Asus A8V. I give up

[IceWindius]

Even doing this for a living, sometimes I just have to admit defeat and take my losses. I"ve spent the last 4 days trying to get my Athlon 64 setup working with Asus A8V but to not a single stroke of luck. Below follows my sad journey back into the AMD world....

After the usuall ripping out old equipment and setting up the new stuff I booted the machine. All seemed good. I changed some stuff in the BIOS turning off uneccassary junk. Rebooted and threw in the XP Pro SP1 disc.

First problem I ran into is that I apparantly didn't have the correct VIA drivers on my floppy. So I took the ASUS CDROM and ran the Makedisk utility and tried again. This time it took and started the Win XP install.

Ok, after full format and intially loading, reboot and off I went into the XP installing screen. All of a sudden, reboot. Mkay....trying again.

Back into loading screen and then a blue screen. WTF. Try again and blue screen repeteadly. Take out old SATA cables and install new ones and wipe drive and try again. Crashes during installing of intial files. WTF????

Rewipe drive and try AGAIN. NOw it gets through the intial Windows installing and I get to my CD Code typing and then starts loading the drivers. And then outa NOWWHERE the machine starts bitching about drivers not being Windows certified? WTF???? I have NEVER seen XP do this during intial install.

Pissed off, I ripped out the corsair ram and threw in a single stick of Corsair value RAM 256 meg. Rewiped drives and tried again. This time the install went without a hitch and I finally had windows. I started doing Windows updates and all my drivers. I popped out the Corsair Value RAM and put the corsair XMS back in and increased the VDIMM to 2.8v.

Machine booted and I continued loading stuff until during a reboot, spontanous crash. ARRRRRRGHHH!!! Reboot again and went into windows. Started Audigy 2 install but 95% through the install it crashed saying " Catostrophic error blah blah blah" Rebooted and the sound worked. Then during Windows updates, farking BSOD!!!!!!!

Furious and nearly out of energy, I ripped out the SATA drivers and threw in my orginal Western Digital IDE drives and started all over and reinstalled everything.

This time I was able to get a operating Windows XP enviroment, but soon afterwards, Here comes the Windows and IE crashes!!!!

Getting really pissed off, I tried 4.10e VIA SATA drivers, reinstalled the SATA Barracudas and tried again. This time I actually got into Windows enviroment but not long after, my Windows Updates crashed out, IE continued to flake out and eventually system locks. *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!*

So, then I ripped out my Corsair XMS 3700 and put in 512 Corsair value 32000 RAM and then did both PATA and SATA drive installations and fresh XP installs. BOTH times Windows errored out or locked up, or both.

Having enough, I'm sadly shipping all my stuff back to newegg and zipzoom fly. My Intel setup has been rebuilt and THANK GOD, its working just as stable as it was.

Sorry to say, I don't think i'll ever be giving VIA another chance, im dissapointed in ASUS's quality drop after 2 great mobo's from them in the past and I'll see how the AMD world is doing a year from now. Until then, thanks but no thanks.

 

[Budman]

power supply used???

Any reason why you chose to get a via chipset instead of Nforce?

 

[bap4201]

I don't understand this at all! You need to post your setup system. I had absolutely NO, none, NADA problems with the a8v! It even perfomed better than msi neo 2 in benching!

 

[Skoop]

The A64 and A8V combination is finicky about memory. There are numerous posts in this forum similar to yours, almost all of which are resolved by hard setting RAM timings or by testing and replacing RAM sticks. The A64 is less forgiving of weaknesses in RAM chips.

You've incorrectly concluded that VIA and Asus are to blame. Upping the voltage as you did is a good move, too, but you should try setting the timings yourself rather than allowing the BIOS to "Auto" set them. Start them at SPD, and add 1 to the TRCD timing. This should get you stable in order to Memtest your RAM. Remember that the memory controller in A64s is on the processor, not the Northbridge as with Intel. It makes a difference in how you set up memory and with the quality of memory. Also, make sure that you use the correct slots.

It's rare that hardware is at fault with 939 boards. It's almost always incompatible RAM, or failure to configure properly. Give it another go.

 

[phr0m]

i to had some really bad problems with my asus a8v kinda like yours but for awile my computer wouldnt even post....... but i got a new ocz powerstream psu and all is well now. If you are using a cheap powersupply that my be your problem the 12v line probbably isnt gettting a 11.9 and up volt to it......

 

[IceWindius]

A brand new Antec NePower was used. I swapped my Corair 3700XMS with 512 meg Corsair ValueSelect RAM and it made no difference, the system was still unstable, even if I used my older Western Digital IDE drives.