A7N8X just keeps going and going....

I (like most of you) come to this forum and others often when I have problems with my machine. I also read threads about problems others are having with components I'm going to be using. Then I try to put together a machine avoiding problems many of you encounter. And of course there are the occasional thread where someone claims so and so's MB's are crap or I'll never buy some such brands memory ever again. Or someone crying about their machine won't break 200FSB, only to find they're using generic RAM or the worst hs ever.

This thread is about everything going right, far beyond expectations. I liked the features of the A7N8X DLX and I made sure that I got a Rev2 board. I already had the Gainward GF4 4200 card, and a Thermalright SLK800/Volcano 9 fan, and 2 sticks of Corsair XMS PC3000 512 MB RAM used on my previous SOYO machine. The PC 3000 is not optimal but close enough to use, so I waited until the XP 2500 Barton dropped below $100 to buy it and put the machine together.

This machines FSB is like the Energizer Bunny, It just keeps going and going...... I would have been happy with an OC to 2300mhz. I'm up to 2420mhz and haven’t made any memory tweaks, and have only jacked the CPU volts to 1.85, that’s it! I haven't had a blue screen or a hint of instability yet. I haven't run a burn in program yet, but I have run app's I use daily. I've run CATIA V5, Photoshop 7, Outlook Express 6, Surfed with IE 6, while playing music with Win Amp all simultaneously without a single hiccup! And I'll continue raising the FSB 1 or 2mhz a day until it does.

Just thought it might be refreshing for some of you to read a post with nothing but positive things to say.

awesome dude, I just bought this board at newegg. I got some samsung 2100 thatll do 200mhz for sure


Jon

Wow this the EXACT same frequency that mine is running at. Except mine is at 1.750V but with a slight vdd mod. I mean the frequency is exact - 2420.46. Thats interesting that the clock generator is off by the same amount on two diff boards. Especially yours being rev 2.0.

Anyways, nice OC.

JFettig said:

awesome dude, I just bought this board at newegg. I got some samsung 2100 thatll do 200mhz for sure


Jon

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I doubt ANY PC2100 will do 200 FSB. (PC3200). Not Samsung, not anything else.

I have screenshots somewhere... I had it up to 206. Im trying to remember who else it was with similar sticks.... If my 1600 was unlocked, I would show ya right now.

Jon

samsung loves the juice

i'm sure it can do 200 but you'll have to relax the timings quite a bit JFettig, since you're pushing it alot i doubt you'll be able to get it to 200fsb in sync in dual channel mode and/or with more than 1 stick of ram

gj on the oc doodah10

i got 200fsb sync with pc2700 ram with my 1.04, 13hour prime95 run without any errors, but this is still a **** board, wish i had bought the abit or epox

rev 2 boards still have the crackling sound problem, i also believe that the a7n8x del is still not soundstorm certified

i know about a dozen hardcore asus fans that switched to some other brand after having to deal with the a7n8x and i'm sure there are many more...

I never new people didnt like it that much.. what are the reasons for not liking it?

Jon

bios corruptions and poor quality control mainly

OK I can belive that PC2700 will do 200 at loose timings, but PC2100??? Get real.

ok, I guess Ill have to show you when I unlock my cpu


Jon

JFettig said:

I have screenshots somewhere... I had it up to 206. Im trying to remember who else it was with similar sticks.... If my 1600 was unlocked, I would show ya right now.

Jon

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i've seen the screeen shots of the old benchmarks

Maybe I just got lucky with this MB, but I play songs with Win Amp all the time and haven’t experienced the popping or cracking sounds some people mentioned. Does the Nvidia control panel running or not running make any difference for you?

i've been a member of nforcershq.com since febuary of this year

it's the biggest nf2 chipset forum i believe

i've seen soo many ppl having just stupid problems, ppl with alot of know how and the right stuff to for ocing not being able to get anything extra out of their boards

there's actually a huge list of faults of the mobo on the asus section, check it out.... i'd love to see how you feel when you to rma your board cause you made a simple change in the bios and it killed the board.... my first board was a dud aswell...

asus got greedy, put out a board that wasn't ready just to get money, all us 1.0x users are beta testers

I have seen tons posts about people having problems with their MB's and I too am a member of nforcehq.com. A friend here in town ordered the same board and CPU as me from the same place (newegg) on the same day as me. He couldn’t get more than 1100 MHz out of it, was crying up a storm. He brought it to me and I found that his FSB was set at 100. He confused it with memory/CPU ratio. A stupid mistake, and his first homebuilt. Easily fixed and he's very happy now. We both have flashed our BIOS to 1005 wth no problem.

I saw lots of bad posts about my previous board, the SOYO Dragon + after I bought it, but I had only good luck with it. People post all kinds of remarks about their MB's when things go wrong and you see them about every MB made. You don’t hear much when they go right and that’s why I started this thread.

I did finally get a blue screen caused by memory, so I uped the memory volts for a day and then the FSB and I’m still going.

doodah10, I had the soyo dragon board also, I didnt have any problems with that one either. I sure hope I dont have any problems with this board...

and the 200mhz on the pc2100 was on the stock timings, When I re-seat my waterblock Im testing, Ill unlock the cpu at the same time. Ill have to see what happens I guess

Jon

And while you all slept, my energizer bunny board kept on going. This unbelieveable to me anyway. Heat sink temp is 44.2C under mild load.

doodah10 said:

And while you all slept, my energizer bunny board kept on going. This unbelieveable to me anyway. Heat sink temp is 44.2C under mild load.

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I should be getting my new board tomorrow from NewEgg. It should be a 2.0 etc. While I have old crap memory, I'm kind of curious to see if my current FSB limits are due to the memory or having to deal with an unlocked PCI/AGP bus. After I get this running, I guess I'll go for some Corsair XMS 3200LL. It may be a few weeks until I get the memory, so hopefully, Corsair might come up with some low latency 3500 sticks. I noticed that they just came out with some 3700 rated stuff, but that's a very relaxed timings and I'm not interested in that.
It should be a fun weekend if Fedex comes through.

So far my only blue screen was RAM related and this PC 3000 im using is not optimal but my results are so good I can't see spending $150 a stick for the small gain XMS 3200LL might give me.

doodah10 said:

So far my only blue screen was RAM related and this PC 3000 im using is not optimal but my results are so good I can't see spending $150 a stick for the small gain XMS 3200LL might give me.

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Yeah, but I have 2100 rated memory that's nowhere near what's out there now. I need new stuff.

doodah10 said:

And while you all slept, my energizer bunny board kept on going. This unbelieveable to me anyway. Heat sink temp is 44.2C under mild load.

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hey..looking nice...have you ran prime yet at that speed? it would be really nice to get 12hrs or more at that speed then it would be a true "DOPEALIOUS OC"...good luck and congrads