Asus A8V

[Mythbreaker]

Thank you for the the tip. It seems that the crashing stooped when i set the memory to 2:1 DDR 400. I has been running stable for a few days. As for the memory modules themselves, well they were not bought as a pair, i bought them separately. I saw on a viaarena thread the exact same problem. The poor guy had to eventually sell his old unpaired memories and buy himself a dual channel kit. Hope i don't end up like him .

This mobo was surprisingly cheap for a soket 939 mobo with features such as SATA RAID and 4 memory slots compared to other motherboards with similar features.

Now i know why.

Thankfully the much lower memory bandwidth doesn't affect me much. I don't encode or archive. There doesn't seem to be any difference in games. Maybe it's too small to be noticed.
As for running 4 modules at the same time, i heard that there is a problem with the athlon 64 integrated memory controller. AMD introduced the 2T setting specifically for running 4 modules simultaneously.
I also heard that the new Venice core should have solved such problems.

[mhalls]

because the AGP is set to x8. If you change it to x4 then it should be more stable.

[Mythbreaker]

I finally found what was my problem: one broken memory module. Let's hope it'll all work fine after replacing it.

[Mythbreaker]

Well i replaced the modules with a Corsair TwinX memory pair. Yet when i place them in banks a2 and b2 i still get all kinds of VERY frequent errors in memtest whith no overclocking. When i place them in banks a1 and b1 the memory subsystem is error free. I'm starting to believe that there is a problem with the on-cip memory controller of my Athlon 64 or with the mainboard itself.

[signmeuptoo]

Hi, I am new to the forum and new to Overclocking anything other than an old PIII. I seem to be having some real troubles with something in my system:

using either BIOS 1017 or 1018 beta, 2 different BIOS chips' BIOS no longer reports the option for adjusting CPU Voltage or CPU multiplier. I have tried resetting the BIOS.

An Asus Tech told me that it is best to Reset the BIOS, Remove the RAM, and only THEN to flash to new BIOS revision. Does that sound right, becuase it sound like bull to me.

You see, the best that I seem to get is to 2349 MHz using an HT MULTI of 800 (it doesn't seem to tolerate any other), Memclock to CPU ratio (what does everyone else call that?) or 3:2, CAS 2.0, TRAS 6CLK, TRP 2CLK, TRCD 2CLK, 2T command disabled, all other mem settings to auto, CPU Frequency @ 235 (it fails above that, either in Windows, or I have to reset the BIOS) and a default CPU Multiplier of 10.

But, as I say, my CPU Multiplier and CPU Voltage settings have disappeared, they are no longer in the BIOS. What the heck?

I don't know much about the HT Freq, Mem to CPU, CPU multi and how to calculate what's what. I could use some help and I apologize for being a total n00b here.

Should I RMA the motherboard, since I have already replaced the BIOS chip once?

RAM is OCZ Platinum EL rev. 1, 2x256, CPU is Venice 3200 Step E6 (someone told me that the E6's don't OC well?), PS is a nice Antec TruePower 2.0.

The A8V Deluxe board is silkscreened as ver. 2, but different programs report it as ver. 1, such as Sandra.

[tedgram]

I have had the same MB for over a year. I have only had to reset the Bios once because of an OC and never because of a flash and I have never removed the Ram before or after. I don't think you will get any more stable speed out of that board as it's not a good OCer. Board showing as Ver.1 is normal. As for CPU voltage and CPU multi disappearing (What the heck)?

[scaryogre]

I just noticed something that I thought one of you might have an answer to:

I have 4 sticks of 512MB Corsair CMX512-3200XL DIMMs in my A8V Deluxe (revision 1). I ran CPU-Z the other night and I noticed that my Memory is only running at the following specs:

160MHz DDR320 CAS 2-3-2-5 Dual Channel (128 bits)

It is my understanding that the memory should (and is capable of) running at 200MHz since that is what is listed in the SPD tab of CPU-Z. So if my memory serves correctly that should be DDR400.

My Memory settings in the BIOS were for "Auto" with the DDR320 result. So I tried a manual setting of 2:1 and DDR400. I ran Memtest86+ for several hours and had numerous errors. Then I tried the "Auto" BIOS setting again for Memory which resulted in the slower speed of DDR320, but this time Memtest86+ ran without errors.

