That is probably your problem. Enalbe EVERYTHING the first time around THEN start disabling. For some reason, Asus has the SATA ports and RAID enable for those ports BACKWARDS. SATA ports 1, 2 corresponds to RAID ports 3, 4. I know, go figure! That is one reason why you should enable EVERYTHING before you load Windows, then once the system is up and running fine, then you can fine tune it.Vader said:
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
A8N-SLI Owners
- Thread starter Vega
- Start date
Voorstryden said:
Well, if it was just the BIOS, I'd agree, and until today I wasn't giving up. Like I said though, when I start getting an occasional lock up on the Windows Splash screen, even with a 24 pin PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI power supply (which means maybe my stability problems weren't PSU related), the little chipset fan is slowly dying and other new minor issues come oozing out of the proverbial woodwork, I get paranoid.
And yes, it's the same chipset...but well, although I've only seen a tiny bit of posts, the only problems so far I've seen with the MSI board is that if one's 24 (or 20 if using that) pin motherboard PSU cable doesn't have a -5 volt wire, the Creative labs onboard sound chip might not work, or might work at a reduced volume. Just looked up the stats for my PSU, it has a -5 volt wire on pin 20, so I'm probably fine there, and if not I've got an old soundcard I can make do with for now.
I'm starting to wonder if the real fix of the ASUS board will be a new revision, to be honest.
Voorstryden
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2004
- Messages
- 29
Arvig,
take a MM and measure your chipset voltage...
It should be 1.55v
I just measure mine and its @ 1.22!
I'm going to mod the voltage to bring it up to 1.6 or so...
If yours is really low it could be the cause of your instability...
can you pass memtest86 for any length of time?
take a MM and measure your chipset voltage...
It should be 1.55v
I just measure mine and its @ 1.22!
I'm going to mod the voltage to bring it up to 1.6 or so...
If yours is really low it could be the cause of your instability...
can you pass memtest86 for any length of time?
Voorstryden
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2004
- Messages
- 29
I'm positive on the 1.22V...
I measured it like ten times as I could not believe it.
I'm using bios 1004.01
My board seems to like to undervolt the chipset and overvolt the ram...
Selecting 2.75 gives me 2.98V, 3.00 gives me 3.16...interesting to say the least.
Now I'm off to volt mod the chipset, just need to find a spare 1Kohm resistor.
I measured it like ten times as I could not believe it.
I'm using bios 1004.01
My board seems to like to undervolt the chipset and overvolt the ram...
Selecting 2.75 gives me 2.98V, 3.00 gives me 3.16...interesting to say the least.
Now I'm off to volt mod the chipset, just need to find a spare 1Kohm resistor.
Voorstryden said:
I'm also on BIOS 1004.001. To answer some questions and make some comments, including ones I didn't quote that you posted:
1) Just looked in Sandra, even though I set the HT to 4x in the BIOS, based on the score it gave, I'm at 5x.
2) If I do a mild OC, like 13 * 215 (I'm using a FX-55 on air cooling), I pass Memtest 86+ fine. I tried 12 * 232, couldn't past memtest even at really horrid timings like 2.5-4-4-8. I did keep at 1T, never tried 2T, I was always failing test #5. I have Corsair XMS XL Pro PC 3200 memory, I know it will do a 240 FSB with somewhat relaxed timings, did that on a MSI K8N Neo 2, same exact sticks of memory.
3) CPU voltage is spot on, haven't looked up what the chipset & ram voltage is really doing. To be honest, at the risk of sounding like a n00b, I don't have a utility to do that, I looked under Sandra 2005 & CPU-Z. Or are you measuring them somehow with something like a voltmeter? I can only check CPU voltage it seems via the BIOS or something like Sandra.
Anyway, I'll check my BIOS, but if I don't edit this, then HT is setting itself to 5x despite my setting to 4x in the BIOS.
Voorstryden
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2004
- Messages
- 29
A bios update can make the board play nice with your sticks of ram. It happened on the NF2 generation boards, it can happen again.
I'm using a Multi-Meter to check voltages... it's the only accurate way.
Myself as well as others have been emailing Asustek Taiwan to ask for better bios files...
I think once they add memory interleaving we'll see some improvements in HTT clocks...
I know they are working on it, just gotta be patient. (beleive me I'm just as frustrated, having the board for 2+ weeks and I still haven't installed it in my case because of the crappy bios = not ready to take the place of my NF2 Rig)
BTW, I've got my chipset voltage to finally read 1.55 via pencil mod. Now I'm researching the best way to mod the memory voltage to at least 3.6 for my BH-5...
