Abit and Vista 64-bit

I'm thinking of moving to Vista 64-bit later this spring. I've heard 64-bit drivers are a little hard or sometimes impossible to find depending on the device.

There is a new ATI Radeon Cat video driver that is supposedly Vista 64-bit ready. That's good news.

But, what about Abit chipset, audio, LAN, USB, and uGuru drivers? Will all the on-board stuff work?

If you are running Vista 64-bit with a recent Abit motherboard (i965/i975 chipset), please post your results. List what was successful and what caused problems. Thanks.

Hey Bat,

The fact Abit lists in the specs for the AW9D-Max that it's Vista ready, are they referring to 32-bit ready or 64-bit ready, or could they mean both? Maybe emailing their customer support and getting clarification is in order here.

Richie

I ran win XP 64bit for a bit and found most of the drivers needed for a complete pc. Abit does have 64bit drivers for their boards but during my use there was no updates only the original version. On their downloads page for each board there was a separate link to the 64bit drivers. I could never get the 64bit guru software to start up much less see temps though.

Ive been using XP64 on our board from day one, and have just (Friday) ordered Vista 64 HP, I should see it Monday if not Wednesday (Tuesday is a holiday here) I have all ready downloaded 64bit vista drivers for the sound, 7900GT, TV 550pro and IP3000 printer. I didnt find drivers hard to find at all.

On the Abit forum there is a beta uguru that works, but it seem to only work right if its the first uguru install on that OS. it doesnt seem to like it if you uninstall a copy of uguru and then install the beta.

So I should be good to go, I'll let you know how she (AW9D Max) takes to it.

While I have no Abit boards, I do want to chime in about running 64-bit. Driver support will probably be a little quicker to arrive with Vista than it was with XP, but I don't think that's the biggest issue. Application support is what killed me in running 64-bit. I do alot of audio/video encoding and most of what I was used to working with either did not work, or took pretty severe performance hits from having to run in 32-bit mode.

On typical usage, I saw no advantage running 64-bit. Where I had hoped to see advantages, I saw only lack of support and subpar performance. I do look forward to being able to move to it, however.

Thanks for the responses.

Abit motherboards listed as Windows Vista ready:
http://www.abit-usa.com/engineered/vista/model.html

Here is what I also found listed on the Abit website (I'm assuming these will work with VISTA 64-bit):

Listed as for Win2000/XP/2003/64bit:
Realtek High Definition Audio Driver
INTEL Chipset Driver
Intel ICH7R/ 8R Raid Installation Disk
INTEL Application Accelerator RAID Driver
uGuru 3.0X

Listed as for Win2003 64bit / XP 64 bit:
SiliconImage 3132 RAID Driver
SiliconImage 3132 SATA Driver

I have seen the Abit forum thread about uguru. Looks like Abit is working on it and at least has a beta available.

What worries me is the lack of 64-bit LAN drivers on the Abit website, but I've heard others say you can find them from the Realtek and Gigabit websites (dunno for a fact since I haven't looked yet).

I'm guessing that probably the biggest problem with Vista 64-bit is driver support for peripherals such as printers, scanners, cameras, etc.

Anyone else with personal experience, please post.

Man... I didnt even think of lan drivers
Ive never used the interweb soooo fast. lan drivers for the AW9D Max can be found here.
32 and 64 bit Vista drivers

Thanks Deanzo, I've got it downloaded. I'm downloading all the 64-bit drivers I can think of and burning them to a CD prior to buying Vista. Hopefully, HP will have my printer and scanner drivers ready within a month or two.

Anyone who has signed drivers, IIRC the only ones that 64bit Vista will allow you to install, must supply both 32 and 64bit DRM compliant drivers for Vista.

I'll wait awhile before I'll get Vista. It will be 64bit as I plan on >4MB of memory.

There are key apps that I simply won't live without like Photoshop that need to be fully 64bit Vista ready before I'd take the plunge.

Well about 2 hours ago I received it at work, I couldnt help myself so I popped home for lunch and installed it, took just over 19min.
First off love the feel of it (for the whole 10min I was using it)
Lan worked out of the box as they say. sound was a no go even though it says drivers are installed and working. (please note I have not installed any driver myself yet)

Any how I have about 3 more hours of work then Im into it, cant wait.

