MY Asus A8V-E Delux

Hi all,

Warning - this post is quite long and doesn't actually lead to much... just a lot of info about my a8v-e delux, since I know there is not much out there right now.. also excuse the many spelling mistaked which are sure to follow... but I don't have spell check yet (no office), and I am hopeless without it..

Also, though I haven't posted much (barely anything) I must say I read a LOT on this forum... and it really helped me understand the market and make a decision - so thank you!

got my new computer yesterday...

Asus A8V-E (rev 1, came with BIOS 02, upgraded to 03)
AMD 3200+
2x512 Corsair Select CAS2.5 (2.5-3-3-8-11-16)
Saphire X600 Pro (no budget for something nicer...)
MAxtor 120Gb SATA
ANTEC SLK2650-BQE case. Came with 120mm low RPM fan on the back panel (very quite) - added a Vantec Stealth 80mm to the front - all in all, it is very quiet... I really like this case.

You may notice the lack of heatsink/fan - I' wanted to try out the stock one and read reviews of the board so I can make sure the sink fits the board..
Not the nicest toy around, but this was what I allowed myself to spend (with everything, shippping, insurance, etcm but no monitor, under 1200 CAD)

CPU came out with a bent pin... box cutters to the rescue.. all good and aligned now

Since this is a pretty new motherboard, here are a few things I've found that you might find of value:
1) There were apperantly problems with the 6600 - obviously, I can't comment, but I do know that bios 1.03 has a fix for coming back from sleep mode with it... plus, it seems there were a lot of DOA 6600 in Europe all around, which is where most of those reviews are from.
This new bios also fixes NOS, so that it actually accelerated your comptuer (apperantly, in some previous benchmarks, it did almost nothing in terms of results..)
2) I saw some complained about the noisy fan on the K8T890 - in my case it doesn't stand out.. and I have good ears - maybe I lucked out with a quite fan.. Asus probe is saying 8700RPM constant, but I can't read a temperature from the chipset directly.
3) I've heard many people whine about only 2xSATA on southbridge - I've solved this problem by buying this case, which only fits 2x3.5" internally This was no deal breaker for me.
4) I've had no issues with drivers, bios, etc. Have yet to install XP 64 and Linux (Yopper) - both iso are on my machine, waiting for me to have some time.

Haven't done much stress testing... but I have the following
Idle temp - 27 C
Regular load (A few programs, downloading some things in background, etc) - 29 C

After 45 minutes of prime95, with NOS set at 8% (cpu-z is showing 216 x 10 the whole time) - 36 C. MB temp - 30C. (Yes, yes, I know, that's not enough time, but it got to 35C in ~5 minutes). Stock CPU fan chuggin along at 2800 RPM the whole time - that seems to be lowest RPM it will take..
Will try 10% next.. then we'll see how far manual tweaking will take me before the temp starts to soar)


now, is this just me or are these pretty low temperature? (granted, this is febuary in canada, but my room is probably a crisp 19C, on the safe side)

I have yet to run 3dmark05 (downloading as we speak).
I have also yet to install a single game... with time, I'll try to put some fps up here as well, but I'm not sure where will that be

I will try to update this as I test more things...
If you have any questions regarding this mobo or the rig (if your considering buying it, etc), feel free to drop a question.

Later,

P.s. - I learnt it is quite annoying to get a new machine when you are swampped at work because you are about to take a vacation, knowing your new rig is sitting on your desk.. waiting to be OC'ed..

Start-up problems

I got my A8V-E DELUXE three days ago and I wanted to share some of my experiences with the board. My set-up is:

- A8V-E DELUXE
- Athlon64 3200+
- Seagate SATA 200GB HDD
- Kingston Value RAM 2 x 512 MB
- Club 3-D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3
- "Chieftec" HIGH POWER ® HPC-340-201 PFC Power Supply (340W), 20-pin
- 2 optical drives

The first time I started up the system, I made some quick changes to BIOS settings and rebooted with Win XP installation CD-ROM. The installer did not recognize any HDDs, so I rebooted again and went to tweak the BIOS settings some more. Since I did this, I can't pass "PCI device listing" step in start-up. It hangs at "ACPI Controller" and when I push reset button, I get "CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded" each time! I've tried to start-up maybe ten times. Sometimes I get this 'Matrix'-like colorful random characters on the screen when it hangs. Something really goes wrong.

