*** Official ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4) Thread ***

[evilmrroboto]

Originally posted by: danlvii
Hi mate,
Unfortunately I'm having the same problem with this board, and I would like to mention is not the first one that I've tried. My first board blew my PSU up as well, a beautiful TAGAN U01 480W, I had to RMA both, and then I could not wait I went to the high street shop and bought a new TAGAN 480 PSU and a new mobo A8N SLI DELUX (S.H.I.T.). When I got home I installed everything in a beautiful chieftek case, I use a AMD 3200+ WINCHESTER, and one asus 6600 GT 128 mb, also my mem is corsair 3200 xl 2-2-2-5 matched pair 2*512mb.I spend till now about £1400 on everything and all that I get is a blank screen, and just the bloody green led on the board, NOTHING ELSE-FROZEN. I?m searching the net for about 1 week to find solution to this disaster but no one seems to have it. I?ll go 2morrow back to the shop and I?ll make a big fuss about it.

Your problem sounds similar to mine, which was that after a week of using the thing I switched out my Allied 400w to an Enermax 495watt ATX ver. 2 with dual 12v rails and then the mobo wouldn't boot. I tried the PSU on another system, it wouldn't boot so obviously a bad PSU so I RMAed it. I tried the Allied back on the A8N-SLI and since I had to do a complete power off and the green led turned off, the CMOS went to hell and the system wouldn't boot with the old PSU. Only the chipset fan spun for a second then stopped. No errors or video. So now I am currently waiting on a replacement from Asus as I have sent them my board back with an RMA. I am about 5 days through their 10 days of looking at the board or whatever. I plan to call them and check the status tomorrow.

Now you, 2 mobo and psu's. That's odd. Test the PSU with something u know will work or get a PSU tester. I have used a 24-pin PSU on a 20 pin tester (just leave out the extra 4 pins that are on the end) and the tester should tell u if the psu is bad or good.

A question for anyone with the Enermax EG495P-VE power supply. If you own a PSU tester that tests each type of voltage (3, 5, 12, -3, -5, -12) can you tell me if you don't get a green (good) light for the -5? I don't get a green light on that and I am assuming thats because Enermax doesn't use the #18 wire (it's empty, no wire or pin in that spot) and most other psu makers have a -5 in that same place so I am assuming thats why I got the "error" with the tester.

 

[RT2]

Originally posted by: armygeorge
"AIBooster fail to install IO driver" is a message I get when trying to install this program. I am new to OC-ing and want to install all the "bonus" software that made this a "deluxe" MOBO. I am also having trouble with the 6.39 drivers, but found wonderful info here this morning...I got about eight more hours to play before the game

here's a solution i managed, just install aibooster to its default dir..C:\blah blah.. don't change the dir path when it asks u..also disable any Antivirus program that is running during the installation proccess.

hope it helps..worked fine here.

 

[squonk]

Originally posted by: RichardIII
OK, back to the EZ-plug question. I have a 6800 Ultra which has its own power plug (6 pin PCIe) on the back. That is plugged in. I do not have the EZ-plug connected, but I'm not sure if it should be or not, or if it makes no difference. Shouldn't the manual tell me this for sure. Yes, it bloody well should. :| I think it's absurd that we all have this "powerful" motherboard and nobody knows the definitive answer to this question.
I am going to send an e-mail to ASUS and ask the question, but in the meantime, does anyone here at Anandtech have any contacts there?
Don't even mention PEG_LINK mode.....

Rich

I have a PC Power and Cooling Turbo 510 Deluxe SLI Power supply and 2 Ultras running with dedicated line to each from PS and left the 12 volt plugged in as well on the board and all is fine. I seem to remember reading somewhere arround page 50 of this thread that the 12 volt is realy for the second card slot but I cant be sure. Just wanted to post what im doing seems to be working fine.

 

[Van Damme]

i thought the EZ thing was for SLI setups

 

[Alostdog]

wildcatts29
I had the same problem.
It went away when I changed the power supply.

 

[d3fc0n5]

hey guys i wanted to know if any one else had this prob. when i try to go past 214FSB. i drop down to a 4xHTT for no reson and i have it locked at 5x in the bios. also when i drop down to a 333ram and try to bring it back up to 400Mhz i crash and i have no clue why im runing the 1003 Offical bios and everything else you mit need to know should be in my sig... thanks guys

 

[JimKiler]

Hey guys anyone used the new Nforce Drivers 6.39? I installed them but I had ton of slowness and even CD-ROM issues.