I'm using a Multi-Meter to check voltages... it's the only accurate way.
Myself as well as others have been emailing Asustek Taiwan to ask for better bios files...
I think once they add memory interleaving we'll see some improvements in HTT clocks...
I know they are working on it, just gotta be patient. (beleive me I'm just as frustrated, having the board for 2+ weeks and I still haven't installed it in my case because of the crappy bios = not ready to take the place of my NF2 Rig)
BTW, I've got my chipset voltage to finally read 1.55 via pencil mod. Now I'm researching the best way to mod the memory voltage to at least 3.6 for my BH-5...
Voorstryden said:
Perhaps so. I was going to do an edit but I'll do a seperate post just as a FYI. Anyway, I set the HT to 3x in the BIOS, Sandra 2005 is STILL reporting as if the HT is set to 5x. Probably explains why I can't get a memory FSB of much more then 215 no matter what I set the timings to on the memory.
And yes, they might pop off with a decent BIOS. Be wonderful if they did, no sarcasm implied at all. Or they might do like the A8V and just kind of say "OOPS, here we now did Rev 2.0...it's the fixed board...". And well, I'm not 100% soured on ASUS yet...I've had decent ASUS boards too, but just on personal experience, I've had good DFI & MSI boards overal, with Abit a close second. Had one good Gigabyte except that it had the dual BIOS, and somehow it flashed both incorrectly at the same time to where I couldn't copy over either chip with a new BIOS. Anyway, to stop rambling, out of the SLI boards out this minute, MSI is the brand I've had the best luck with, and I guess I'm jumping ship...well did, board is ordered from Newegg as of this morning.
Hey, don't take my jumping ship as a flame of ASUS, just me running out of patience.
More problems with the NVIDIA RAID controller. I have everything enabled except the IDE RAID, only SATA RAID 1,2,3,4 and the Silicon Image Controller is disabled. I still get the BSOD before I get to Partioning of the drives in WinXP. I updated teh BIOS to 1003 also...still no help. I'm stumped. In non-RAID SATA, the nvidia controller works fine? Anyone..bueller?
Arvig said:
I am having a similiar problem, i like everone else flashes my bios like everyday ...lol....to see what is the best and most stable. Well, at some point , dont know where, the hyperbus was set down a notch to gain stability. So 4x was really 3x, and so on. So when i flahed back to 1003.5 the hyperbus was stuck at 2x......even if i put it on 5x, or 4x, or even auto, it always reads 2x. Now, the numbers it reads are different though. Like if i set it to 4x in the bios, it will read 2x 490 .......or if i put it on auto it will read 2x 1005. So its really messed up, but my performance is great to say the least. I mean im getting over 14,000 in 3dmark 2003 with a single 6800GT. So i wouldnt let the hyper bus(no matter what it tells you) be my factor with memory overclocking like it used to. 245 fsb with 1T is what im at, and its the highest i can get. My hyperbus reads 2x 735 (1470).....who knows if its right or not...lol....but my performance is top notch!
Vader said:More problems with the NVIDIA RAID controller. I have everything enabled except the IDE RAID, only SATA RAID 1,2,3,4 and the Silicon Image Controller is disabled. I still get the BSOD before I get to Partioning of the drives in WinXP. I updated teh BIOS to 1003 also...still no help. I'm stumped. In non-RAID SATA, the nvidia controller works fine? Anyone..bueller?
So my friend is a sys admin and pretty much does about 15 minutes of real work a day and spends the rest of the time looking shit up. he has been helping with my rig since im using this new board and he came across some very interesting things on some other forums. as it turns out the nforce4 chipset only has beta drivers (check nvidia's web site and see when the current unified driver set came out a while ago). any hard drives currently using NCQ and TCQ has major problem possibilities. not only diminished preformance but data corruption as well. nforce3 boards are also having similar problems with NCQ but not TCQ. if any of you are using a RAID go with the silicon controller and disable TCQ in windows. i had the same problem installing windows and was getting a BSOD at the same spot as VADER using the nvidia controller. seems certian brands of SATA drives get f***ed up in the same spot. there still seems to be confusion wether its the chipset exclusivley or a combo of bios version and unified driver set. so to me this all means that this is still a very beta board so be careful not to lose your dataedit: just checked nvidia's web site. they mention the chipset supporting NCQ but nothing about it in the Unified driver set. will be interesting to see when they come out with the new ones if it will specificaly mention support for NCQ
Replicant1911
Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2004
- Messages
- 1,020
Just thought I would post this here in case some other n00b is in the same boat. You have to plug in EVERY SINGLE PSU CONNECTOR! I mean the EZ connector the 20 to 24 pin converter (PSU is an MGE Vortec 600W) and that square 4pin connector on the top of the motherboard that I didnt see as well as the power connectors for the video card. I hope this helps someone else.
