ASUS A8N is a POS!!!!

I purchased one of the first boards available (had it at the beginning of December) and it has given me no problems at all so far. I don't overclock so I could care less about any of that and the shipping BIOS of 1002 has been fine for me. I really don't think that this is a beta board, its just that since SLI is in its infancy there is going to be issues with the amount of features these products support. Plus the fact that nVidia and ASUS have been running these things far longer than when they were available to the public. I remember them doing a demonstration of SLI way back in October. ASUS was the only motherboard with SLI at that time and nVidia was working closely with them to iron out incompatibilies and create a great gaming platform. True, they may have released SLI a little too soon but then again when it works it is truelly awesome.
 
Forget asus or gigabyte...just get this.... :D
neo4-3.JPG
 
Dioretsa said:
Yeah I've heard people having nothing but problems with this board. If you want super reliable nForce 4, you're probably going to have to get the DFI board.
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*shudder* I'll admit that I haven't done much research on the new DFI boards, but their Socket A Lanparty boards are an absolute nightmare. A buddy of mine has one, and over the summer we probably put in close to 50 hours to troubleshoot the oddities of the board. On top of that, DFI customer support was, well, less than supportive. Maybe they''ve gotten better in the past couple months, but assuming they haven't, I'd stay the hell away from DFI until they get back into the game.

Oh, and as a note, I'm well aware that the DFI boards can clock like no one's business, but the ability to OC should preclude stability and an absence of oddities.
 
Asus is the first company to release the Nforce 4. The nforce 4 has not matured enough yet in the market. Calling it POS will not help you. Only waiting for BIOS/NVIDIA driver release can help you. Gigabyte seems to work, but with the extra cost for DPS and lack of overclocking ability, it seems unjust. DFI seems to have extreme OC ability, but lack of warranty/support. Come on, which memory/cpu manufacturer will warranty 4.0V to memory, and 2.0V to cpu??? OCZ seems to be the only memory manufacturer that support high voltage, but it's not that high. All you can do is wait it out.
 
kellog said:
Not necessarily, if more people bought board x than board y, it could have a higher number of complaints, but still a lower ratio of people who have had problems with it. If 1000 people bought board x, 50 people bought board y, and there were 15 complaints for x and 10 for y, then board x is still a better buy.
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IMO you've missed my point if you change the number of people in my hypothetical example who bought each board. If you're going to do that, then why not say that 50 people bought board X, and 1000 bought Y? Then X looks exceptionally bad...and also misses my point.

My point was that no, the number of complaints isn't an absolute, but then again neither is one review of a board, or even 100. But yes one can use it as an indicator. I would venture to say that roughly the same number of people have bought the Gigabyte SLI, it's been out about as long. Yet, at least from what I've seen personally, it has less complaints. Not trying to say "OH, ASUS SUX, GIGABYTE R0X", not trying to flame ASUS at all, or promote Gigabyte or any other brand at all. Just trying to show that one can't just dismiss complaint threads and that yes, one can use them as a rough indicator, even if people praising the board will be less vocal since it's more likely people will come to a message board to complain and/or post their problem to seek help.

Or to put it another way, the Gigabyte has been out for roughly the same amount of time, I've seen it off and on in stock since at least middle of January. I see both less volume of posts about the Gigabyte, and what I've seen less of the total percentage of the Gigabyte posts seem to be complaints. Yes, the Gigabyte may have had less sales, but even the people who bought it are having less problems, since they are being less vocal in general if one assumes that it's more likely for a complainer to be vocal then someone praising it. So thus, it's possible to conclude that the Gigabyte has less problems.
 
TheOneBarton said:
Asus is the first company to release the Nforce 4. The nforce 4 has not matured enough yet in the market. Calling it POS will not help you. Only waiting for BIOS/NVIDIA driver release can help you. Gigabyte seems to work, but with the extra cost for DPS and lack of overclocking ability, it seems unjust. DFI seems to have extreme OC ability, but lack of warranty/support. Come on, which memory/cpu manufacturer will warranty 4.0V to memory, and 2.0V to cpu??? OCZ seems to be the only memory manufacturer that support high voltage, but it's not that high. All you can do is wait it out.
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And what about people like me who have had the board a month, and see problems that a BIOS fix won't cure? And I don't just mean the chipset fan. I've detailed them in other threads, so won't detail them again. Am I jumping ship too soon?
 
Arvig......kinda. I think maybe waiting untill the first release of official Nforce 4 drivers would be a decent start, but who am i to tell you what to do. I wish you the best luck with what ever you get, really. I know you paid ALOT for your A8N-SLI board, so did i and thats one of the reasons im gonna wait it out and see what asus does. In my opinion, Asus is the best motherboard company there is. My p4p800 was the best. Your sistuation isnt like mine so i can understand where your coming from. I am able to overclock to a decent degree where as you couldnt really and thats unexceptable. I hope you get a board that does you justice and you can finally start doing whatever it is you do. I however am gonna wait a bit, as the more i think about it, what am i gonna get from another board.....270 fsb up from my 245 now? Its just mot worth it to me, my board works flawlessly. Ive been playing games all night without so much as a hiccup from my system. And i feel that someone soon will come out with a modded bios for people who have TCCD memory OR asus will address this and i will get my 300+ fsb.
 
