A8N-SLI Owners

ok guys after 3 hours of hell with this mobo, i finally got it working.
so now i can join the club.
the most fucked up part was gettin the damn ethernet to work.
had to use 6.53 drivers to get it sorted, now time to oc this sucka
:)
 
Ok im kind of a noob with installing mother boards. Can some on egive me a summary of what i will need to do.

heres my setup

A8N-sli premium new
amd 3800 x2 new
BFG 7800gt new
and from my current computer
120 gig seagate ide - windows and apps drive
250 gig WD sata - storage and games
audigy 2
motorola wireless card.
1.5 gigs 3200 ddr 400 ram not sure on the timings right now
 
You'll be lucky to get 3 sticks of RAM to work right (assuming 3x512= 1.5GB).
 
Well, I do have 3 SATA drives, 1 IDE, 1 DVD burner, and 6 chassifans. So maybe that's why? Anyway, I RMA'd it and got a new one. This time I chose a Antec Neopower, so I should be set now ;)
 
OK, I have got the following components and will install them as soon as I get my CPU waterblock:
- Asus A8N-SLI Premium
- 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000
- AMD 64 X2 3800+
- MSI GeForce 7800GTX
- SB X-Fi XtremeMusic
- Antec NeoPower 480W
- BenQ IDE DL DVD burner
- Raptor 74 SATA drive
- WD 160GB 3.0Gb/s SATA drive
GPU and CPU is watercooled. I will be installing WinXP Pro. Planning on overclocking.

I plan on installing software in the following order (before anything I will disable RAID controller and Realtek audio controller in BIOS as I wont use them):
1. Clean install of WinXP onto the Raptor. Both drives are new and therefore already low level formatted.
2. Install nForce chipset driver on the Asus disc.
3. Install newest Detonator drivers for vidcard
4. Flash to newest BIOS available for mobo
5. Upgrade to newest nForce drivers avaiable
6. Install SP2
7. Install X-Fi drivers

As I have seen in this thread, quite a few people are having problems with this board, so I just figured I should check with you guys if my planned order of installing software is approved, and maybe you have some other tips for me.

Does my plan look OK? Any other things I should be aware of?
thanks!
 
Hi all...
I switched from the MSI A8N Neo4 SLI Plat to this A8N-SLI Premium and so far, no major issues. I did have a 6 beep post boot, no video problem but think I resolved that. Only have one BFG 6800GT card (at the moument) but plugged in power into the EZ-Plug. Seemed to resolved the issue.
Here is my question, with so many BIOS settings, what can I set to tweak the system with and without OC? Here is my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2x512 Crucial DDR400
BFG 6800GT 256
Creative Sound Blaster Audiogy 2
Plextor 12x DVD_+RW
Lite-On DVD-ROM
Maxtor 80gig 8MB cache IDE
Western Digital 320gig 8MB cache SATA
Antec NeoPower480 PSU

Any suggestions? Thanks guys and gals...
 
This motherboard is the biggest piece of unstable shit I've ever owned. I bought it along with an eVGA 7800GTX back on November 3rd of 2005. It's worked a total of 4 times.

And just today it decided it no longer liked my memory so it went from seeing 2gigs to 512mb then upon a relocation of the memory to see what the problem was it decided it no longer wanted to function at all.

It boots. Screen does not turn on, so I'm assuming the motherboard and the video card are both shot.

I'm going to attempt to return both to Newegg and I'm going back to an A8V Deluxe non-SLi and I'll stick to playing Solitaire since the 6800GT doesn't run anything past D00M 3.
 
what's with all of the bad reviews? i have had 0 problems that weren't user error :).
evga 7800gt
3200
7200.8 250gb
2x1gb mushkin (i think it's running at 2t...but that's the ram's fault)
p180
seasonic 430

anybody who is thinking of getting this board, DON'T! the chipset is very loud, and putting on the nb47j is the scariest/most frustrating thing i have done with this computer. just get the premium and be done with it.
 
I've done some tests of networking my new a8n-sli premium mb to an existing unix box. I was getting some pretty crappy xfer rates using sftp so I downloaded ttcp to test from/to values. This is on a 100baseT net. CPU usage stayed below 10%.

With sftp (cygwin build), I am seeing ~3.4 MB/s in / ~1.8 MB/s out. Craptastic!