Mr.Dru said:
edit: just checked nvidia's web site. they mention the chipset supporting NCQ but nothing about it in the Unified driver set. will be interesting to see when they come out with the new ones if it will specificaly mention support for NCQ
Yeah, now you tell me about NCQ drives.
Sorry, I was someone who had gotten two Diamond Max 10's just for this board, ended up switching to Raptors, I had to say something.
LittleMe said:Yea, atleast you only went with 2, I went with 4 of them
Well, as long as you don't turn on NCQ/TCQ in Windows, 1002 will at least support them, and well...maybe they will have a fix for NCQ in one of the beta BIOSes, or a driver fix, like the guy I quoted earlier today said, the NVidia chipset drivers are all beta.
(Although to be frank...I kind of knew that...if nothing else, when the official driver on NVidia's site is still 5.10 which I think is dated Sept. 2004, that tells me that all the drivers on the motherboard CD's are beta...
)Yeah...
It's really strange, but I hope they'll fix it in final 1004 bios version...
Also - I've decided to stay with 1003 because 1002 causez many problems in my OS [BSODs, instability etc] don't know why - but other bios versions didn't make that.
So "when" and "if" my motherboard recognizes my DiamnodMax 10 - everything is ok, the system is rock stable, runs fast, smooth, without single problem.
I've figured out something like a "voodoo ritual" is needed for my motherboard to recognize NCQ HDD. I usually turn on and off my computer several times, then disconnect serial ata data cable, turn it on and off two times, then connect to another sata port [sata 4 for example] and if it still doesn't detect my hdd - then I connect it to sata 2 or 3 and then => 'tadaaaaaaaaaa' it displays my hdd. My OS starts to boot and no need to do anything like that until next shut down/power up... :>
And no - I didn't connect EZplug molex power connector/cable... I did connect it for testing purpose but nothing happened so I decided not to connect it until my PowerSupply [OCZ PowerStream 520W] arrives and then I'll connect everything in my case [the PS I currently use is poor 400w with really weak 12v rail]
Regards....
It's really strange, but I hope they'll fix it in final 1004 bios version...
Also - I've decided to stay with 1003 because 1002 causez many problems in my OS [BSODs, instability etc] don't know why - but other bios versions didn't make that.
So "when" and "if" my motherboard recognizes my DiamnodMax 10 - everything is ok, the system is rock stable, runs fast, smooth, without single problem.
I've figured out something like a "voodoo ritual" is needed for my motherboard to recognize NCQ HDD. I usually turn on and off my computer several times, then disconnect serial ata data cable, turn it on and off two times, then connect to another sata port [sata 4 for example] and if it still doesn't detect my hdd - then I connect it to sata 2 or 3 and then => 'tadaaaaaaaaaa' it displays my hdd. My OS starts to boot and no need to do anything like that until next shut down/power up... :>
And no - I didn't connect EZplug molex power connector/cable... I did connect it for testing purpose but nothing happened so I decided not to connect it until my PowerSupply [OCZ PowerStream 520W] arrives and then I'll connect everything in my case [the PS I currently use is poor 400w with really weak 12v rail]
Regards....
mIRCon said:
LOL on a voodoo ritual, why do I picture you sacrificing a chicken on the top of the case.
Err...don't do that if you have a blowhole on it. I'd assume chicken blood, meat and feathers isn't good for PC parts.
To stay more or less off topic, here's a nice voodoo ritual you can do...it's how one makes an undead badger:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml
(Yes, it dates back to that "Badger-badger-badger" animated cartoon...but the link IMO is still funny, and no the cartoon's song doesn't play while your looking at that link. Just be glad it isn't an "All Your Base" reference.)
That sounds similar to what I had to do...except that sometimes I couldn't even do that to get NCQ drives recognized in anything past 1002, so I just gave up and swapped out my Diamond Max 10's.
vxspiritxv
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2001
- Messages
- 1,610
You guys running windows xp sp2 and want all the performance you can get might want to try this:
open up c:\boot.ini change
/noexecute=optin
to
/noexecute=alwaysoff
I gained huge performance boost myself. Mostly when it came to memory 'swaping' from my harddrive, I play MMORPGs. I didn't run a before and after game benchmarks, so if anyone has the time, post some.
open up c:\boot.ini change
/noexecute=optin
to
/noexecute=alwaysoff
I gained huge performance boost myself. Mostly when it came to memory 'swaping' from my harddrive, I play MMORPGs. I didn't run a before and after game benchmarks, so if anyone has the time, post some.
