The unofficial "Official A7V266-E Thread" !

[bluesky]

Thanks Assimilator1.
I could boot up several times, but not install os. Still having various problems.
I might be wrong, but I think I got a problem w/mobo itself.
I'm sending it back. Just don't want to prolong my misery.

 

[Paladin]

I too am having problems with shutting down and restarting. When ever I restart, it hangs at the 'Windows is shutting down' screen. When ever I shut down, it reboots. using XP. I broke the 1st rule of building a new system. After Everything was up and running just fine, I installed the rest of my card (Audigy, NIC) and made some other changes, including enabling PnP in the bios. I'll change that and see if it solves the problem.

 

[NoiseControl]

Whenever I turn off my Sony G420 monitor, after the win shutdown, the computer boots again. If I turn off the monitor before the shutdown is complite there is no problem. Any thoughts?

 

[Paladin]

Turning off PnP in the bios now allows me to 'Restart' my computer, but the computer still won't turn off when I 'shutdown'. It @#%$ing reboots!! Does anyone have any ideas??

Noise Control, I tried what you are doing to shutdown but that didn't work for me.

Also, do I need to go get the latest via 4-1 drivers? what version does XP install?? How can you check what version is installed?

 

[EtOH]

My impressions of the A7V266-E:

This time last week I was on an Abit KT7A with a AXIA at 1.4 and chugging along happily. My boss says "Here is $600 go build a server for me". Needless to say work is now a proud owner of a KT7A paired with a Duron and I am now in the DDR crowd.

I started out with an MSI K7T266 Pro2 (Its all the store had in and I had to buy something THAT day). Wierd problems ensued. All related to IDE devices. Keep in mind the only thing I changed was my motherboard and ram, everything else stayed the same.

Config #1:
Primary m/s: HD/HD. All is well on this chain, ATA100 and no data corruption
Secondary m/s: CDRW/DVD. All is well in the bios, Windows doesn't see the DVD

Config #2:
Primary m/s: HD/CDRW. All is well on this chain, no data corruption.
Secondary m/s: HD/DVD. All is well in the bios. Windows sees both but the HD only operates at PIO level and anything I pull from it is corrupted

At this point I flashed the bios. The bios flash said all is well, the reboot. Nothing. Not a damn thing but 1 beep. Dead as they get.

I took the MSI back and opted to pay the extra $20 for the Asus A7V266-E.

I had the same drive issues with the Asus and finally fixed them by using the following config:
Primary m: HD
Secondary m/s: HD/CDRW
Promise Primary: Empty
Promsie Secondary: DVD

So the only way to fix my drive issue with the DVD drive was to move it to its own IDE channel. Wierd to say the least considering the Abit didn't have any problem with it. Since it was identical across manufacturers I would have to say its possibly the fault of the chipset.

Other things about the Asus A7V266E:

Onboard Sound: Not the best but good enough to warrant selling my Santa Cruz
Layout: Floppy connector is in a bad spot. Too many jumpers all over the damn place. IDE headers in a wierd spot (underneath my harddrives).

As far as memory scores go I am far from impressed at all. My settings are:
1.33 GHz (10x133), 2-2-2-5, 4 way interleave, 1T command, 8k something or another. Basically maxed out on the settings, see my rig for more info.
Sandra Score = 627/698. Not at all impressive, actually a little dissapointing. It is generic DDR using Micron chips (like I said, had to be bought that day at the store).

I am going to test with it some more and will post more information as I uncover it if anyone desires it. Sorry for the length of the post.

EtOH

 

[EtOH]

This you may find odd. I just hit the bios and changed all the memory related settings to "AUTO" and got an INCREASE in my scores from:

627/698 as noted in my previous post to:
655/843

Think I will tweak them 1 setting at a time and see what I get the biggest boost with.

EtOH

 

[Thresher]

<< My impressions of the A7V266-E: This time last week I was on an Abit KT7A with a AXIA at 1.4 and chugging along happily. My boss says "Here is $600 go build a server for me". Needless to say work is now a proud owner of a KT7A paired with a Duron and I am now in the DDR crowd. I started out with an MSI K7T266 Pro2 (Its all the store had in and I had to buy something THAT day). Wierd problems ensued. All related to IDE devices. Keep in mind the only thing I changed was my motherboard and ram, everything else stayed the same. Config #1: Primary m/s: HD/HD. All is well on this chain, ATA100 and no data corruption Secondary m/s: CDRW/DVD. All is well in the bios, Windows doesn't see the DVD Config #2: Primary m/s: HD/CDRW. All is well on this chain, no data corruption. Secondary m/s: HD/DVD. All is well in the bios. Windows sees both but the HD only operates at PIO level and anything I pull from it is corrupted At this point I flashed the bios. The bios flash said all is well, the reboot. Nothing. Not a damn thing but 1 beep. Dead as they get. I took the MSI back and opted to pay the extra $20 for the Asus A7V266-E. I had the same drive issues with the Asus and finally fixed them by using the following config: Primary m: HD Secondary m/s: HD/CDRW Promise Primary: Empty Promsie Secondary: DVD So the only way to fix my drive issue with the DVD drive was to move it to its own IDE channel. Wierd to say the least considering the Abit didn't have any problem with it. Since it was identical across manufacturers I would have to say its possibly the fault of the chipset. Other things about the Asus A7V266E: Onboard Sound: Not the best but good enough to warrant selling my Santa Cruz Layout: Floppy connector is in a bad spot. Too many jumpers all over the damn place. IDE headers in a wierd spot (underneath my harddrives). As far as memory scores go I am far from impressed at all. My settings are: 1.33 GHz (10x133), 2-2-2-5, 4 way interleave, 1T command, 8k something or another. Basically maxed out on the settings, see my rig for more info. Sandra Score = 627/698. Not at all impressive, actually a little dissapointing. It is generic DDR using Micron chips (like I said, had to be bought that day at the store). I am going to test with it some more and will post more information as I uncover it if anyone desires it. Sorry for the length of the post. EtOH >>




