*** Official ASUS A7N8X/Deluxe (nForce2) Thread ***

[pelikan]

Mine came off by twisting it.

 

[MDE]

Believe me I've tried twisting. This thing is stuck on, almost like it's glued. It's not important, just very annoying because I want to double check my chipset revision.

 

[Wigwam]

Monkey - are you still hankering after the hope that you have a Rev 2.0 board even though your chipset says 1.04 on the basis of the type of tim on the northbridge heatsink?

sheesh man i rate your dedication but do think you're a little nuts for doing this
i can just picture it: broken board in hand "so it was a rev1.04 after all" [or even worse: "woohoo, it was a rev2.0 - pity its broke now!"]

leave it be man! [or else tell me what your conclusion is!]

 

[SKORPI0]

Originally posted by: Buck_Naked

Originally posted by: JSSheridan
Whoa, I just noticed that there is a new bios for the A7N8X series. 1006 Final was released on 8/20. There hasn't been an update since May. I'm downloading it now. Peace.

So how is this BIOS working for you?

1006 does not work for my rev1.04 MB. Tried to update from 1004, but no POST. Upgraded at default settings, clear CMOS, etc, no POST. Had to go back to 1004 bios. :frown:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev1.04 - 1004 Bios
2100+ Tbred "B" AIUHB 0302 OC to 2283 MHz (169.11x13.5) w/ 1.700 VCore - Still trying for 2.4 GHz
2 Mushkin 256MB PC3200 222 - Black Hi Perf Level II
Alpha PAL 8045 HS - CPU - 35C (idle) , MB - 25C <<< monitored w/ Asus PC Probe v2.19.05
Delta FFB0812SHE 80 mm fan (noisy!!!!) - 4900 rpm, 68 cfm , 48.5 dbA
Chenming Server Chassis AX-01SLD w/ 420W PSU and 4 fans.
WD 60GB - Master w/ Win XP SP1
WD 120GB - Slave
Lite-On LTR-48125W
Artec DHI-G40 16X DVD-Rom
3 1/2" floppy drive
PNY GF4 Ti4200 (64mb, 8x)
NEC MultiSync P1250+

 

[JSSheridan]

Sorry to hear that, SKORPI0. When I flashed, I just set the multiplier and FSB to the default speeds, but I left every other setting at manual or user defined. Peace.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Wigwam
Monkey - are you still hankering after the hope that you have a Rev 2.0 board even though your chipset says 1.04 on the basis of the type of tim on the northbridge heatsink?

sheesh man i rate your dedication but do think you're a little nuts for doing this
i can just picture it: broken board in hand "so it was a rev1.04 after all" [or even worse: "woohoo, it was a rev2.0 - pity its broke now!"]

leave it be man! [or else tell me what your conclusion is!]

Yeah, it's too much work taking the board out of the case and reinstalling everything afterwards. WCPUID reports the northbridge as an A2 revision, which according to someone whose name I've forgotten, is a bit old. Well, I can hit 220FSB on this sucker. Doesn't really matter much to me, but that's why my friends call me Whiskers, because I'm curious like a cat. \

EDIT: I'm trying to see the markings on the actual northbridge not the TIM.

 

[JBT]

The best was to flash is with the AWDFLASH on your drivers CD the other ones that you download from asus or the one built into the mother board are BOTH kinda flaky. 1006 is basically just adding support for the thorton cores. I am waiting for the 1006 UBER bios from Demoulous. I am using 1005 UBER on my Rev 2.0 board and it ownz.

 

[Gogeta4832]

Greetings all,

another proud owner of this fine motherboard joins the group.
I've had this board for about 3 weeks now and I'm just loving it.
Especially love the Dobly Digital 5.1, matrix kicks A$$ now.

I do have one question though, and I've read through the posts and I'm still unsure of this.

--Does running ram in dual channel vs. single channel have any effect on overclocking?--

I'm runing one stick of Buffalo Tech PC3200 256mb at 2.5-3-3-6 @ 2.7v right now and hit the wall at 195fsbx11.
I can post at 200fsbx10 but once in windows it will reboot.
195fsb is rock solid though, but I wouldn't mind being able to say that I've pushed past the 200fsb as so many others

To all who read this who are fellow A7N8X owners, deluxe or not, this board ROCKS!! glad to be part of the group.