Tripp17 said:
Arvig......kinda. I think maybe waiting untill the first release of official Nforce 4 drivers would be a decent start....(snips rest of your post).
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Well, I am kind of in "debate" mode for lack of a better term with this specific thread, so please consider that. But well...would a driver fix cure a burning out chipset fan? Or a board that occasionally locks up right after the Windows splash screen, especially if my board is like someone else's and is undervolting the chipset? (I have no way of testing that personally without buying a multi-meter, so I don't know if mine is undervolting the chipset like the other guys' board is). Neither a BIOS nor driver fix will cure that. And...like I said, had mine since right after Christmas. What if this board came out late November instead, and I had it for two months with these problems...would that be an acceptable length of time? Or in the middle of July and had it for half a year, is that then okay?

Again, just in debate mode really.
 
centvalny said:
Forget asus or gigabyte...just get this.... :D
neo4-3.JPG
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Wish Newegg would actually update their shipping status and/or ship...otherwise I'd have that right now. ;)
 
Heres neo4 sli at 1st. try htt 4x and memory 1:1. It beat the hell of my Gigabyte k8n sli that limited to htt 4 at 290
3000.jpg
 
I just ordered the ASUS A8N-SLI and now I hope I made the right decision. I really wanted the Gigabyte board as those boards have been good to me but the ASUS board had three PCI and the Gigabyte only has two PCI slots. I have three PCI cards so I had to base it on that one factor.

Since some of you have this board does the raid mirroring function allow you to use a hard drive that has everything installed on it already and duplicate it on the matching hard drive? Or do you have to set up the raid with two empty drives losing your data from the not empty drive?
Thanks!
 
wishbringer15 said:
I just ordered the ASUS A8N-SLI and now I hope I made the right decision. I really wanted the Gigabyte board as those boards have been good to me but the ASUS board had three PCI and the Gigabyte only has two PCI slots. I have three PCI cards so I had to base it on that one factor.

Since some of you have this board does the raid mirroring function allow you to use a hard drive that has everything installed on it already and duplicate it on the matching hard drive? Or do you have to set up the raid with two empty drives losing your data from the not empty drive?
Thanks!
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Err...well...I guess you could clone/ghost the data from hard drive x, boot up on one of the NVidia SATA ports, install the NVIdia RAID drivers manually (or if using the silicon image ports, those drivers), clone your drive to drive y, then set up the RAID 1 array and hope it works. Never tried such a stunt, personally, in fact I've only ran RAID 0 arrays myself. (using x and y as the two drives in your RAID 1 array)

Another idea that might work, just guessing. Let's say you have three drives. Drives x and y, two identical drives for your RAID 1 array. Drive z, different drive. Drive X contains your old Windows install and/or data you want to keep and don't want to reinstall. Clone X to Z. For now use Z as your boot drive. Install the NVidia RAID drivers (Or again sil drivers if using them) onto Z. Format both X & Y. Reboot, go into the RAID setup utility that comes on right after the BIOS, build your RAID 1 array from X & Y. Let Windows on Z come up after doing that, clone it to the one drive in your RAID 1 array that Windows sees. Disconnect Z and reboot to make sure it will now boot off of the RAID 1 setup X & Y, then if you want to use Z in the same system, shut down, plug it back in and reformat it.

Err...after all of that work though, I'd just reinstall Windows if I was building a RAID array from scratch, especially if you're coming from a vastly different chipset.

Here, if you do want to play drive cloning gymnastics, I like this software personally:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

This is a trial version, but it is fully functional for 15 days. I did clone a Windows install from one RAID 0 to another RAID 0 array, if that helps.

One last tidbit, if your drives are NCQ enabled, especially Maxtors...don't use them on this board. I had a LOT of problems using NCQ based SATA drives on this board. The shipping BIOS would corrupt the install if you did turn on NCQ in Windows, and any BIOS after that so far is even worse, the NVidia SATA ports will literally stop seeing the drives. Don't know if it's specific to this board, a NForce 4 chipset problem in general, and/or a NVidia chipset driver problem, the driver itself is a beta right now, even the ones on the motherboard CD's. Did hear it could be a problem with the NForce 4 chipset in general, and/or the current drivers in general though.
 
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.

Me <---Going to take the liberty of posting this in the ASUS A8N-SLI thread too.
 
