Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe - new bios out

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DesertCat

Gawd
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Jun 14, 2006
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Just thought I would post an FYI for the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe owners that BIOS 1404 is out now. It is dated as 2/22/08 but I believe it showed up on their site in the past day.

I mostly say this for the Phenom owners that may have had issues with the 1302 BIOS (the first one with Phenom support). I know I had to relax my Crucial Ballistix memory timings (4 sticks) from 4-4-4-12 2T on my old X2 3800+ to 5-5-5-18 2T to get stability with Phenom and the 1302 BIOS. I'll be putting this system through the paces over the next few days to see if that helps with that problem.

There are no release notes posted on this, so I can't tell you what has actually changed. As always, if your system is running fine you probably don't want to fiddle with a BIOS upgrade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As a final note, I did have to clear the CMOS by using the motherboard jumper after this upgrade. That's just good practice anyway, but in this case it actually resulted in a non-boot situation until I did that.
 
Ok, I've been able to do some testing with BIOS 1404 installed. It's something of a mixed bag for me.

1) I'm thinking that BIOS 1404 may include the Phenom B2 erratum fix. I believe 1302 was released prior to the erratum problem being known. After comparing my 3DMark06 scores with BIOS 1404 to version BIOS 1302, it looks like I lost between 600-800 points in my final 3DMark06 score. I have not been able to find a toggle for the erratum fix in the BIOS. Since this is an AM2 board (Nvidia 570) instead of AM2+, I don't think there is any AMD Overdrive software that allows me to override this.

2) On the positive side, I've been able to tighten up my memory timings again. With 4 sticks installed, I can again run at 4-4-4-12 2T 2.2V (for which my Crucial Ballistix is rated). Mostly as a "burn in" technique, I also found that running nTune's "Tune System" function was much more stable. With the 1302 BIOS I would get to the point where the this tweaking program would crash over and over. While a crash or two is expected due to this program pushing the CPU/PCI-E/Memory to it's limits, the crashes I got with 1302 were over the top. With the 1404 BIOS I only saw one crash and that was near the end of the 20 minute "coarse tuning" cycle. When it tried to push the FSB of the board from 212 MHzto 218 MHz was the only time I saw a crash. This is pretty much a "known" with the current generation of B2 Phenom processors; 212 MHz tends to be the limit for FSB.

So... if my guess about this version including the erratum fix is accurate, many people will want to pass on this BIOS. For people that have experienced BSOD problems due to their particular memory settings, this may be a desirable BIOS upgrade.
 
I have been able to use the 2.09 amd over-clock tool with my m2n32 sli delux. Not the later ones though.

I have been having some issues with ram too.... When I upgraded from the x2 core to the 9600 (black) I had to pull out two of my four (1 gig) stick of ram. The crucial still worked the OCD didnt. I was able to replace with two sticks of crucial. I ahd been able to OC up the 14x mult with just two sticks, with the four sticks I cant OC past 13x.

I wonder if goign to the newer bios will allow for higher OC and if so, will thet be worth the performance hit.
 
Elf_Boy said:
I have been able to use the 2.09 amd over-clock tool with my m2n32 sli delux. Not the later ones though.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the suggestion. I guess the 570 and 590 chipsets must be just different enough that this does not fly. When I try 2.09 it does not seem to run and gives a generic "run as administrator" message, even when I've launched it as an administrator. Version 2.14 makes a statement about it being for 790 series boards and then shuts down.

I would be happy with either a BIOS or software toggle for the erratum fix. It seems silly that a person could only do this with AMD chipset motherboards.
 
I know this seems wierd - try installing it outside the "programs" folder. I am on vista 32... what OS are you on? I tried installing and unistalling it and 2.14 a few times before it started to work. I do get that really anoying are you sure you really want to run it vista thing.

Come to think of it, before I figured out my problem with the OCZ ram (I keep not having good luck with that brand), it wouldnt run at all. Try slowing down your ram settings maybe?
 
I am using Vista Ultimate 64-bit, so that may make a difference as well. I'll be sure to let people know if I find a way of actually getting it to work.
 
When I was first looking into this I remember seeing a post somewhere on how to make it work under vista 64... something about it using unsigned drivers and needing to hit f8 or something at boot up. I didnt pay to much attention as I use vista 32.
 