Gogeta4832

 

[batmanuel]

Are there any good reasons (except for Apaloosa support) to bump up to the 1006 BIOS on a rev. 1.04 board like mine. I'm really concerned about RAM stability, because for the moment I am using some really cheap RAM to get by until I can swing the cash flow to get a 2500+ and a gig of PC3200 Hyper X. I can safely say that I'm running the world's ugliest RAM configuration: 256MB of K-Byte PC2100, 256MB Kingston ValueRAM PC2100, and 512MB of PC2700 Corsair Vauleselect running at PC2100. Performance-wise it may not be ideal, but since it only cost me a grand total of $50 after all the mail-in rebates, it'll do for now (especially since my Palamino-core 2000+ shows no signs of having any desire to see a 333 MHz FSB, even when running only the single Corsair stick). I've been able to run Prime 95 error-free - even with the memory running dual channel - since upgrading to the 1004 BIOS, which I consider a minor miracle. I am usually game to try out the new BIOSes, but I don't want to screw up my good luck. Anyone here tried the 1006 on a pre-rev. 2 board with crappy RAM? Is it forgiving enough for me to do the foolish things I do and get away with it?

 

[XRdirtHead]

Anyone have a problem with "Smbus_Write byte errors"
I'm receiving this error when I start Asus Probe. I emailed Asus tech help but haven't heard back yet.....not holding my breath.

 

[dougyb123]

Thinking of purchasing ASUS A7N8X/Deluxe (nForce2) with AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ "Barton" 333 FSB

a little confused on the memory I should use for this board.

Will this memory from NEWEGG work ???

KINGSTON KVR400X64C3AK2/256 256MB Kit (2x 128MB) DDR400 PC3200 CL3

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: dougyb123
Thinking of purchasing ASUS A7N8X/Deluxe (nForce2) with AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ "Barton" 333 FSB

a little confused on the memory I should use for this board.

Will this memory from NEWEGG work ???

KINGSTON KVR400X64C3AK2/256 256MB Kit (2x 128MB) DDR400 PC3200 CL3

As I mentioned above, just about any memory will WORK with the newer, more refined BIOSes - even my sucky configuration. From the reviews I've read, for cheap memory the Kingston ValueRAM is actually pretty nice, but for just a little bit more you can get some nice Hyper-X modules that will allow you to run tighter memory timings and give you a more responsive system. The better memory also will help if you are looking to try to push your processor up to a 400MHz FSB (or higher). If you check newegg right now, I noticed that the 256MB Hyper X PC3200 is actually the same price ($63) as the 256MB ValueRAM. For $71 you can get modules that are rated 2-2-2-6-1T, which is allows some pretty tight timings. Granted, you'll only be able to run single channel, but with the tighter timings, you shouldn't notice much difference. You are really only going to see a dramatic increase in performance going dual channel over single channel if you are running integrated video off of a nForce IGP like the A7N8X-VM. With the IGP nForce 2 chipset the dual channel memory is used to give the onboard graphics core adequate bandwidth to function at performance levels close to a GeForce 4 MX 420. If you are using the A7N8X Deluxe, with the SPP chipset, the extra bandwidth is never really fully used by the Athlon (unlike the P4, which greedily uses every bit of memory bandwidth the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets can supply with Dual Channel DDR), so you'd do better getting a single 256MB stick of low-latency Hyper-X rather than two 128MB sticks of CL3 ValueRAM. Also, a single large stick gives you a better upgrade path in the future, since to upgrade to 512MB with a 2x128MB configuration, you'd have to use a 256B stick for one channel and the two 128MB sticks in the other channel - which will work, but is less than ideal from the standpoint of stability.

Hope this helps. Just remember that if you spend the cash for the biggest, fastest module you can afford, chances are that you'll be able to use it longer than a slower, cheaper module. A nice high quality 256Mb or 512MB stick of PC3200 will not only work on a nForce 2 now, but should also work down the road on a P4 or Athlon 64 platform (at least until they announce P4s with a 1GHz FSB and Athlon 64s with faster Hypertransport links to the RAM). Otherwise, you'll be like me and have to eBay half my computer's RAM when you upgrade (in my case, I need to ditch my PC2100 sticks when I upgrade to a 2500+ sometime next year so I can run my FSB and memory at the same speed).

 

[CowDoc]

Since buying the a7n8x BIOS 1005 dlx 2.0 I have been running it for the past couple weeks as a break in. Running great (thanks again freewolf). Now, I wanted to do some basic overclocking, however the bios won't allow me to do single Mhz FSB stepping, only 100,133,166,200 even under 'user defined', it only offers 'optimal' and 'agressive'. I also cant access the tRAS setting for the RAM to change that. Any ideas as to how I can open these up? I tried all permutations in the Adv. Chip. and can't open these up for me to change. Thanks.

 

[niggles]

I have the same problem... does anyone know of a FAQ on overclocking this board?

oh yeah.... and just so you know, if you print this thread off it's only 298 pages....