I know I complained in my previous post. But I have a serious question. When I first put my system together with this board, I didn't (and still don't, should be here today) have a pci-e video card. First, I put in a old POS S3 Virge card. Graphical corruption was evident in the bios screen (although subdued). The windows installer showed some corruption as well. Once I got windows installed, the actual GUI was horribly corrupt, it was almost impossible to read text. So, I put in another S3 virge card I had on hand, figuring maybe the other card was at the end of its life. The 2nd card showed graphical corruption as well, but it wasn't nearly as prevalent. So, I figure I got a bad board, and package it up get ready to RMA it. I have a had time leaving things alone. So I reassembled the system, and put in an old voodoo banshee with a dying fan, rigged a different fan on it, and fired up the system. No graphical corruption. I've chalked it up to some sort of compatibility problem. I have two questions: 1) has anyone else experienced this problem. 2) Does it seem to you like it's an incompatablility problem as I suspect, or a damaged board?
I'm using the 1002 bios, since later bios's do not play nice with my maxtor dm 10.
 
Arvig.....quick question. If i wanted to add another rapter to my system, would i have to start all over again or can it somehow just start working with my other rapter.....i want raid 0, so you know? What do you think? Ive never had 2 harddrives before so i really just dont know. I was gonna hold off because of all the problems people were having at first, but no one is having problems with 2 rapters on the A8N-SLI.......so, can i just "add" it or do i have to start all over?
 
ObSean said:
II have two questions: 1) has anyone else experienced this problem. 2) Does it seem to you like it's an incompatablility problem as I suspect, or a damaged board?
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I don't think anyone here uses a S3 Virge with an A8N-SLI ;)

Sounds like a compatibility issue to me.
 
actuall, befor i got my replacement gt6800, i was using a pci s3 verge to play with windows, etc, flash the bios, because of all the trouble i'd been reading about

and i saw graphical corruption on mine too
i borrowed a fairly new pci tnt2m64 and this worked fine - and since its all got put back together its run brilliantly

overclocking attempts are a bit crap - cpu seems to take it, ran seems to take it, graphics card will take it, jjust i think the board overheats - and that fucking fan - i'm going to rplace that this week, - i already have the replacement (a blue zalman thing)

speaking of which, anyone tried fitting those with a leadtek 6800gt?

the heatsink on this gfx card is huge, and i was wondering wether it'd need cutting?


(i mean the £5 zalmon hs - not the £300 gfx card)
 
Tripp17 said:
Arvig.....quick question. If i wanted to add another rapter to my system, would i have to start all over again or can it somehow just start working with my other rapter.....i want raid 0, so you know? What do you think? Ive never had 2 harddrives before so i really just dont know. I was gonna hold off because of all the problems people were having at first, but no one is having problems with 2 rapters on the A8N-SLI.......so, can i just "add" it or do i have to start all over?
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Yeah, when I dropped my two NCQ drives, I went to two Raptors in a RAID 0, one of the few things that works 100% okay on this board. ;) No problems here.

Without a disk cloning program, you'd have to reinstall I'd think. If you scroll up a post or three, I did put in a link to a disk cloning app that is a fully functional trial version, works for 15 days, super easy. What I used to clone my NCQ's to my Raptors. Took five minutes and a couple of reboots.

Just guessing, like I did with the other guy wanting to import his RAID 1 array that I mentioned, here's what I'd try, you'd need your two Raptors, and a third hard drive that you'll be installing just for a bit.

Call Raptor 1, the drive with your initial Windows install Drive X. Call the new Raptor, Drive Y. Call the drive you're using to do all of this juggling Drive Z.

Okay, connect Drive Z. Clone Drive X to Z, using software I linked to earlier in this thread. Disconnect Drive X, boot up on Drive Z. Reconnect Drive X and connect Drive Y, your new Raptor, build your RAID 0 array from them. Boot up one more time on Drive Z. If you haven't yet, install all the NVRaid drivers to Drive Z (or if using the Silicon Image ports, install the Sil Drivers). Format the combined RAID 0 array of Drive X and Y, Windows should see it as one large drive now, clone Z to RAID 0 X+Y. Power down, disconnect Z, reboot and in the BIOS and hardware RAID utility (the one you hit F10 to go into right after the BIOS post), set up the RAID 0 array as your boot drive. Come back up, see if it is now booting on your RAID 0 X+Y drives. If so, then put Z away, or power down and reconnect it so you can format Z and use it as a secondary storage drive.

Again, didn't do this, I just cloned my two NCQ's which were already in a RAID 0 to the Raptors which I made into a RAID 0, so the software just saw it as cloning for one drive to another drive, but I'd THINK this would work.

Err...worst case, it won't and you have to do a reinstall, I'd suppose.
 
VashTheStampede21 said:
(i mean the £5 zalmon hs - not the £300 gfx card)
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ROFL, I imagined someone with a Dremel or a hacksaw cutting the PCB of their video card in half in order to fit a heatsink. Thanks for the mental image. :D

Sad thing...I'm sure someone somewhere has done this...."Hey, I don't see any traces on this card, as long as I don't hit a soder point, I bet I can cut a bit off the end..."

;)

EDIT: To make this post on topic, just got a notification from ZipZoomFly that the DFI SLI board is in stock, for $245.00:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=246485

NCIX had it for $231.00 USD assuming the same conversion rate, but I think their cheapest shipping to the USA was about $16.00 USD, so still a bit cheaper for those of us in the USA. And I didn't look to see if they had it in stock there.
 
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