I am looking at the Asus site... there is a bios 1802 now with a date of 3/6/8.
 
It looks to me like that 1802 BIOS is for the M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Nvidia 590 chipset) instead of the M2N-SLI Deluxe (Nvidia 570 chipset). It appears that the 1404 is still the most recent for my board.

That said, Asus actually lists some of the fixes in that 1802 BIOS for the M2N32-SLI Deluxe.
Update to AMD AGESA 3.1.6.0 code.
Disable DDR2 1066 option when AM2 CPU is plugged.
Fix that AM2+ L3 cache string will overlap
 
I have this board and previously I had the BIOS version that comes with the board. I bought it back in January 2008. I currently have a Athlon 64 X2 6000+ in the board with an EVGA GeForce MX4000 and a thermaltake 750 watt PSU. with 4 GB of corsair xms2 memory and a 100gb maxtor pata hdd. I am currently running Windows XP SP3. I currently am looking to put an EVGA 8800gts and a 750gb seagate barracuda into my system but need to work my problem out.
The problem that I am having is that i want to run a Phenom processor in my system and know that I need to upgrade my BIOS. I did try to upgrade my BIOS to version 1404. However, it apparently successfully wrote but I get to the windows boot screen and it begins to load and then it BSODs. I have followed the book and tried to downgrade back to the original BIOS but nothing is working. Can anyone help me out?
 
The upgrade to BIOSes 1404 and above (I would actually get the newer 1502 that's out BTW) often require 1 extra step and it does not appear that you can downgrade once you move up to one of newer version.

The big thing that many people need to do is manually clear the CMOS after doing the BIOS upgrade. This is described on page 2-20 of my manual, assuming they haven't changed the manual. The brief version is this, 1) unplug computer, 2) find the jumper labeled CLRTC on your motherboard (it's just to the right of the round silver battery), 3) Move the jumper from it's default position on pins 1 & 2 so that it covers pins 2 & 3, 4) Wait about 10 seconds, 5) move the jumper back to pins 1 & 2, 6) plug computer back in. When it reboots, the BIOS will be back to all of its defaults.

That solved my boot problems after upgrading to 1404.
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If you are still having boot issues after that, I suspect that it is because of an upgrade to the RAID firmware in the BIOS that does not get along with the SATA RAID driver that loads at WinXP startup. I ran into this issue a while back with a different board. Maybe somebody knows a more elegant way around the issue, but my fix is to run Windows XP repair so that I can install an updated RAID driver (not the same driver as what you can easily upgrade inside of windows). The key here is that there is a little driver that allows WinXP to access the SATA Hard drive. Due to changes with the motherboard's RAID firmware, sometimes that driver may need to be upgraded to get along with the firmware upgrade. So that requires two things 1) Download the new Nvidia RAID driver and have it available on floppy or thumb drive (depending on what you have on your machine) and 2) running WinXP repair.

Here's the link to Asus' most recent version of that Nvidia RAID driver that you will need.
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/NVIDIA_SATA_RAID_MakeDisk.zip
You will want to run the program in that zip file to extract the RAID driver.

The instructions for doing a WinXP repair are here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

The KEY extra step that needs to happen during the repair is loading your new driver. On one of the early DOS screens, you will see the prompt "Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver". You will want to hit F6 at that stage (SATA is a cousin to SCSI ). It will grind a while longer with the installation but will eventually prompt you for that driver. That will overwrite your old driver that may be causing you bootup issues. Then continue the repair process.

Unfortunately, a WinXP repair will roll you back to the version that is on your CD. Unless you have a slipstreamed copy of WinXP SP3, this means you will need to re-install all of that. It's a bit of hassle, but is easier and quicker than scrubbing the hard drive and starting over.
 
Thanks man. I actually did clear the CMOS back to defaults before I read this and everything works perfectly now. I actually did end up loading BIOS rev 1502 instead of 1404. I now have my new EVGA 8800GTS and my 750gb Seagate barracuda installed into my system and i love it now. I am hoping to upgrade my processor now within the next year and also to take full advantage of DX10 get Vista and XP to dual boot. Thanks for all the help. Out of all the threads I found online, this was the most useful.
 