My BIOS version information is:
ASUS A8V-E DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1002
12/17/2004-K8T890-8237-A8V-E-00

I wonder whether the old ATX power supply can have something to do with this or did my SATA mode setting (from RAID to IDE) corrupt the bios somehow, My next step is to try and find a newer BIOS version and update.

-Elmeri

A few things to try

That sounds quite odd...
When it didnt recognize the HDD, did you use the VIA SATA/RAID driver from a floppy?

have you tried: (each can be tried seperatly)
1) Reset settings to default in BIOS
2) upgrade to bios 1003
3) if that doesnt solve it, you could try turning off everything non-essential in BIOS... and then start turning them on if it starts working
4) Clear CMOS
5) IF you have access to another power supply, you could try that... you can even see in hardware monitor if the voltages are decent

let me know how that works for you..

Finally some info regarding this mobo, my parts are in my sig. Here are a few pros and cons I've encountered.

Pros:

-After 24 hour prime and who knows how many hours of memtest86, I have yet to encounter stability issue. (FarCry is smooth so far, and NO BSOD w/ 3DMark 05 like those in Europe.)
-Onboard Wifi-G works wonderfully
-So far I am able to get it up to 240mhz*10 stable. (Using stock Vcore and 2 3 3 6, but I'll try more voltage later when I am less busy.)
-PCI-e/PCI lock.
-PEG left mode (faster, fast, normal, auto), good feature.

Cons:
-Lack of 1T/2T option in the bios.
-Noth Bridge fan is way too loud, and the Q-fan 2 technology only adjust the CPU fan, but not the NB fan. It runs at 8400rpm regardless of the temperature. Big time bummer for me.
-Only 2 SATA connections, however the price justifies it. I can always add a SATA2 controller in the PCI/PCIe slot.

Problems solved

Antithesis said:

have you tried: (each can be tried seperatly)
1) Reset settings to default in BIOS
2) upgrade to bios 1003
3) if that doesnt solve it, you could try turning off everything non-essential in BIOS... and then start turning them on if it starts working
4) Clear CMOS
5) IF you have access to another power supply, you could try that... you can even see in hardware monitor if the voltages are decent

Click to expand...

I did try 1 and 2. Then I fixed my floppy cable and got the 3.5" FDD working. I was able to boot from a diskette, so all those weird symptoms were now traced to booting from the SATA disk (in RAID mode). I simply followed Asus's instructions how to install Win XP using RAID drivers on a diskette and it worked fine! Now I have installed tons of utilities and drivers and everything seems to run fine. Even the WLAN Access Point is working and I can now suft with my laptop wireless I just finished downloading 3DMark2001 and 2003, so I'm excited to see how the new system performs!

It just seems that SATA is still new enough technology to cause a little headache when building a system. I have to say that the fans are quite noisy. I will have to install something like 'speedfan' or something to slow the fans down.

-Elmeri

Anyone tried above 300 htt yet?

Bummer about the chipset fan, looks cool though....

Cant wait to try mine. Ill post with my opinions when I do.

Anyone know how to get lower voltages? I can only seem to set it to +100mv.

fix

hello!
how can i enabled fix pci-pci-e in the bios?
i try to disabled sinc cpu frequency and assign 33mhz to pci and 100 mhz to pci-e but over 230 mhz fsb the sistem not boot because not detected hdd or boot but corrupted data and not load windows.
my hdd is link on s-ata 1
thank you

If one of you could list the features of this board and compare it tho the A8V Deluxe, we could make a sticky out of this one. I'll start off by asking a few questions:-

1.Any changes in the voltage options?
2.Any stability issues with Winnys?
3. Any word on how this chipset responds to TCCD RAM?
4. Max OC so far?
5.Stability issues and influence of the WiFi card on stability?

Good Luck and keep us posted!

I dont have a a8v deluxe to compare but I will try

1. Vcore: .8-1.6 +100mv or +200mv Mem: 2.6-2.9 Vchipset:1.5 1.6
2.. Fine for me expcept hight HTT like mentioned earlier.
3. None to test.....
4:265*9
5. Rock stable at noted settings, cant get an inch above 265 though.