Just a hunch........i bet some how, some way you lost power to the board, not turning it off, like unpluging the psu or hitting the off switch on the psu. If you did that for what ever reason, it screws up everything and really need to clear cmos, than youll be fine again untill you lose total power again. Shutting down a computer is fine, just when that green light that indicates you have power goes out, thats when youll have trouble again. Tell me if you cut power like i said, to see if im right.
Personally to define what I think is the no POST problem. I went throught this problem on 2 motherboards and finally got my third which this has not happened to yet. To define what I think is the problem; there are 2 IC's (Integrated Circuts) towards the back of the board (On the front to the far Left side when looking down at the motherboard sitting flat on a table). One is right above the first PCI slot the second is between the first and the second PCI slot. One IC is a Texas Instraments and the other is for the onboard sound??. Anyways these two IC's heat up to a very intense heat and get so hot that u can't touch them. This happened to the first two boards that I got. One was from buyxg.com and the other was from newegg. One was a rev. 1.0 and the other was a rev. 1.02. after I got the second board I thought that it had to be normal since there didn't seem to be anything to suggest that they had a bad run of board since they came from two seperate resellers and were different revisions. However, this third board that I got back from Newegg does not have this problem and had been one of the smoothest running boards that I have worked with. So in conclusion, to any of u having problems with this board start checking some of the IC's on the left had side of the board near the PCI slots. make sure they are not getting so hot that u can't touch them if they are my suggestion is to RMA the board because I was never able to get either of my first two boards to ever boot again.
EDIT : And no i didn't do anything to the first two they were like that from the first time I booted them up and they were not overclocked. My first board lasted a total of about ~30mins and the second ~1 Day.
PS sorry about the long post but I thought this might be important information for anyone with this board since normally most people don't check the temp of each individual IC on a motherboard.
EDIT : And no i didn't do anything to the first two they were like that from the first time I booted them up and they were not overclocked. My first board lasted a total of about ~30mins and the second ~1 Day.
PS sorry about the long post but I thought this might be important information for anyone with this board since normally most people don't check the temp of each individual IC on a motherboard.
I got more information. I did some pretty extensive testing based upon instructions from Corsair Micro's tech support. Here's what I did.
Removed everything from the board except the CPU. Betty says, "System Failed Memory Test" every time. I put in two sticks of RAM in slot 1 & 3. Sometimes the machine fails to POST, sometimes Betty says, "System Failed VGA Test." I did the same with the sticks in slots 2 & 4, and got the same results. Here's where it gets interesting. I put 1 stick in slot 1 and every time Betty says, "System Failed Memory Test." I put 1 stick into slot 2 and get the same thing. I put 1 stick into slot 3, and sometimes it wouldn't POST at all, and sometimes Betty would say, "System Failed VGA Test." I tried slot 4 with the same results as slot 3.
Corsair Micro says DIMM slots 1 & 2 are bad if they won't recognize the memory at all. That sounds right to me. It doesn't address why I'm getting the no POST on slots 3 and 4, but it is definately a problem.
Those of you who are getting no POST should try this and see what kind of results you get.
I'm going to RMA the board with AxionTech.
Removed everything from the board except the CPU. Betty says, "System Failed Memory Test" every time. I put in two sticks of RAM in slot 1 & 3. Sometimes the machine fails to POST, sometimes Betty says, "System Failed VGA Test." I did the same with the sticks in slots 2 & 4, and got the same results. Here's where it gets interesting. I put 1 stick in slot 1 and every time Betty says, "System Failed Memory Test." I put 1 stick into slot 2 and get the same thing. I put 1 stick into slot 3, and sometimes it wouldn't POST at all, and sometimes Betty would say, "System Failed VGA Test." I tried slot 4 with the same results as slot 3.
Corsair Micro says DIMM slots 1 & 2 are bad if they won't recognize the memory at all. That sounds right to me. It doesn't address why I'm getting the no POST on slots 3 and 4, but it is definately a problem.
Those of you who are getting no POST should try this and see what kind of results you get.
I'm going to RMA the board with AxionTech.
TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2005
- Messages
- 183
Well, FWIW, I've had no problems whatsoever with this board (specs in sig, if you're curious)
(specs in sig, if you're curious)TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R said:Well, FWIW, I've had no problems whatsoever with this board
Well, with a name like "TR0GDOR THE BURNiAT0R", if I was your motherboard I'd be too intimidated to be buggy.
