* ASUS A8N-SLI experiences/results/issues

[SkyBum]

Originally posted by: 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!

RMAing the Mobo, we'll see what they have to say about it once they run some tests. I called ultra and they said I had two options

1 - Order a new one from them, theyll ship a new one immediately and credit my acct as soon as they recieve the old one.
2 - ship the old one and theyll send a new one at no charge as soon as they recieve it.

He said they dont test them though, so no chance there to see if it was indeed bad or not. Either way I'm gettin a new ultra, whether I use it in this rig is another story....

 

[MaverickBP]

I would then pay for the new PS and send back the old one at the same time. Assuming your using a credit card you really shouldn't have a payment. If nothing else you get a fresh and new PS(whether or not that was your problem). I would definetely though wait for the new PS and give it a whack before you send back your mobo. Who knows when you'll get another back ya know? There are a couple sites i reviewed today that put the ultra through a stress test before they ship it. Although the sites escape me right now. I'll hold off on my purchase until your problem is resolved seeing as your build is similar to mine(except the koolance). Also got a question for you. With your koolance system...does the "coolant" need to be refilled periodically? Read a review from a site and the guy needed to refill once every 3 weeks...Almost like a subscription payment to watercooled systems lol.

 

[SkyBum]

Based on what I've read so far, my experience is not typical and there is still some question as to whether it is mobo or PSU related. I would not hold off based on my experience alone, until you see any more reports like mine you should consider it to be a fluke.

As for the Koolance fluid, I have a few hours on mine, 'fraid I cant answer that one but i've never seen it mentioned and I read a LOT about that unit before I pulled the trigger.

 

[MaverickBP]

well the idea of a quieter cooling system is appealing...albeit the cost isn't...but the thing holding me back is the refill process...guess ill have to look around a bit.. Also can't seem to find a store in vegas or henderson that sells the CM Stacker... Hoping to find a sale/rebate on it. Well gotta be to work at 6am. I have a usb 2.0 card in my pc (old pc no 2.0) and i hooked up a dcr-hc40 sony minidv cam yesterday and when it started to sync it shut down my pc and gave me device manager errors and problems similar to what it seems your experiencing. Can't even use my ipod on it. Transfering 4000 songs via usb 1.1 is painful. Dont know if that is a fix for you but might as look around your PCI slots/add in cards. Just an idea.

 

[Dolly]

For the UK peeps,
I just got a mail from scan, telling me that my mobo should be with me on Monday or Tueasday since they are getting a limited run of 50 today.
Dont know if you will manage to get one now since I placed my order on the 29/11 but they are coming to the UK at last!

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I have now installed windows and several apps and everything seems to be running well. No stability issues at all. Windows loaded without incedent. All devices are recognized and working properly except the floppy drive. I have deterimed that I have a dead floppy drive. I will be swapping out this weekend and trying to get my raid setup.

I am still running with the selector in SLI mode with a single graphics card. I will try changing it back this weekend. Perhaps after I flash the latest bios.

I couldn't get my cable modem connection to work last night, so thats my next challenge

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: 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.

When I originally discovered this, I thought the same. But I repeatedly switched the selector, making sure each time that it was properly seated. Always the same result. (In Dual it would post, In Single it wouldn't).

Now that I've had it running for a while and loaded several apps. I will experiment with switching it back to single. I think I will flash the latest bios first.

 

[bap4201]

what bios did yours ship with? and what bios are you going to upgrade to?

 

[chexi]

Floppy's are notorious for not working because the cables aren't keyed. I'd try switching the cable around every which way before getting a new drive. Mine is not being recognized either, but I am confident that switching the cable around will solve the problem. I just haven't gotten around to it.

I've also noticed some difficulties in connecting to my wireless router on this machine, but my USRobotics Wireless card has always been touchy.