With ttcp, on the nvidia nic, I see 11 MB/s in / 5 MB/s out. If I "optimize for throughput" rather than "cpu" in the driver advanced settings, I get ~7.3 MB/s outbound.

With ttcp, on the marvell nic, I only saw ~3 MB/s out. When I tried inbound, I got ~11 MB/s inbound, but the second time I tried the nic locked up. I probably need to reboot to unstick it.

So my general findings (some of which may just be particular to windows):
windows/this mb is better at incoming than outgoing traffic (I'm pretty sure my freebsd box is not the limiting factor)
optimizing the nvidia driver for "throughput" (see the advanced driver settings) buys you ~2MB/s of outbound.
the marvell nic may have issues under heavy load and seems slower than the nvidia nic

All tests performed with:
ttcp -r -s -p 5002 -f M -v -n 16000 (receiver)
ttcp -t -s -p 5002 -f M -v -n 1600 [receiver ipaddr] (transmitter)
 
hs95p user said:
With sftp (cygwin build), I am seeing ~3.4 MB/s in / ~1.8 MB/s out. Craptastic!
With ttcp, on the nvidia nic, I see 11 MB/s in / 5 MB/s out. If I "optimize for throughput" rather than "cpu" in the driver advanced settings, I get ~7.3 MB/s outbound.
With ttcp, on the marvell nic, I only saw ~3 MB/s out. When I tried inbound, I got ~11 MB/s inbound
What did you use to measure your throughput, the application sftp/ttcp?
What version of nvidia and marvell drivers.
What was the network configuration, point-to-point/hub/switch?
Any firewalls running, nvidia's/windows?
 
I've had this board a while and it has occured to me that there is no chipset voltage option in the bios. I've read that people can get 295 fsb out of this board. From what I've read about other boards, that should only be possible if the chipset voltage is "goosed" a bit. Otherwise it won't go much past 250. Am I mistaken? I would like to run at 10x250. Using a memory divider I can run this setting, and oddly enough my dual core passes two instances of Prime 95 with no failures. But I do notice annomolies in games with this setting. The memory is running close to 200 and is not the problem. I believe its the chipset that needs to be bumped to about 1.6 (1.5 is stock). Can someone advise me on this? As a note, I run at 11x220 (2420 mhz) at a 1:1 and all is well. I can boot up and run at 10x250 (2500 mhz) at a 5:6 memory divider (ram stays around 200). Thanks!
 
panhead said:
What did you use to measure your throughput, the application sftp/ttcp?
What version of nvidia and marvell drivers.
What was the network configuration, point-to-point/hub/switch?
Any firewalls running, nvidia's/windows?

Throughput was as given by sftp or ttcp, I doublechecked it by looking at netstat -b output on the freebsd box and the results were close enough.

Nvida driver: 4.8.2.0 (4/6/2005)
Marvell driver: 8.41.1.3 (9/19/2005)

Netconfig is through an ABS 100baseT switch, but I did one sftp p-to-p test and the results were about the same.

Windows firewall was off for testing (I have ipf further upstream but not between these systems).

I've had the Marvell nic lock up one more time during general use, so I might advise sticking to the Nvidia nic (the bottom port) if any of you run into what seem like lockups.

[a8n-sli premium 1009 bios / AMD 4200+ x2 / x32 windows]
 
hs95p user said:
Marvell driver: 8.41.1.3 (9/19/2005)
I've had the Marvell nic lock up one more time during general use, so I might advise sticking to the Nvidia nic (the bottom port) if any of you run into what seem like lockups.
You might want to try Marvell's 8.46.4.3 (11/10/2005) driver.
(8.47.1.3 for Win64).
http://www.marvell.com/drivers/search.do

edit: If a marvell driver update doesn't solve the lock up issue and provide better performance it may be a multi-core cpu issue. Watch for an updated driver.
 
okay, this is a great thread, but 90% of the posts are from last january. let's try to ramp up on getting some current info in here. i have a couple comments and questions.

my kit:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium bios 1009
AMD 3800+ X2
2 * 512MB Patriot PC3200 (will be replaced by 2 * 1GB G.Skill PC4000 on friday)
adaptec 19160 scsi card
seagate 15k.3 18GB scsi drive
WD 2500KS sata drive
thermaltake big typhoon
silverstone zeus 560W

1) don't install the asus Ai booster. that thing was changing my settings like every 5 seconds and not to anything good. you'd be a lot better off running through the OC guides in this forum and setting the board speed yourself. you'd waste less resources running that stupid program that way too.