Can anyone tell me if this is simply a problem with the A8V and populating all four memory banks? Or am I doing something wrong here?

Also, what kind of performance increase would I get with only two DIMMS running at DDR400 versus four DIMMS at DDR320? Is this speed difference perceptible in games? Or will it not make a noticable difference?

Thanks for any help...

[Boogie]

Originally Posted by scaryogre

I just noticed something that I thought one of you might have an answer to:

I have 4 sticks of 512MB Corsair CMX512-3200XL DIMMs in my A8V Deluxe (revision 1). I ran CPU-Z the other night and I noticed that my Memory is only running at the following specs:

160MHz DDR320 CAS 2-3-2-5 Dual Channel (128 bits)

It is my understanding that the memory should (and is capable of) running at 200MHz since that is what is listed in the SPD tab of CPU-Z. So if my memory serves correctly that should be DDR400.

My Memory settings in the BIOS were for "Auto" with the DDR320 result. So I tried a manual setting of 2:1 and DDR400. I ran Memtest86+ for several hours and had numerous errors. Then I tried the "Auto" BIOS setting again for Memory which resulted in the slower speed of DDR320, but this time Memtest86+ ran without errors.

Can anyone tell me if this is simply a problem with the A8V and populating all four memory banks? Or am I doing something wrong here?

Also, what kind of performance increase would I get with only two DIMMS running at DDR400 versus four DIMMS at DDR320? Is this speed difference perceptible in games? Or will it not make a noticable difference?

Thanks for any help...

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...l=A8V%20Deluxe

[scaryogre]

Originally Posted by Boogie

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...l=A8V%20Deluxe

Thanks for the link. For ease of conversation here I will repost the answer. However, please note that this only partially answers my question(s) and leaves a very important and unresolved issue (see below):

Question: Why does A8V Deluxe automatically down-grade from DDR400 to DDR333 when four DIMMs of memory are plugged?

Answer: It is a protective function when system cannot boot up or any instable symptoms due to memory itself.
Please enter BIOS setting and manually adjust memory frequency to 200MHz.

My unresolved issue: When I tried a manual setting of 2:1 and DDR400. I ran Memtest86+ for 10 hours or more and it resulted in numerous errors. When I tried the "Auto" BIOS setting for Memory it resulted in the slower speed of DDR320, but this time Memtest86+ ran without errors. Thus, I am left with trying to determine why is it when I manually set the Memory to be DDR400 speeds does Memtest86+ fail? What am I doing wrong here?

The memory I have *should* run at DDR400 speeds. According to that Asus FAQ all I should have to do is manually set it to do so in the BIOS overriding the safety feature which I have done. Yet, I still get the errors.

The last question also remains unanswered: What kind of performance increase would I get with only two DIMMS running at DDR400 versus four DIMMS at DDR320? Is this speed difference perceptible in games? Or will it not make a noticable difference?

Thanks again for the help.

[Kaleid]

Any Vista SATA drivers available? Can't find on Asus homepage, but do VIA or Promise provide any?

[Viking]

Hi

I hope my request does not repeat a previous post, but I have been through all 172 pages of this thread and cannot find what I am really after, so here goes...

I run an A8V board per my sig, and am thinking of upgrading the CPU to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ as I am doing a lot more graphics (photos, video etc). At some £200 ($400) this is not cheap and I would rather not make a mistake.

Now, reading through the posts, I know I will need to upgrade my BIOS from 1009 to a newer version to allow the board to cope with the X2 CPU (AMD website points me to a beta version - does anyone know if this is stable or should I install a previous rock solid version?). Looking at the rest of my specs, can anyone see anything else that may need to be upgraded now to cope with the new CPU?

Is the PSU man enouhg for the job - I see some huge PSUs on various sigs and further references to problems with undergunned systems.

Over the coming months I do intend to install a RAID setup on the Promise SATA controllers, and may increase and upgrade the memory. However, I do not really want to do this just yet - watching the pennies.

The system is not overclocked, and needs to be rock solid as my wife uses it as well for basic stuff, I travel a lot and remote system repairs are not my forte!

Any help (or pointers) would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Viking