Memory problem and Asus A7N8X Deluxe?

[Eapiel]

I just got my Asus A7N8X Deluxe from Newegg for my upcoming Home Theater Computer. The rest of the PC is AMD Tbred 2100+, 256mb Corsair pc2100, ATI 9500pro, 330 watt Antec True PS on Windows 2000.

Before the new Asus MB arrived, I had been "testing" the 2100+ and the pc2100 256 MB RAM on my older Abit KR7A-Raid motherboard on a Radeon 8500 video card. The chip was running flawlessly overclocked and the 256MB of Ram held ran everything just as well as my 512MB of El cheapo Ram from last year. In fact, the Corsair Ram was able to take the Tbred 2100 much higher than El Cheapo.

However, when I put the new computer together using the Asus MB I have to shut down several programs using Task manager just to enable opening Windows explorer or any other basic program. For example, I normally run Zone Alarm, Norton, ATI task bar, Powerstrip, Popup Stopper, and NForce Control Panel in the background along with all of the other Win 2000 programs. All of this ran great in the Abit. But I have to shut down every program but 1 or 2 with same configuration to run anything with the Asus.

Could it be the Asus with all of it's onboard features (lan, audio, etc) is that much more of a memory hog than the Abit? Is anyone running an NForce 2 board or with only 256 MB of Ram? Obviously Ram is cheap and I will get another stick of Corsair, but I want to make sure that this indeed is my problem. FWIW, prime 95 and other programs normally show I have about 170mb of free physical memory out of the 256mb--really no difference b/t the 2 systems.

I guess I just finding it hard to believe the difference b/t the motherboards. I have been a loyal Abit fan and this is my first Asus MB. I would like to hear from you Asus owners out there.

Thanks in advance.

 

[floccus]

Did you install all the drivers for the integrated features? If you didn't and didn't disable some of them then you might get issues. I can't see how having integrated devices would be a problem since they replace add-in cards so you'd have drivers for them loading just as you would for the integrated ones. Could be a faulty northbridge, might not be able to control the data flow as well. I'm not real sure here, but the driver thing in the beginning is something I'd look at.

 

[Eapiel]

I did install the drivers, but after other drivers and I used the control panel, update driver from the older cd included with the motherboard. Solved some problems and but still had some lockups, serious slow downs. I did swap with 512K of Ram and that did nothing, so that was not the problem.

I finally formatted and reinstalled Win2K, the latest motherboard drivers from the Asus website, then direct X, and my video card drivers, in that order. I have not installed the rest of my favorite programs but everything seems to be in order now.

The moderator may want to move this under the sticky for this motherboard (Asus A7N8X deluxe)- I would have probably listed this under there for the masses had I seen it sooner.

 

[Audiofight]

Have you flashed the bios?

I am not sure what version bios your board shipped with, but the 1001G bios sucks!

Any bios before or after will usually clear up some problems. I flashed mine immediately after the initial post to ensure everything working.

 

[magomago]

Which Bios are you using? Upgrade to the latest( I'm not sure how well newly released 1003 is, but I know that 1002A is very good) bios and hopefully it'll fix those problems