Now I have another thing that I have been trying to do for some time. I am currently running XP Pro SP3 off of my Maxtor 100GB IDE hard drive and would like to run that off of my 2 WD 80GB SATA HDD. I put the XP disc in run the installation with the raid floppy that I made and all that jazz...starts up fine initially. I then start to install drivers and all of those happy things to make the computer work. And it gets to the point where I need to restart to finalize the drivers installation. OK, restart and I get to the screen that tells me to insert the boot disc and press ok. Insert the boot disc and it boots to the RAID 0 config fine. That is the only time that it boots is when the XP install disc is inserted. Can you think of a reason for this. I would like to use the RAID 0 as mu boot drives for a faster boot and faster gameplay.I don't necessarily need it but I want to get away from the IDE
 
I guess the better question is that I am trying to boot from my 750GB Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD...i load windows XP Pro up and everything nice and then i take the disk out to do a restart, I get to the point of it looking to boot Windows and get this error message "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"
Any thoughts regarding this?
 
j007conks said:
I guess the better question is that I am trying to boot from my 750GB Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD...i load windows XP Pro up and everything nice and then i take the disk out to do a restart, I get to the point of it looking to boot Windows and get this error message "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"
Any thoughts regarding this?
Click to expand...

I assume you have one WinXP installation on Maxtor and a new one on the Seagate and you have the menu on boot to choose between the two WinXP installations? When you unplug the Maxtor, you get "Disk boot failure.." because the other WinXP installation is using the boot files from the Maxtor drive. You should remove the Maxtor prior to installing to Seagate.
 
I've heard of other problems like this when dealing with both IDE and SATA hard drives on the same machine. I think the advisable thing is due totally disconnect the IDE drive before you start trying to load WinXP onto your SATA drive(s). Many motherboards give priority to IDE before they going looking for SATA. There may be a way of fiddling with the boot order that gets around this in the BIOS, but I believe some just lump all hard drives in the same category (IDE & SATA). This can especially cause problems if both have OS installs. The only IDE-based things I've tried to run on a SATA system are CD/DVD drives, so I've never run into this issue.

If there are files that you want to keep on the IDE drive, I would suggest copying them over to an external hard drive and then copying them back over to the SATA drive. Of course that assumes that you have an external drive for backups. If you can avoid mixing IDE and SATA hard drives in the same machine, I would suggest that's the best bet for getting around this problem.
 
There's also a new BIOS out for the M2N32-SLI Wireless Deluxe last week that addresses Phenom processor and a few other things. For a long time now I've been having some troubles with my mainboard, mostly regarding RAM recognition. Seems no matter what RAM I try, it won't work properly. Either the timing would be wrong or it won't POST or the computer would frequently lock up.

I've tried Muskin, OCZ, Kingston, and now Corsair XMS.

I keep hoping that the next BIOS revision would fix something, but alas it didn't. I guess maybe I just got a bad board or something.

I ordered a new board this weekend, an M3N-HD, because it has DDR2-800 support, and I have a ton of DDR2-800 RAM I might be able to use, thanks to my current board lol.

I grew up with ASUS and they've always been great. If there's one biggest weakness with ASUS in my experience, it's their inability to support every RAM module in the market. They're very choosy in that regard, hence it was hard to determine if my board was bad or if I kept buying unsupported RAMs.

Anyways, staying on topic, M2N32-SLI Wireless Deluxe also released a new BIOS last week and it didn't give my computer any troubles (other than the RAM issues I've always had which probably has nothing to do with the BIOS).
 
Azhar said:
Seems no matter what RAM I try, it won't work properly. Either the timing would be wrong or it won't POST or the computer would frequently lock up.
I've tried Muskin, OCZ, Kingston, and now Corsair XMS.
Click to expand...

What do you mean with "the timings would be wrong"? Can't you set up the timings manually?
 
ijozic said:
What do you mean with "the timings would be wrong"? Can't you set up the timings manually?
Click to expand...

Correct, no matter which way I try, manually adjusting the timing or letting it be automatically recognized, a lot of my RAM wouldn't work.

I should also add that the first RAM I had on this motherboard literally exploded, causing one of the module to bubble up and melt.. left a nasty stink in my room.

I removed it and put new RAMs in it, and it hasn't been the same since, even in the second set of slots. The malfunctioning RAM most likely shorted out the board.
 
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