 

[pelikan]

If you set everything to "user defined" the options you need will open up. A couple of great resources are the Asus forums at AMDMB forum and NforcersHQ. There is a very good FAQ at NforcersHQ.
And of course we love to answer specific questions here.

 

[XRdirtHead]

Thanks for the links Pelikan....should help me and my mobo...

 

[CowDoc]

Thanks Pelikan. I made a n00b mistake and missed one of the 'user defined' entries...it's all opened up now and have been (slowly) inching my FSB,RAM settings,Vcore etc. slight improvement seen...so I guess I'll keep going! Thanks again!

 

[niggles]

Thanks Pelikan, I'll try and read through these tonight.

 

[pelikan]

That's great everybody. I'm glad to be of help.

 

[unbiased]

Hi fingerdemon,
Could you figure out about the front panel audio connectors for a7n8x-deluxe rev-2 board with antec Sonata cabinet? I have the same hardware and I am also trying something.I would very much appreciate if you are able to throw some light.
Thanx

 

[unbiased]

_________________________________________________________________________________
Hi,

I posted here before, but this time I actually own one of these boards. hehe

Here's what I ended up getting:

A7N8X Deluxe (I got a Version 2.0 from NewEgg..whoo hooo)
AthlonXP 2500 Barton
WD HD 120 GB
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
LiteOn CDRW
2 sticks of 512M Corsair XMS 2700PC
Antec Sonata Case with 380 TruePower Supply
WinXP

Almost all of it was on sale one day on NewEgg except the HD and Video card which I got on sale earlier from other stores.

So, I took my time. Lots of it. And I have been slowly either putting things together or reading up on stuff to figure out what to do for the past couple of weeks. I know you Tech heads are probably laughing that it took me so long, but I would rather be safe than sorry and I also had other stuff to do.

Anyway today was the day I finished it and booted up. I needed a defribrilator when I got a POST error, but it was my own simple mistake of not reconnecting the AGP card power supply.

The one thing I had trouble with was the front panel audio connections on the Sonata. The Sonata cables are labelled differently than the motherboard manual, but in most cases I could still figure it out.

But the audio cable part still has me stumped. I will try to summarize the motherboard info below and then describe the cables I have. This really isn't a critical thing, but it would be nice to be able to plug my headset and microphone in from the front of the machine.

Motherboard book shows ten pins labelled

AGND +SVA BLINE_OUT_R NoPin BLINE_OUT_L
. . . o .
MIC2 MICPWR LineOUT_R Not connected LineOUT_L
. . . . .

This is listed under FPAUDIO1

Okay, I hope that looks halfway understandable. The confusing thing is that there are two jumpers connecting the third set (BLINE_OUT_R and LineOUT_R) and the last set (BLINE_OUT_L and LineOUT_L).

The Sonata cables have an unlabelled connector with ten holes and one of them is filled with a plastic plug. But the plug doesn't match the missing pin, so I'm pretty sure this is not the connection. On the same cable are seven single pin connections.

They are labelled:

MIC
FPOUT_L
AUDGND
MICBIAS
RET_R
RET_L
FPOUT_R

So, I can guess where the Ground cable goes according to the motherboard instructions, but what about the rest of them? And do I just yank those jumpers off? What is the deal with them? Is this cable the right one for these front panel connections? Is there some difference in standards or something? I would appreciate any enlightenment that anyone can offer me on this. I also am not getting the full speed of the CPU showing up, but I know Chizow gave someone instructions on that in this thread earlier, so I will look for that and try and fix it myself.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

FingerDemon
________________________________________________________________________________

hi fingerdemon'
could you solve the problem related to front panel audio connectors of a7n8x deluxe with SONATA? I am interested because I also have the same combo.I am trying something but will appreciate mightily if you can throw some light.
Thanx

 

[redls1]

hmm me too just got this case and love it .

 

[farmercal]

Just got my A7N8X Dlx up and running and everything seems fine except that when I run Sandra it indicates that the CPU is an AMD Athlon 1800+ and the CPU I installed is SUPPOSED to be a 2400+. The packaging even indicates that it is a 2400+. I didn't look at the numbers on the chip itself because it came right out of the package which was sealed. It there anything in the BIOS that would make the CPU look like an 1800 instead of what really is? This is strange.

 

[sh4nsen]

Im not positive, but Sandra might be reporting the actual frequency of the chip, not the PR rating.

 

[farmercal]

According to new eggs site, the actual reading on the chip for a 2400+ is 2.0 GHz. Also Sandra is indicating that the CPU IS an 1800+ instead of a 2400+. I also remembered during the POST seeing it read 1.5 as well. I was just wondering if something in the BIOS is telling it that I have an 1800 vs. a 2400. I have only had this board running for two days so I am kind of new at this. Thanks.