So my question is what is the SMBus driver?

Also my HD is on the SATA would this still be the IDE driver?

 

[kaizan]

Hi,

I have built my 1st full system that I am totally happy with. I am however totally new to tweeking and overclocking because of this. There is a lot of stuff out there on how to overclock etc but seeing as this board has pretty much the very best of it all I have decided to seek some pro advice.

You can see my system specs in my signature below. Basically I have a few questions and you guys will be the most helpfull to answer I think.

1) Should I overclock using BIOS or windows based software?

2) Is Asus AI software any good? Are there any indepth reviews avaialble?

3) Is the nTune Software any good? Can I trust its benchmark results?

4) I am told my RAM is top quality and should overclock really well. How do I do this?

5) How can I truly gague I am getting maximum performance from my SLI setup? I like Rome: Total War and HL2

6) What are the best benchmarking apps to use that are availabe on the net and up-to-date. I don't mind spending cash on them.

If anyone wants to help be o/c this little ah heck we can chat vie MSN as I have another machine here and we can do it live! Then post the full results here and hopefully I can do a cool write up on a 1st time user experience.

Kai.

 

[SenorBiggles]

Originally posted by: JimKiler
Hey guys anyone used the new Nforce Drivers 6.39? I installed them but I had ton of slowness and even CD-ROM issues.

So my question is what is the SMBus driver?

Also my HD is on the SATA would this still be the IDE driver?

I was having slow speed issues accessing shared folders on my network after I installed 6.39. I didn't uninstall the old drivers first. Last night I unistalled all my nvidia drivers (including video), and reinstalled the new drivers. Everything works fine again.

 

[P0pinjay]

Hey guys,
I've been getting BSOD's for a couple weeks now with my new setup but it doesn't happen after I exit games. At one point it happened consistently when I exited AIM and just the other day it happened when I tried to load a page on myspace. More recently it's taken to rebooting at random and particularly when I have Bit Torrent open. Most of the time it was just a brief flash of the blue screen so I wasn't able to capture it but the other day it stayed on so I took a picture. Take a look:

http://home.comcast.net/~curry1982/bluescreen2-6-05.jpg

I've tried disabling the /noexecute line in my boot.ini but to no avail. I've just recently upgraded to BIOS 1003 and Forceware 6.39 and they seemed to make the problem worse. I'm not running SLI nor am I trying to overclock. Any suggestions?

 

[kaizan]

Oh and another problem. when installing the AI-Boost program it opens and IO error and will not install, anyone know what this could be?

 

[RT2]

kaizan, read my reply on page 73 about this IO error

 

[durnelln]

Originally posted by: P0pinjay
Hey guys,
I've been getting BSOD's for a couple weeks now with my new setup but it doesn't happen after I exit games. At one point it happened consistently when I exited AIM and just the other day it happened when I tried to load a page on myspace. More recently it's taken to rebooting at random and particularly when I have Bit Torrent open. Most of the time it was just a brief flash of the blue screen so I wasn't able to capture it but the other day it stayed on so I took a picture. Take a look:

http://home.comcast.net/~curry1982/bluescreen2-6-05.jpg

I've tried disabling the /noexecute line in my boot.ini but to no avail. I've just recently upgraded to BIOS 1003 and Forceware 6.39 and they seemed to make the problem worse. I'm not running SLI nor am I trying to overclock. Any suggestions?

I too started to see these DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSODs generated by NVNRM.SYS after upgrading to Forceware 6.39. I could not even play HL2 as Steam would BSOD every time when it started up!! The culprit appears to be the new ethernet driver (v4.68 I think) in the 6.39 Forceware release.

Reinstalling the older Nvidia ethernet driver from the Asus CD fixed it for me. No NVNRM.SYS BSODs any more.

 

[JimKiler]

The culprit appears to be the new ethernet driver (v4.68 I think) in the 6.39 Forceware release.

I agree as trying to install UT 2004 took forever using a virtual drive over my network, but my CD-ROM would also crawl speed wise and not recognize CD's as well until I went back to the drivers that came with the motherboard.

Maybe these issues are why Nvidia does not post the new drivers exact thru the exact link?

 

[Dream Operator]

Anybody using XP Pro 64bit RC1 v1289?

I installed it on my PATA drive just now. Having some troubles getting dualboot setup right, but can work around it to get what need for now.

