: joelslaw
listen to the man, he's right! And if you don't believe either of us: check some benchmarks. Just make sure it's a fair comparison. To push pci-e alot of venders are clocking agp cards slower than their pci-e counterparts. Example: pci-e 6600gt's have ram that is clocked 100mhz faster than the agp 6600gt's (the exception is xfx, they went against the specs and gave both cards equal speed)

So, like flexy said, right now there is really no difference.

that was because of the bridge chip

 

[gobucks]

BFG is also gonna use the same speed memory for their AGP and PCIe versions. In fact, they overclock to 525MHz/1050MHz on both versions.

From what i've heard, the only reason they slow down the memory is to offset the added cost of the BR02 bridge chip. Whether or not it's true is something we will never know, but at least it makes sense. After all, it's easier to hide that cost in high-revanue products like the 6800GT or Ultra, especially when bridged versions are so highly priced anyway, but it's hard to keep everything the same and take a $5 hit on every $200 card produced, which can kill their profits.

 

[Omizzle]

skybum, what water cooling thing u using? (sorry for crappy terminology)

 

[Nyati13]

Originally posted by: SkyBum


Anyhow, I've been wondering about that heatsink myself, it's strange because it was not there in the early pics of this board, nor is it seen in pics of the reference board, and stranger still, it is not present in ANY of the pics of the board seen in my manual. Seems that it was a very last minute addition. All I can tell you is that on the board it is labeled "heatsink 2", not much to go on there.

The Heatsink 2 covers the MOSFETs, it could probably be replaced with individual low profile RAM sinks on each MOSFET if it intereferes with the CPU heatsink of choice.
I have my XP-90 mounted, and it easily clears the MOSFET heatsink.

I wouls post photos of mine, however I am still missing the freakin video cards. The two 6600 GTs I ordered are due in tomorrow, so I'll be able to finish then.

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: Omizzle
skybum, what water cooling thing u using? (sorry for crappy terminology)

I'm not sky bum, but I can answer that, since I have the EXACT same cooling system as he does. It is the Koolance Exos (external system) See my signature and/or check out koolances website!

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: Nyati13

Originally posted by: SkyBum


Anyhow, I've been wondering about that heatsink myself, it's strange because it was not there in the early pics of this board, nor is it seen in pics of the reference board, and stranger still, it is not present in ANY of the pics of the board seen in my manual. Seems that it was a very last minute addition. All I can tell you is that on the board it is labeled "heatsink 2", not much to go on there.

The Heatsink 2 covers the MOSFETs, it could probably be replaced with individual low profile RAM sinks on each MOSFET if it intereferes with the CPU heatsink of choice.
I have my XP-90 mounted, and it easily clears the MOSFET heatsink.

I wouls post photos of mine, however I am still missing the freakin video cards. The two 6600 GTs I ordered are due in tomorrow, so I'll be able to finish then.

Well, good news the XP-90 clearly fits... Still

 

[joelslaw]

not to be dense but ... MOSFET?

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Metal
Oxide
Semiconducting
Field
Effect
Transistor

MOSFET

Basically transitor made by putting metal traces on a semiconducting material. By applying a sufficient voltage to one of the traces, you can bridge the gap between the other two. I think that most integrated circuits are made using this type of transistor, but I'm not sure. Normally, whan people talk about MOSFETs they are talking about power regulation (at least in the R/C arena, where they are used in electronic speed controls). It's been many years since I studied this stuff (and I wan't really paying attention at the time) so my info may be only partially correct.

-D'oh!

 

[joelslaw]

uh ... rrright. Yeah I'm deffinately dense! Let me dumb this down and you tell me if it's still within the realm of "correct"
The heatsink is covering a set of chips, that are used for regulating power (to the cpu, I assume) The name MOSFET just indicates what TYPE of chips they are. Right?

 

[RyanLM]

I got my A8N-SLI and a FX 55 the other day, and while stable I have noticed some issues:

1) The new Zalman does NOT work with these boards, you cant install the first bank with the new 7700 line.

2) Running SANDRA's benchmark shows my memory through put at 4.9 Gig, not nearly what I was expecting. I am using Corsair Twinx Pro (the stuff with the LEDs), but I also tried some OCZ Platinum, and some basic Kingston ram, all left me with 4.9 GB/sec in the basic memory bandwidth test - when most I have seen on the net show around 6 Gig. Anyone else have this issue? I am currently running 1 Gfx card.

3) Overclocking is odd, I have my CPU set to a 220 (from 200), and my multipler still at 13, the Bios shows 2.86 Ghz (and System Properties), however CPU-Z shows half that, and a reduced multiplier of x6. It seems as I lower the over clock the multipler starts coming back up, even though I have them all locked manually in the bois.

4) I have 4 x 74 GB Raptors in the system, in a RAID 0. The performance is odd, HD Tach shows very crappy performance, around 100/mb/sec (same as I get with 2 drives) WinBench spikes at 130/mb/sec and SANDRA gives me a more respectiable 190/mb/sec. I dont know which to believe But I can say windows installed in about 7 minutes.

Also - I have gotten theses same results on a a second A8N-SLI board (my friend got one as well from a different vendor), exact same benches anyway. I am running the latest bios as well 002.

Any Ideas?

 

[SkyBum]

Sweet mother of god my rig is now completely and utterly funked up. I got a real bad feeling about right now.....

Don't want to hijack this thread problems listed here

I'm gonna go puke.

 

[BahbRF]

Originally posted by: RyanLM


1) The new Zalman does NOT work with these boards, you cant install the first bank with the new 7700 line.