EDIT/On topic post:
Well, for what it's worth looks like it is NForce 4 in general with regards to NCQ drives. Popped onto MSI's forum and saw this:
>i have this board and 2 maxtor dp10 300gb.the board can not detect the hard disks.i have to turn on and then shutdown (not reset) 3-4 times and then it detects them.
the board works fine with these disks in array 0 but can not detect them always.
is there someone knows anything about it. <
Didn't cut & paste this, but his board is a MSI Neo 4 Platinum, he didn't say SLI so I assume the NForce 4 Ultra. Still, assuming by "DP10" he meant Diamond Max 10 and made a typo, this finally answers what I asked a week ago in a thread, if anyone with a NForce 4 board other then the ASUS has problems with NCQ drives. Looks like he does.
Err...guess I'm glad I dumped the drives before ordering a new board.
Ok, just got the board going, and all seems well, except for one small problem.
I cant seem to boot from my DVD drive, to reinstall WinXP. I have two Sony DVD drives, one is a burner, one a reader only. They both show up fine in the BIOS, and both work fine in WinXP. However, when I put the XP cd in, and chance the first boot device to CD-ROM, it doesnt pick it up. I have even gone to the boot menu and selected it there, and it didnt work either.
I am on the latest official BIOS of 1003, any idea? I know I can format and install from within XP, but I just dont like it that way.
I cant seem to boot from my DVD drive, to reinstall WinXP. I have two Sony DVD drives, one is a burner, one a reader only. They both show up fine in the BIOS, and both work fine in WinXP. However, when I put the XP cd in, and chance the first boot device to CD-ROM, it doesnt pick it up. I have even gone to the boot menu and selected it there, and it didnt work either.
I am on the latest official BIOS of 1003, any idea? I know I can format and install from within XP, but I just dont like it that way.
poach said:
Didn't seem to be, seemed faster then normal SATA drives, but Raptors on inital bootup seemed faster still. Sandra did benchmark them, both as single and RAID 0 arrays almost as fast as they benchmarked my Raptors. But I also never turned on NCQ in Windows, so it was really the 16mb buffer of my Maxtor Diamond Max 10's adding in speed, I'm assuming NCQ was doing nothing to help or hinder in this case.
LittleMe said:
Yeah I tried both, and as I said, both show up in the BIOS. And both are usuable in Windows right now.
I upgraded from a MSI K8N 754 platform, to this mobo, and a 3500+. I have a new 74gig Raptor on the way, should be here Friday. But was going to go ahead and format anyways. Since it doesnt seem to want to work.. I just made this XP install work. Uninstalled the previous drivers, and installed these, and it seems to be ok. But when that new HD gets here, I really want a fresh install of XP.
TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2005
- Messages
- 183
This was actually the first problem I had with this board (Just had to say I wasn't having any on monday. Stupid Karma!fallguy said:
). Try resetting the CMOS, that fixed it for me.
Xrave
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2004
- Messages
- 7,816
Vega said:
Setting it to 67 will lock it.
TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R said:This was actually the first problem I had with this board (Just had to say I wasn't having any on monday. Stupid Karma!
Didnt work either. I have tried the CD in both drives. I get my new HD Friday.. and Im going to have to format. Ugh, one small problem could screw up my whole weekend. :/
Im wasnt trying to get into XP, I was trying to format.
There is good news though, ZZF&FedEX got my HD here a day earlier than the tracking said. And after an hour of frusteration because I couldnt boot from cd, I just decided to tap the space bar several times anyways. Low and behold, it worked! I never did get the "press any key to boot from cd..." message, but it woked anyways.
Im on it now, fresh format, and a new 74gig Raptor. All is well.
Also got my 3500+ up to 2640Mhz so far. Not too shabby for the first testing.
There is good news though, ZZF&FedEX got my HD here a day earlier than the tracking said. And after an hour of frusteration because I couldnt boot from cd, I just decided to tap the space bar several times anyways. Low and behold, it worked! I never did get the "press any key to boot from cd..." message, but it woked anyways.
Im on it now, fresh format, and a new 74gig Raptor. All is well.
Also got my 3500+ up to 2640Mhz so far. Not too shabby for the first testing.
I should have stuck with the 1004-001 beta BIOS. It was running great. I just 'upgraded' to the release version of 1004 and so far I've locked up three times. Eh, I'll figure it out. This is the first problem of any kind I've had with this board so far.