Main issue is that the Ethernet drivers are not working for me.

Device manager shows a PCI Bridge and an Unkown. The only other devices w/o drivers are my M-Audio cards (which have drivers but they aren't being recognized yet).

I figure the PCI Bridge and Unknown devices are the ethernet jacks. Tried NF4 6.39 and then the ethernet driver from the cd that came with the board.

 

[JimKiler]

Main issue is that the Ethernet drivers are not working for me. Device manager shows a PCI Bridge and an Unkown.

Are you using the nvidia ethernet and not the other 3rd party one? Also you cannot use 32 drivers at all in windows 64bit so get the beta 64 bit drivers from Nvidia or use the 64 bit drivers from Asus.

 

[SPtheALIEN]

I am glad I found this forum.

I installed the newest version of the standalone nForce 4 drivers from nVidia's website. After I did that, I no longer have sound from the TOSLINK optical digital out. Any ideas as to what I should do?

Thanks in advance.

 

[JimKiler]

I installed the newest version of the standalone nForce 4 drivers from nVidia's website. After I did that, I no longer have sound from the TOSLINK optical digital out. Any ideas as to what I should do?

revert to the original Nforce drivers. The last two pages of this thread have other users with problems after installing the 6.39 drivers.

 

[ColSpr]

I just bought this board along with Antec True power 550. I was currious about the 24 pin requirement so I called Asus. Here's what I was told....you can use the 20pin or a 20-24 pin adapter power supply such as the TruePower 550. But he mentioned that 550 is the MINIMAL and that over time, especially if you add more peripherals, the performan and stability will degrade. He recommended changing to the NeoPower480 despite the lower wattage rating. I just rma'ed my TruPower for the NeoPower.

 

[armygeorge]

RT2, still having the IO errors. I also installed SpeedFan v4.20 and I get "unable to use I/O"...as soon as I get this fixed I'll start addressing Audigy2 problems <<wahhh>>

 

[Dream Operator]

Trying to get drivers for both ethernet adapters. I prefer to use the nVidia one though.

Where are the 64bit drivers you speak of? I don't know of the nVidia ones. I went to the Asus site and found 6.09 64 bit chipset from 2004/12/01.

Tried using the drivers listed above, nothing worked.

Still see "Other PCI Bridge Device" and "Unknown"

I think these are the ethernet adapters. When I expand "Network Adapters" I only see one 1394 adapter.

 

[JimKiler]

Where are the 64bit drivers you speak of? I don't know of the nVidia ones. I went to the Asus site and found 6.09 64 bit chipset from 2004/12/01.

Nvidia 6.25 drivers for 64bit CPU

 

[iscsidude]

Jim,
I'm getting a page not found on that 64 bit link.
Drilling about the results, I've been unable to find the 64 bit drivers.
Any ideas?

 

[expostfacto]

For what its worth, I had problems with on-board sound after I installed the nForce 6.39 drivers. I noticed a reduction in performance and stuttering in audio content. I uninstalled nvidia audio drivers using Windows' add/remove programs. During the uninstall process a list of uninstall options came up and I picked uninstall nvidia audio drivers. I am glad I had a choice because I thought I might have to uninstall everything again. I normally just use device manager but given the instructions for installing nForce 6.39 I was unsure whether or not removing one nForce driver might effect stability of the other nForce drivers. I re-installed the Realtek drivers that came with the board. Problem solved.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: ColSpr
I just bought this board along with Antec True power 550. I was currious about the 24 pin requirement so I called Asus. Here's what I was told....you can use the 20pin or a 20-24 pin adapter power supply such as the TruePower 550. But he mentioned that 550 is the MINIMAL and that over time, especially if you add more peripherals, the performan and stability will degrade. He recommended changing to the NeoPower480 despite the lower wattage rating. I just rma'ed my TruPower for the NeoPower.

Opps.Not a good move IMHO

The antec works fine on this board and has 30a+ on the 12v rail. I have one and its been rock solid for 2 months now.

The neopower is a dual rail with an 18a rail that supplies the motherboard, and a 16a rail which supplies everything else, which is not enough to run two high end graphics cards and all your drives, fans etc. Numerous problems have been reported on these forums running this PS with dual graphics cards. If you never intend to run SLI it will be fine.

Antec makes a 24pin version the EPS 550 true that has 36a on the 12v.

And the OCZ modstream models seem to do well on this board

best price performance is probabally the Athena Power 550 EPS at newegg for $84