I am with Baccio, I beleive the hypertransport/LTD bus is to blame for instabilitys. I have messed with different settings and cannot get above 265. Even with low multiplier settings on the LTD ie 400mhz, which should be 2x multi(available settings, 400 500 800 1000). When low multi is set I have been able to get ai booster running somewhat and have it display the FSB at >1000, ai booster is not intended for this board ATM so I cannot trust this reading reliably but I am starting to beleive this is the source of the limited HTT.

Until either an updated ai booster or clockgen is released that is compatible I dont know how to test this hypothesis.

With the A8V, you just have to set the LTD to 5x (HTF=1000MHz) and forget it. If you try the manual settings, instability results. Maybe you ought to set HTF at 1000MHz. The A8V auto downclocked HTF, this one may do the same. The new VIA chipset is just a PCI-E enabled version with a few enhancements. No earth shattering changes yet.

What is the AI booster? I'm suspicious of all AI/AUTO Oc'ing stuff!

Good to know that VDimm can finally scale upto 2.9V. Any idea if the OCZ Booster is compatible with this board? I hope this doesn't have a low overvoltage protection like the A8V (3.01 V).

So the Wi-Fi card has no influence on stability? Interesting.

I am with Baccio, I beleive the hypertransport/LTD bus is to blame for instabilitys. I have messed with different settings and cannot get above 265. Even with low multiplier settings on the LTD ie 400mhz, which should be 2x multi(available settings, 400 500 800 1000). When low multi is set I have been able to get ai booster running somewhat and have it display the FSB at >1000, ai booster is not intended for this board ATM so I cannot trust this reading reliably but I am starting to beleive this is the source of the limited HTT.

Until either an updated ai booster or clockgen is released that is compatible I dont know how to test this hypothesis.
-------------------------------------------
thank you we must wait a new version of clockgen that support chipset via kt890 or new bios with update ai booster!
now i'm at 220*11 more stable

Super Nade said:

With the A8V, you just have to set the LTD to 5x (HTF=1000MHz) and forget it. If you try the manual settings, instability results. Maybe you ought to set HTF at 1000MHz. The A8V auto downclocked HTF, this one may do the same. The new VIA chipset is just a PCI-E enabled version with a few enhancements. No earth shattering changes yet.

What is the AI booster? I'm suspicious of all AI/AUTO Oc'ing stuff!

Good to know that VDimm can finally scale upto 2.9V. Any idea if the OCZ Booster is compatible with this board? I hope this doesn't have a low overvoltage protection like the A8V (3.01 V).

So the Wi-Fi card has no influence on stability? Interesting.

Click to expand...

This board just has settings for LTD to 400 600 800 1000 and auto, no "multiplier" setting(but the multi is obvious...)

Are you saying we may have better results simply trying auto instead of say, 400?

I will try and hit higher HTT without the wifi enabled but I have doubts as most are stuck at the same kinda speeds that I am. If that made adifference though I would be a very happy man!

Sorry for getting back to this so late

Yes, I believe changing the HTT to AUTO should work best. In the A8V Deluxe (AGP), there was no AUTO setting for the HYpertransport Frequency. I set it to 1000MHz but the board automatically downclocks it. Weird, but it works!

Didnt seem to help much but I didnt test too much. I will leave it at auto now though.

After 45 minutes of prime95, with NOS set at 8% (cpu-z is showing 216 x 10 the whole time) - 36 C. MB temp - 30C. (Yes, yes, I know, that's not enough time, but it got to 35C in ~5 minutes). Stock CPU fan chuggin along at 2800 RPM the whole time - that seems to be lowest RPM it will take..
Will try 10% next.. then we'll see how far manual tweaking will take me before the temp starts to soar

Click to expand...

you see this is the thing that Surprised me. Many people say how asus motherboards are like so crap, because they claim that the cpu or chipset temperature becomes too hot and maxes out. Now as i look that your temps i'm led me to assume that the motherboard chipset VIA have now picked up there game, i don't know if that lead's to the high fan speed, but hay great choice on yer MOBO.