If theres anything you would like me to run/test and I have it or can download it for free let me know, this install is just a testbed for around 2 weeks or less then Im going to set it up for real, Im all so going to give matrix raid a go in that time.

Should be a fun week or two, I'll update up along the way.

Excellent, a pioneer blazing a path through the Vista 64-bit wilderness.

I've got the 64bit Vista iso. I'm hoping that I can get a deal on a 37GB Raptor to install it on.

It ought to run fairly fast on that drive and my C2D system. Too bad this iso is only the latest RC2 and not the RTM version.

Just a wee update for all the AW9D user in the house.

Lan, as above works right off the bat.
Sound, I was a little fast to say it wouldnt work, it does but I could only get it to go for 2.1, Updated drivers and Im back to 5.1
Uguru, 3101 for vista 99.9%works the only thing is it reads my cpu volts wrong, set in bios at 1.525 reads 1.38, everything else works fine
USB, mouse, keyboard and pendrives all work, havent set up my printer yet.
GPU, Im better off with the drivers that came with it, Over what ever Nvida thinks its doing with there new beta, and yes I know its beta but the drivers before this one came out on the 5th Jan 07, Im not sure if they got the note that vista was going to store at the end of Jan. There new control panel is a joke as well.

Ive started testing alot of other things but more on that later.


All and all Im very happy with it and its a walk in the park next to setting up XP64 12 months ago

One last thing for now, Ive only been running this for about 2 hours so take the above with a grain of salt and you just have to love how fast it is to load and re-boot when needed.


Edit: Uguru now reads my volts to high

Ive made a wee thread here with all the software I have tested so far.

I'll only post back in this thread if someone needs help or its to do with the board or Abit software.

And Im still very happy that I went 64bit.

Well I just finished my first raid 0 set up on two Seagate perpendicular drives

And I must say it was easy

First down load number 5 (this is for 64bit vista) and use it to create the floppy for your raid driver

Then you need to set up the bios:

Integrated Peripherals

>On-Chip IDE Device = Press Enter to gain access to the On-Chip IDE Device sub-menu
>On-Chip PCI Device = Press Enter
>Super-IO = Press Enter
> Onboard PCI Device = Press Enter to gain access to the Onboard PCI Device sub-menu


On-Chip IDE Device

IDE Bus Master = Enabled
On-Chip IDE-1 Controller = Press Enter

*** On-Chip Serial ATA Setting ***
X On-Chip SATA Mode = RAID – set this second after setting On-Chip SATA to Enhanced
X – SATA RAID ROM = Enabled – this will be Enabled once On-Chip SATA Mode is set to RAID
On-Chip SATA = Enhanced – set this first then you’ll be able to set On-Chip SATA Mode to RAID


Onboard PCI Device

IEEE 1394 Controller = Enabled or Disabled - this is the firewire controller
Serial 1 ATA Controller = Disabled if you aren’t using SATA 5 or SATA 6 (Silicon Image)
- SATA RAID Mode = if Serial 1 ATA Controller is Disabled this is grayed out
- SATA Option ROM = if Serial 1 ATA Controller is Disabled this is grayed out
Serial 2 ATA Controller = Disabled if you aren’t using SATA 7 or e-SATA (Silicon Image)
- SATA RAID Mode = if Serial 2 ATA Controller is Disabled this is grayed out
- SATA Option ROM = if Serial 2 ATA Controller is Disabled this is grayed out
LAN1 Controller = Normally Enabled, Disabled if you aren’t using LAN
- Invoke Boot Agent = Normally Disabled, Enabled if you what to boot from LAN
LAN2 Controller = Normally Disabled, Enabled if you use both LAN connections
- Invoke Boot Agent = Normally Disabled, Enabled if you what to boot from LAN2

F10 to save and exit bios

Straight after it re boots (ctrl+i) to enter the raid controller utility and build your raid array. Exit, then boot to CD for Windows install.

During instllation at the part that lets you format the drive you will see their's a button that say's load driver's click that follow your nose and your done.

As I said easy


Next Stop Matrix Raid

anyone tried the Abit IN9-32X Max Motherboard? how well does that run with vista 64. im assuming you can just use nvidia drivers for the 680i chipset