A8R32-MVP what is it

Coolasmoo · 12 Mar 2006 at 10:35

Well Chris,

I RMA'd my first board and the second one im using now is fine.

So you just have to consider if there is anything better out there at the moment (which i dont think there is if you want crossfire)

Or sit it out abit and wait for the other manufactures to bring out there rd580 boards.

lordedmond · 12 Mar 2006 at 10:36

Well ChrisC

I think its down to you , maybe look at the other rd580 offerings maybe the dfi is for you

yes this mb has had a difficult birth but just maybe it will mature into a good product , hindsight is a powerful tool

Coolasmoo · 12 Mar 2006 at 10:43

I just want to add, that by the time most new motherboards are 99% stable, the next offering usually comes out.

This has been my problem all along.

I get setup with a good stable system, i know the bios inside and out, then temptation gets the better of me and im off to the next one.

Im hoping i can get out of this habbit, but the world of PC's as a hobby is an evil thing

cuke2u · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:31

Hi all and thank you for all of your replies. I think I will stick with the same motherboard and memory but I will RMA them. I'm going to do this because I know, from what you've all got, that this combination will work and I'm sure I can't be that unlucky a second time around, well hopefully anyway. I do think that until I've replaced these component I could never be sure that one, or both, of them is faulty, so I think replacing them is the best way forward. I just hope that the RMA process goes ok...
ChrisC

lordedmond · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:45

Good luck

cuke2u · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:08

Hi raja, sorry just read your reply to my HD detect issues. Yes I am running in raid, four drives all connected to the ULi ports. What happens is that when I intially connected the drives they were shown up as a third and fourth IDE master and slaves, and on subsequent boots, if all is working ok, they are not listed at all in the list of drives in the bios, just the DVD on First master and on the second not installed. When I 'lose' the drives it goes though the post and into the ULi raid, whereupon it just sits there. I then reboot and go into the bios, I then get second/third/fourth drives not installed. I then save the bios, without changing anything, and on the first or second attempt I see the drives listed in post, the ULi raid then detect the drives and XP loads ok.
I hope this makes sense...
ChrisC

Dashik · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:23

Hi Guys. Well I am glad I got the board and as luck would have it the day I got it they released 0311 so I have been lucky and no major problems here.

I got Win XP Pro installed after my silly problems, But I was wondering if anyone else's board sits for about 30secs to 1 minute while it scans for USB devices on POST? If so then fine. If not what setting do you change to reduce the post time, apart form the quick post/boot option?

Coolasmoo · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:36

Dashik said:
But I was wondering if anyone else's board sits for about 30secs to 1 minute while it scans for USB devices on POST? If so then fine. If not what setting do you change to reduce the post time, apart form the quick post/boot option?

Mine does that.

Maybe not quite that long though , maybe 5 or 10 seconds

If you disable hi speed and set to fullspeed then its instant, but of course your only getting 12mb/s out of the USB if you do that

Dashik · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:42

Thats the trick isn't it! I want the High speed!

Also I've overclocked my Opty 146 CAB2E to about 2.9Ghz at the moment with no real problems!! looking forward to seeing what it will do when I have the time. Coming from the AsRock Dual Sata II which was bios limited to 2.74Ghz I'm pretty pleased!

Oh and a vote for the Arctic Cooler 64 Pro!! It runs the cpu cooler and quieter than the Koolance Exos I had!!!

Going for some better cooling shortly too. Maybe that CoolIT's Freezer or some Dangerden kit.

raja · 12 Mar 2006 at 16:15

Coolasmoo said:
Mine does that.

Maybe not quite that long though , maybe 5 or 10 seconds

If you disable hi speed and set to fullspeed then its instant, but of course your only getting 12mb/s out of the USB if you do that

try changing the boot device order, I think it is set to usb mass storage as primary boot device, I disbled it by pressing enter on it and selecting disable......

