Asus A8V Deluxe / Abit AV8

[Marmaduke14]

Trying to decide which board to get. Does anyone have any experience with either board? Will be using an Amd64 3000+ with 1Gb dual channel ram.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I'm waiting for a little more maturity, but I'm liking the Abit AN8. The uGuru + 5 controllable mobo fan plugs is what does it for me.

People seem to like the Via Fatality boards, the Abit is very similar to the new nvidia based Fatality. I would skip the AN8 3rd Eye.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Do these differences help?

Abit: 3 onboard firewire ports; Asus: 2 onboard firewire ports
Abit: 2 sata connectors (raid 0/1); Asus: 4 sata connectors (raid 0/1)
Abit: VIA VT6122 Gigabit Ethernet; Asus: Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet
Abit: 6-Channel AC97 Codec; Asus: Realtek ALC850 8-CH
Abit: 2x IDE ATA 133 (up to four devices); Asus: 2x IDE ATA 133 (up to four devices) & 1x IDE ATA 133 (up to 2 devices, native raid 0/1 support)

I have an AMD 64 3000+ with 1gb of dual channel ram. I went with the Asus board because I've never had anything but good experiences with Asus boards and had one not-so-good (but not terrible) experience with an Abit board, and the Asus board's support for more hdds.

I don't overclock seriously (just from 1.8gHz to 2.2gHz), so maximum overclockability wasn't a concern for me.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

The Abit has 4 SATA plugs, like all nforce 4 boards.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I think you're thinking of the wrong board. According to every website I checked, the AV8 has two sata connectors. (The AV8 isn't an nforce4 board.)

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
Abit: 6-Channel AC97 Codec; Asus: Realtek ALC850 8-CH

The AV8 uses the ALC658 codec which is better than the ALC850.

 

[ty1er]

I have been running the Asus A8V 2.0 for around 8 months so far.
My system has been runing nice n' stable.

The only negitive coment i have against this mobo (and i have read that some other users also experience this problem) is that ever once-in-awhile, maybe once every 2 two months when i start up my PC i will get the msg "OCing failed" even tho im not even OC my System. I will have to hit the reset botton, then the PC will boot normally.

Other than that, it has been a good board.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Originally posted by: ChineseDemocracyGNR

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
Abit: 6-Channel AC97 Codec; Asus: Realtek ALC850 8-CH

The AV8 uses the ALC658 codec which is better than the ALC850.

And anyone who cares that much about such a minor difference in sound quality as between the 658 & 850 will probably get a sound card.

 

[Red and black]

I haven't had any trouble with my A8V and A64 3000+ 90nm.

Installing NetBSD 3.0_BETA was a little annoying because I didn't have a spare PCI NIC -- otherwise it would have gone very smoothly.

But as others have mentioned, installing Windows on an SATA drive seems to be a bit tricky.

 

[Tbirdkid]

that a8v sucks for sata installs... get the software out and copy the drivers off of the support cd to a floppy so you can install sata drives... otherwise, it wont work. Asus really facked that one up....

 

[orenb]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
And anyone who cares that much about such a minor difference in sound quality as between the 658 & 850 will probably get a sound card.

You'll think otherwise once you read this (check out the sound quality comparison at the bottom of the page).

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Well, my Asus A8V died on me a few weeks ago, and after waiting... and waiting... and waiting for the Asus RMA, I broke down and decided to get an Abit AV8 board. It modestly overclocked every bit as easily as with the Asus board (1.8 to 2.2 on a Winchester 3000+), and so far I've had absolutely no problems whatsoever with hardware conflicts.

Orenb was right, the Abit's sound card is noticeably better to the Asus's sound card. The difference is not significant, but it is there (though I wonder if I would've noticed it without listening for it).

All in all, I've been pleased with this Abit board.

 

[Appledrop]

a8v going strong for about 5months no problems with a nice OC to boot!

edit!!: However, you are getting a 3000+, which need high HTT to achieve a high overclock, in which case an Epox 9NDA3J or a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum are much better choices. (the via chipset cannot get much more than 250 htt while the nforce3 is good for over 300 i hear)

 

[theMan]

the a8v deluxe is very specific to memory type. wrong memory will get the oc failed message. my a8v is really nice. it overclocks well, i am able to max out the fsb. its stable. just make sure you get a revsion 2 board because the rev. 1 have some serious issues. also, use the promise sata ports while overclocking. not the via ports.