I'm not sure if you are trying to run Windows XP, but if you are, it appears that it has problems with the Cable Select settings on IDE drives. You might try resetting them to master/slave settings if that is the case. I can't remember where I read that, I wish I could give you a link.

 

[GEShields]

Get mine on Thursday..can hardly wait...

Pairing it with an Atlon 1800 XP.

Greg

 

[EtOH]

I tried it with cable select and manually selecting master/slave. It just didn't like my DVD drive sharing any chain.

That IDE issue occured under both XP and 2000.

EtOH

 

[AA0]

what brand drives are they? my cheap mitsumi cdrw will only have its own IDE cable, if anything else is there, it will not let the computer see it. IT also must use the standard driver in windows, compared to the secondary IDE driver.

 

[Paladin]

check a few threads up for my original post. The computer restarting when I shutdown has been narrowed down to when a USB mouse is installed. When it's PS2 the computer shutsdown correctly.

Is anyone else using USB mice with no problems???? Do you think it's a motherboard issue, get a new one?? or is there a patch that would fix the USB problem

Thanks.

 

[Thresher]

My USB mouse works fine, but I cannot use my USB port to synch my Ipaq. It locks the machine up completely every time. CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing, the only solution is to hit the power button and start over. It's fine if I use a serial connection.

I've started using my laptop to synch my Ipaq, USB works just fine there. I've tried all the USB ports available and none of them work. I also had this problem with synching my old Palm on my A7V133 using the USB interface.

Compaq tech support said that this is a common complaint, they blame it on VIA. Since it happened with my Palm, it seems like a logical conclusion.

 

[NoiseControl]

Hi KevinC

It worked for me to set the jumpers on page 23 item 10 back in position 1-2.

That "killes" my USB mouse which is hook to my Sony G420 USB hub, hence the problem in the earlier thread.

 

[Assimilator1]

EtOH

Ath XP 1500 @ 1.45 GHz (10x145)
512 Mb DDR Crucial CL2.5 (running at CAS2,2T,4way interleave)
Asus A7V 266-E
Win 98SE lite

Sisoft sandra v2001.3.7.52

ALU 836 Mb/s
FPU 888 Mb/s


I think you got some kind of problem!

 

[AyeYou]

KevinC,
This worked for me. Go to the Power section of the BIOS. Change "CPU Thermal Option" from throttle to shutdown.

 

[EtOH]

Assimilator -

Looks like I do

I am only running at 133, and haven't tweaked it out at all yet. Not sure why the most aggressive timings worked but with such poor results.

EtOH

 

[EtOH]

Assimilator -

I just tested out every possible memory setting combination. As it sits right now the only thing I have changed from AUTO is setting to 2-2-2-5 and 4-way interleaving. Burst Length, and Page settings all led to a decrease in memory performance.

At all AUTO settings I get the following Sandra scores:
666/833

Changing to 2-2-2-5 and 4Way Interleaving gives me:
734/898

One thing I found interesting. If I changed the Command to 1T I got a HUGE performance hit, which increased each time I ran Sandra. Take a look at the following runs after setting it to 1T (everything else on AUTO)

Run 1: 637/739
Run 2: 539/598
Run 3: 518/586
Run 4: 516/584

I ran every combination 4 times and 734/898 is the best I could get out of it.

Something else to note. Where as using 1T would cause DECREASED scores on each run with Sandra, every other setting caused INCREASED scores with each run. If anyone wants the data let me know.

The Optimal settings on my board at this point are everything AUTO, change inteleaving to 4way and Spd to 2-2-2-5. Leave all the other stuff alone.

EtOH

 

[Paladin]

Hey guys, thanks for the hints. I think the USB header must have been bad on the motherboard. I went and got a new one yesterday and all is well.

Now if I can only get ICS up and running......

 

[Assimilator1]

EtOH

Intresting info ,when I tried 1T it rebooted the moment the desktop showed! ,so I gave up on that

I think I set my RAM to 7ns ,havent tried further tweaking ...............yet.
Btw looks like your score is about right now

re 1T giving you a performance hit ,maybe you were pushing your RAM too hard causing timing errors?? ,maybe not enough to crash but enough to slow things down?.

I'm gonna tweak the RAM settings more tonight & will post back soon

Oh & I got higher SSSandra score with a latter run
ALU 845
FPU 912