Duke · 12 Mar 2006 at 16:18

I tried 280 HT 1:1 and 133mhz divider and still reboots. Last few tries before going back to the previous bios..

edit: loaded trackmania.. soon as it went into 3d the coloures went weird then it dropped back to desktop.

tried to go back on the bios but i can only do it through DOS?? getting fed up of this now... :rolleyes:

lordedmond · 12 Mar 2006 at 16:25

Duke said:
I tried 280 HT 1:1 and 133mhz divider and still reboots. Last few tries before going back to the previous bios..

edit: loaded trackmania.. soon as it went into 3d the coloures went weird then it dropped back to desktop.

tried to go back on the bios but i can only do it through DOS?? getting fed up of this now...

use asus update

click the drop down select options
click next

you then have the option to downgrade the bios

Duke · 12 Mar 2006 at 17:11

ta

Doesn't make any difference though... no idea why it's suddenly stopped OCing stable. Even with the previous bios I can't get it stable.. with 2T timing too.

Am I missing some obvious bios change which only ATI need for thier chipsets to OC properly? Don't understand why it should take so long when you know what the limit of the ram/cpu is already.. :\

TooNice · 12 Mar 2006 at 17:49

Eek. Most reviews I've seen show the A8R32 capable of ~300Mhz FSB. And I've already have one on my way =/

Do bios update historically increases the board's stability at higher FSB?

raja · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:23

Hi,

Just recieved a couple of emails from Gary over at Anandtech, he's gonna try and recreate the issues I'm having in the next day or so. If he finds the same hopefully we can try and get Asus to sort it...

"Hi Raja,

I will get back on the Asus board in the morning. I pulled it out of
the test bed to complete an article this weekend. If Wes has his board
up and running today we will check your issues out on it this
afternoon. We hit 320~322 with this board with a 4000+ and 315 with
the Opteron 170. We will be reviewing the DFI RD580 once they complete
the board. They are taking their time on this one due the issues you
know about.

Sincerely,
Gary"

"Hi Raja,

I forgot to add this - Use the Realtek 1.32 drivers also, they did an
update to the bus audio driver (ATI/ULi chipset updates) and it should
work better with the 1.21 BF2 patch.

Sincerely,
Gary"

at least someone is still prepared to help............

lordedmond · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:20

TooNice said:
snip
Do bios update historically increases the board's stability at higher FSB?

they can , but ther again they can undo things, the 311 has fixed certain things but have upset others eg with 201 i could run with all four mem slots full with 311 no go just will not boot

if you have read this thread and seen what the bios has fixed then read what Asus say they have fixed they do not line up :eek:

Asus are covering up the fault with fud . They will sort it

raja · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:26

As an experiment I set the ram skew to auto for both channels in bios.

I tried to reboot but the computer would not boot directly out of bios (my motherboard does this everytime I change a key setting like ram or fsb's etc), so I had to hold the power switch in for 5 seconds.

Upon immediatley powering up after holding in the power switch, the system rebooted with my overclock, without posting the overclock failed screen (this is also normal).

So just to see what had happened to the ram skew, I re-entered bios, and it had auto set to 150 and 100 (I think), I then rebooted (had to hold in power switch again!) and entered windows.

Tried to load BF2 and all I got was a black screen with my computer trying to re-enter into windows, the graphics cards fans were ramping up and down. I hit ctrl alt and del, and managed to close the application.

So I restarted and entered bios, changed back to manual dos skew of 750 and 600 (same old bios non boot method). Re-enter windows, BF2 does not work again (this has happened before), so at present I am re-installing BF2. Also it may have corrupted the ati drivers, I have not nailed down which one of the 2 it corrupts, but it is fixable by uninstalling ad reinstalling (what a pain!).

Bottom line there is a good chance people that overclock will run into problems in certain games, if they don't manage to find a manual workable ram skew.

raja · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:34

Just checked it is the driver it corrupts, so I am now re-installng catalyst 6.3...................

Dr Who · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:45

raja said:
Just checked it is the driver it corrupts, so I am now re-installng catalyst 6.3...................

Not impressed with 64 bit catalyst 6.3's so far... nasty sparklies on bottom and right hand screen edge....

Hope you are running 32bit

raja · 12 Mar 2006 at 21:33

Yeah 32 bit.