 

[rombat]

Hi guys I just built my sli machine (using the ASUS Sli Deluxe), and I am using 2 eVGA 6800GT cards, everything seems to be ok but I notice when I shutdown my computer it hangs on the windows shutdown screen, can't move the mouse just stays on the shutdown screen. I have to manually hold the power button down to shut it off. This does not happen all the time some time it will shutdown properly I have tried all the shutdown patch and have updated Xp to service pak2. I think it could be the drivers for the chipset not being certified yet, if any of you have any info on how to fix this I would appreciate, thanks!

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: 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.

You have a point for people who are looking for a specific performance level, but for the average machine used for browsing, e-mail, playing MP3s it is far cheaper to pick up a $400 (or less) Dell/HP/eMachines computer.

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: rombat
Hi guys I just built my sli machine (using the ASUS Sli Deluxe), and I am using 2 eVGA 6800GT cards, everything seems to be ok but I notice when I shutdown my computer it hangs on the windows shutdown screen, can't move the mouse just stays on the shutdown screen. I have to manually hold the power button down to shut it off. This does not happen all the time some time it will shutdown properly I have tried all the shutdown patch and have updated Xp to service pak2. I think it could be the drivers for the chipset not being certified yet, if any of you have any info on how to fix this I would appreciate, thanks!

strange. What chipset drivers are you using?

 

[uenoparker]

Thought I'd comment on my experience with A8N-SLI Deluxe and ATI X800 XT. They don't play well together. I tried the Catalyst 4.12 and 4.11 drivers for the X800, but get a black screen when the Windows desktop should display. DVI connector doesn't produce any signal. ATI Tech Support said that my problem seems similar to their support comment 4273, which refers to same symptom with AGP cards, and is fixed with an upgrade to the chipset. I've installed the latest Nvidia chipset software, but no dice. Seems like I'm out of luck until either Nvidia or Asus or ATI come out with new software.

I'd welcome any ideas...

-------------------------------
ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE
Athlon 64 3500
512 mb x 4 Corsair Value Select VS512MB400R
WD Raptor 10K 74Gb
Maxtor SATA 7200 300 Gb 16Mb cache
NEC ND-3500A dual-layer DVD writer x 2, black
ATI X800 XT
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Antec Neopower 480W
Coolermaster Praetorian Mid-Tower, Black
Zalman 7000B-AlCu
WinXP Pro SP2
ViewSonic VP201b

 

[chexi]

Latest USR driver that has 125mbs for wireles USR5416 pci card also appears incompatible with this board, although only since installing XP SP2. Very strange. The previous driver works, but only at 54mbs.

 

[Nyati13]

Still at stock speeds for now, I won't overclock for a couple of weeks.

I ran some benches 3DMark05 5603
3DMark03 13041
3DMark01 19604 ? (That seems a bit low, as my old system got 19017, maybe I'm CPU limited)

 

[rombat]

bap4201, I am using the drivers that came on the Asus install cd, are there any new ones out?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: bap4201
what bios did yours ship with? and what bios are you going to upgrade to?

I'm not sure? I flashed to the beta bios 1003.02. Once I did, I could finally get the system to recognize my cable modem. Woot! I am posting from my new rig.

I got my floppy working (thanks Chexi), and configured my raid array and loaded windows on the array.
It seems to be working well, except for one issue. Several times after loading drivers or apps and rebooting the system, bios wouldn't recognize the array. I would have to reboot from the windows disk and reload the raid drivers from diskette. I'm hoping the new bios will also fix this issue.

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy

Originally posted by: bap4201
what bios did yours ship with? and what bios are you going to upgrade to?

I'm not sure? I flashed to the beta bios 1003.02. Once I did, I could finally get the system to recognize my cable modem. Woot! I am posting from my new rig.

I got my floppy working (thanks Chexi), and configured my raid array and loaded windows on the array.
It seems to be working well, except for one issue. Several times after loading drivers or apps and rebooting the system, bios wouldn't recognize the array. I would have to reboot from the windows disk and reload the raid drivers from diskette. I'm hoping the new bios will also fix this issue.

yeah!! woot! woot! you've now joined the amazing HIGH SPEED club!

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: rombat
bap4201, I am using the drivers that came on the Asus install cd, are there any new ones out?