2) in order to get the pci bus locked you need to set the PCI bus to 33.3mhz AND set the CPU Freq to something other than 200mhz. set it to 201 if need be. if you leave it at 200 and then try raising it in windows with clockgen your PCI bus will change along with it.

3) i have the latest version of all drivers (as of last week) installed. once in a while, while at stock speeds, when i log into windows the computer sort of hangs. it never loads the desktop and the mouse freezes periodically. however, i read elsewhere that installing the nvidia SW IDE driver that is part of the nforce4 driver is a bad idea. so i either need to uninstall this or reinstall the machine without it. is anyone else running that driver, or is it generally accepted that you should leave it off?

4) for me, if i set asus probe to load on startup it will be impossible to minimize it. if i closer, then reopen it i can minimize it without issue.

5) which of the following utilities do you have installed?
asus probe (if you don't use this, do you use something else?)
asus ai booster
asus update
ntune
that whole raid driver thing that is running apache and consuming 15MB of ram

otherwise i am having a good time with the board (now that i dumped the antec neoHE POS). i have had no major issues really, and most of the minor ones can be solved by eliminating a bad driver i think.
 
okay i just reinstalled yesterday. i am using the following:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium bios 1009
AMD 3800+ X2
2 * 512MB Patriot PC3200 (will be replaced by 2 * 1GB G.Skill PC4000 this week)
PNY 6600GT
adaptec 19160 scsi card
seagate 15k.3 18GB scsi drive
WD 2500KS sata drive
thermaltake big typhoon
silverstone zeus 560W

i have installed:
windows xp pro (32 bit) sp2
asus update v6.01.01
nvidia nforce4 driver 6.70
nvidia forceware 81.98
marvell NIC driver v72113
silicon image driver v1233b
ALC850 audio driver v5870 WHQL

i did NOT install:
the AMD cool and quiet driver
the SW IDE driver portion of the nforce4 drivers
asus aibooster
asus ai selector
asus probe
ntune
nvidia active armor
nvidia firewall

i have not done a ton of stuff on this yet, but i am cutting commercials out of a bunch of tv shows atm and it's running fine. i did not install a lot of the asus software though i don't think it is really problematic. IOW, i did not not install it because it causes instability. i just don't find it terribly useful.

i was having problems with the computer locking up hard right after login (never make it to the desktop) with my first install. i think that was due to either the nvidia SW IDE driver, or the active armor, or firewall since i no longer have that problem. i have seen lots of complaints about all 3 of those around various forums.

i will have to burn a CD/DVD and do some other common tasks and report back, but thus far this system seems rock stable. i'll also report back with OC results once i get my mem, but i did test out the max potential of my FSB and CPU. the CPU seems to top out around 2500mhz, but i got the FSB all the way up to 340mhz. anywho . . . .

cheers,
big daddy fatsacks

ps- for whatever reason the asus update utility does not update anything. it gets to "Connected to ftp.asus.com . . . " and then never goes any further.
 
Yep you hit the nail on head. I never install the Asus software and all is bliss
 
I know this is a old thread, but i just got a A8N-SLI and having some issues with my SATA drives. Its showing in benchmarks that my average seek time is alot lower then lower grade HD's (ATA100, ATA60, etc etc). Im using SATA 1-2 with 2-120gbs WDs.

This is with Sandra 2007. Now this didnt happen before when i was using my Neo2 plat. Nor does this happen on another PC. I was just wondering if anyone was experiencing this other then me.
 
Highlife said:
I know this is a old thread, but i just got a A8N-SLI and having some issues with my SATA drives. Its showing in benchmarks that my average seek time is alot lower then lower grade HD's (ATA100, ATA60, etc etc). Im using SATA 1-2 with 2-120gbs WDs.

This is with Sandra 2007. Now this didnt happen before when i was using my Neo2 plat. Nor does this happen on another PC. I was just wondering if anyone was experiencing this other then me.
check this board out for A8N-SLI problems.

http://asustech.15.forumer.com/index.php?

the board is dedicated to A8N owners. They also have a live chat room that I found VERY helpfull in solving an SLI problem.
 
Has anyone tried to put on this mainboard a 7800GTX256 on it zalman 900v cooler and then on the north or southbridg (board chip) a termaltake aktive cooler.
I would like to buy this cooler and add them but it seems they wont fit together?
 
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