The new Zalmann does work. The first DIMM is a tight fight, but I had no problems installing on all RAM Slots.

 

[crumply]

skybum:

frightening thread.

 

[SLEEPER5555]

Originally posted by: Tabb

Originally posted by: Nyati13

Originally posted by: SkyBum


Anyhow, I've been wondering about that heatsink myself, it's strange because it was not there in the early pics of this board, nor is it seen in pics of the reference board, and stranger still, it is not present in ANY of the pics of the board seen in my manual. Seems that it was a very last minute addition. All I can tell you is that on the board it is labeled "heatsink 2", not much to go on there.

The Heatsink 2 covers the MOSFETs, it could probably be replaced with individual low profile RAM sinks on each MOSFET if it intereferes with the CPU heatsink of choice.
I have my XP-90 mounted, and it easily clears the MOSFET heatsink.

I wouls post photos of mine, however I am still missing the freakin video cards. The two 6600 GTs I ordered are due in tomorrow, so I'll be able to finish then.

Well, good news the XP-90 clearly fits... Still

The important question is will the XP-120 work on this board?

 

[joelslaw]

checked thermalright's site, but it doesn't say. I just wrote them an e-mail, so I'll let you know when they write back.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I spent a couple of hours working on the settup of the my A8N last night. I have encountered the following problems.

1. The board arrived with the SLI selector set to "Dual Graphics" as others have reported. Since I am only using 1 card, I reset the selector to "Single Graphics". Power up the system and no monitor singnal, and post reporter annouces "failed VGA" test. I removed, checked and reinstall GPU (XFX6600GT), same result. Then I thought maybe there is a reason the board came set to "Dual Graphics", so I reveresed the selector and bingo it will now post. Is this a bios issue? Or will this board only work in SLI mode?

2. I tried to create a raid driver diskette by putting the mobo disc in to my old computer(1.4 Tbird) won't work! In the drivers menu where the manual shows the option "make raid driver disk", mine shows "no proper hardware devices" and no menu options. I thought I had found a work-around, when browsing the contents of the disc I found, 2000XP/chipset/makedisk.exe. So I ran the program and it extracted files and created a diskette, and when I looked at the diskette most of the files have nvraid in the title. BUTT, when I had succesfully configured the bootable raid array using the nvraid utility in bios and attempted to load windows (hitting F6) and inserting the diskette when prompted. Windows would not load the drivers and just keeps prompting for the diskette. I have a third hard drive, so I think my next move will be to undo the raid array, reset bios defaults and attempt to load windows to the 7200rpm just to get the system running. Then maybe I can make the proper raid diskette from the new computer and set up the raptors.

3. Some wierd readings in bios like CPU mhz 4850 ? WTF? I wish.


I'm not as concerned about the raid driver problems, as I feel confident that I can get that resolved.
Nor am I extremely concerned about the bios issues. I accept that as being a "beta tester" of new technology. But the SLI selector issue is more troublesome, as are some of the posts I've read today.
I feel for ya Skybum!

I will be trying to load windows later tonight, and I will keep everyone posted

*edit* I have a few questions:

1. Can anyone who is successfully running 1 video card in this board, tell me how their SLI selector is set?
2. Anyone running a raid array, how did you make the diskette?
2. What bios and nvidia drivers are working best?

 

[joelslaw]

yo, just got my reply. And I quote:

"Dear customer,

We have not tested this mobotherboard yet but by looking at the product
photo I believe XP-120 will fit the board all right. The only concern could
be the height of that aluminum heatsink in between socket and I/O gasket.
Please see attached drawings of XP-120. The clearance under the fins is
about 44mm in height which I guess is more than enough to accomodate that
aluminum heatsink.

Thanks for choosing Thermalright!

Best Regards,
Jack
Thermalright, Inc."

all the drawing is, is a picture of the sink with the different dimensions written on the sides. If you want to see it tell me a good image host, and I'll post a link to it.

 

[chexi]

Guitar Daddy,

I had the same problem as you with the SLI. The only thing I can think of is that the little interface board wasn't seated properly (maybe a little off or loose). I switched mine back to Dual and then back to Single (the word single is closer to the CPU and pointed toward the one and only video card in slot 1), and now Single works fine without errors. Oh, I also turned off that annoying voice that it took me about 10 times to understand what she was saying.

 

[MaverickBP]

Skybum,

I also live in the Vegas area. I work for a company called Zones (zones.com) and we deal in the configuration & repair of desktops, laptops, servers, and accessories. We have a healthy list of contracts (Ebay and Paypal, Nordstrom, NBC, Peoplesoft, IBM, PG&E, Toyota, Xilinx, Group Health, Network Appliance, Network Associates(Mcafee), the public, etc...) and we build almost everything these companies use. The servers that run Ebay and the storage servers that store your email on Yahoo mostly come from us.

Anyways that's a little background on me...

What I wanted to say is through my work i am able to purchase the A8N-SLI board for $170 and am about to pull the trigger (along with the CM Stacker case) but not if these boards are presenting bugs. Hopefully, no offense, it's just a faulty PS and not the board itself. Doesn't mean the PS is a cheap one, just one of the always possible faulty ones(every company has them...even OCZ). So if you need a local to brainstorm with, hit me up with a PM. Good Luck!

 

[Nyati13]

I got it all hooked up and running. Now I get the joy of configuring Windows, and loading all of my software.

The board fooled Windows Installer, and I didn't need to load any SATA drivers during install. It just saw the two SATA drives automatically. I think that is a really cool feature.

I am still at stock, and no benchs yet. I have noticed that I can't seem to get Cool&Quiet started.