I'm not sure. I used the same drivers also. And for forceware, I used 66.93, because I understood that those were the only ones that would support sli mode? Does anyone else know?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Heres some 3dmark05 numbers with a single xfx6600gt

2645 with SLI selector in dual mode w/ 1 card @ stock 201x10 2010mhz
2746 with SLI selector in single mode @ stock 201x10 2010mhz
2818 single mode @ 216x10 2160mhz

Temps @ 2160mhz
ambient room tem 78f
CPU 34c-36c idle, 38c-40c load (monitor probe-asusprobe)
GPU 38c-41c (monitor probe)

 

[Tanclearas]

Well, my install went (almost) perfectly smooth.

A8N-SLI-Deluxe w/3200+
1 x Leadtek 6600GT
1 x Seagate 7200.7 w/NCQ

I was making a significant upgrade to an existing system, and am still using an Antec Sonata case. The only snag I hit was the hard drive just wouldn't power up. Fortunately, I just ran up the street and grabbed a WD SATA drive to test with. I'll have to re-install once I get the Seagate drive replaced, but at least I've got practice at it now!

I created the driver disk from the makedisk.exe utility. When I hit F6 during WinXP installation, it loaded the nVidia SATA and RAID drivers off the disk without a problem. I imagine this is an important step for anyone using NCQ drives, even if you're not using RAID.

Everything is running stable so far. Ran Prime95 overnight and no errors. Been playing Doom3 a fair bit today without problem. 3D Mark 2K3 completes fine. The temps look very good (~30C idle, and less than 40C under Prime 95).

I let coolbits set my Leadtek's frequencies, and they're at 580/1.16! I played Doom 3 at that speed, and no problems at all! I'll be running through the various 3D Mark's at those speeds in a bit to see if they're okay as well.

I haven't OC'd the CPU yet. As someone else mentioned, I'll probably wait a week or two to make absolutely certain all is well with the motherboard at default. Besides, I upgraded from an Athlon XP 2500+ / Radeon 9700 Pro combination, so everything just seems so much faster now anyway.

About the only odd thing I experienced was in nTune. When I run nTune, it warns that my PCI clock is currently set to track the HT bus. I checked through the BIOS settings, but don't see a PCI lock. Is it tied to the PCIe lock? As I said, I'm not in that big of a hurry to OC the CPU just yet anyway, but when I do start bumping things up, I don't want my PCI bus running too high.

 

[HiroProt]

I went throught overclocking my system yesterday, and have been running various stress tests all night and today. I seem to have my A64 3000+ Winchester (stock 1.8 GHz) running at 2.4 GHz on the stock cooler in my Sonata. My Chaintech 6600GT is running at 582/1.17. Those overclocks were pretty easy to achieve, I'm sure that I could squeeze out some more performance with a little effort.

 

[HiroProt]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
Heres some 3dmark05 numbers with a single xfx6600gt

2645 with SLI selector in dual mode w/ 1 card @ stock 201x10 2010mhz
2746 with SLI selector in single mode @ stock 201x10 2010mhz
2818 single mode @ 216x10 2160mhz

My system scores 3573 in 3dmark05 in its current state. I guess the tuning paid off

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I'v got my Winchester 3200+ running stable @ 268.3 x 9.5 = 2548mhz

So far, overclocking is a breeze on this board. Lock'd her up several times and saw a couple of BSOD's, but the system always returned to default bios settings.

However my 3dmark05 scores are staying about the same as I last posted.

Hey HiroProt, how did you O/C your video card?

 

[HiroProt]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
I'v got my Winchester 3200+ running stable @ 268.3 x 9.5 = 2548mhz

So far, overclocking is a breeze on this board. Lock'd her up several times and saw a couple of BSOD's, but the system always returned to default bios settings.

However my 3dmark05 scores are staying about the same as I last posted.

Hey HiroProt, how did you O/C your video card?

3DMark doesn't change much with CPU overclocking. The GFX card makes the big difference here. I just went with CoolBits and the clockrate that it suggested. Piece of cake