ASUS P6T Deluxe @ [H]

EZ Flash is the bomb. I just used it to update it to the newest beta 0903. Anyone here try it out yet? So far so good.
 
I"m a bit confused here. The board has a PCI Express slot, but the slot itself looks much bigger than all the others I've seen.

Usually the slot is only big enough to fit something like X-Fi PCI-E sound card, but the slot on this board is much longer.
 
Marvell and correction to my previous post, the 0903 is indeed still a beta bios release.
 
verncat05 said:
Marvell and correction to my previous post, the 0903 is indeed still a beta bios release.
Click to expand...
Thanks man, am going to have to do a little research on it. Have you tried the SAS ports? With a SCSI hard drive of coarse.
 
I'm going to be starting my build soon, and I just want to know if you guys are setting your ACPI to 2.0? I heard it's not set to 2.0 by default. Thanks!
 
I did set it to 2.0 and you heard correctly. It is not set to 2.0 by default.
 
Dan/Kyle

Were there any RAID cards tested with this or any other of the i7 boards? I am hesitant to make the move until I know I can take my SAS setup with me.
 
LibertySyclone said:
Dan/Kyle

Were there any RAID cards tested with this or any other of the i7 boards? I am hesitant to make the move until I know I can take my SAS setup with me.
Click to expand...

I can't speak to what Morry and Kyle have done but I can tell you that as a general rule we do not test add in or high end RAID controllers out on the review boards. If anyone ever has it is me. I occasionally do it for my own reasons as I do have RAID controllers at home that I get curious about. What RAID controller do you have?
 
Would have liked to see there SAS controller (Marvell) tested in the review. Has anyone tried it out yet?
 
Dan,
Do you know if the Marvell setup is more software based like the Ciprico’s Raidcore cards? Can’t seem to get to much information on Marvell other than a sales pitch.
:s

Can live with two SAS ports and the rest can run off NAS.
Does anybody have any info/specks on ASUS’s setup with the Marvell chip?

Thanks,
Mario
 
Would it be possible to run a SAS card in the top PCIE x4 slot? It looks like the card might end up sitting on top of the "lower" section of the NB heatsink and that sorta worries me.

I've been debating on getting the P6T to replace the Foxconn I've got now and adding a SAS controller in to the top slot for giggles.

Thanks,

--MF
 
Ok, I was able to con a friend with this board to come and hang out last night. I threw in my LSI LSI00118 MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP, along with my Savvios and bam right into vista. No issues. so then i grabbed a couple 75GB rapts and put them into RAID using the on board, which also worked w/o a hitch.

For those asking why i put the rapts in RAID using on board.... If you use the onboard SAS you can no longer use on board SATA RAID. which IMO was a crappy call by ASUS.

SAS speeds using on board with 2 fuji 15k 147GB were around the 180MB/s read speeds. I see very similar speeds on 2 of my seagate 2.5" 74GB savvios and my LSI controller.

Adaptec 3805 and 5405 card DO NOT WORK currently with the P6T, this could just need a BIOS or firmware update on the card or MoBo.

Midian, I wasn't able to test your question, but the NB cooler may be a tad tall for that. not saying it wont work, its a definite maybe.
 
marzzes said:
Dan,
Do you know if the Marvell setup is more software based like the Ciprico’s Raidcore cards? Can’t seem to get to much information on Marvell other than a sales pitch.
:s

Can live with two SAS ports and the rest can run off NAS.
Does anybody have any info/specks on ASUS’s setup with the Marvell chip?

Thanks,
Mario
Click to expand...

I don't know what the actual Marvell chip is or anything about it either. However given the board's price I'm going to go out on a limb and say the chip is NOT high end. It is more than likely a software RAID with some hardware acceleration like the onboard SATA controllers are.
 
All good, it was just a thought and I may have found a solution to my question. The Highpoint RocketRaid-2680 is 3.3" long, basically it ends with the PCIE slot and should work within the space constraints, but I'm not sure how well this card will perform.

I'll have to do some research and see where that goes, but it is a bummer the ASUS on-board SAS and Sata Raid configurations don't play well together.

Thanks for the info,

--MF
 
Wow good stuff, thz LibertySyclone. A tough trade off, never been to keen about onboard crap anyway but it would have been nice to spare a coveted 16x slot.

Thank you too Dan.
 
LibertySyclone said:
Ok, I was able to con a friend with this board to come and hang out last night. I threw in my LSI LSI00118 MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP, along with my Savvios and bam right into vista. No issues. so then i grabbed a couple 75GB rapts and put them into RAID using the on board, which also worked w/o a hitch.

For those asking why i put the rapts in RAID using on board.... If you use the onboard SAS you can no longer use on board SATA RAID. which IMO was a crappy call by ASUS.

SAS speeds using on board with 2 fuji 15k 147GB were around the 180MB/s read speeds. I see very similar speeds on 2 of my seagate 2.5" 74GB savvios and my LSI controller.

Adaptec 3805 and 5405 card DO NOT WORK currently with the P6T, this could just need a BIOS or firmware update on the card or MoBo.

Midian, I wasn't able to test your question, but the NB cooler may be a tad tall for that. not saying it wont work, its a definite maybe.
Click to expand...
@ LibertySyclone, Dude you rock! Sounds like you have a good friend.
Thanks again,
Mario
 
I used the onboard Marvell raid for a few days with two WD 640gig hd's in raid 0. The performance was ok at best. I have been running an Areca ARC-1210 hardware raid card and was trying to get away from it, if possible, so I could use the other 16X slot for a second 260 in SLI. I just couldn't do it. I am so used to the reliability and speed of the Areca that I would rather sacrifice a second video card. So, I now have a single GTX280 (sent the 260 back) and the ARC-1210 back in. I am much happier this way.

Just my .02
 
Not sure why the Adaptec 3805 or 5405 wouldn't work,
My 51645 works fine, in any of the 16x slots.

My highpoint 2314 seems to cause video corruption if placed in the 4x slot.
I figure the 4x slot is probably southbridge provided and is causing issues.

If i put both the adaptec and the highpoint in the 16x slots, I get some
no space for PCI option rom errors, but the system still boots
and I can still get into the BIOS of each raid card. I did have to disable
some of the onboard boot roms, like the marvell sas and the marvell ide.

On a side note, it seems Adaptec released a new driver this month,
but I havent had a chance to try it out yet.
 
alamone said:
My highpoint 2314 seems to cause video corruption if placed in the 4x slot. I figure the 4x slot is probably southbridge provided and is causing issues.
Click to expand...

I just can't win, dammit.

alamone said:
If i put both the adaptec and the highpoint in the 16x slots, I get some no space for PCI option rom errors, but the system still boots and I can still get into the BIOS of each raid card. I did have to disable some of the onboard boot roms, like the marvell sas and the marvell ide.
Click to expand...

I see the same PCI option rom errors on the Foxconn I have, yet all I have installed are my 2 4870x2s. This is beginning to trouble me more and more.

alamone said:
On a side note, it seems Adaptec released a new driver this month, but I havent had a chance to try it out yet.
Click to expand...

Please let me know if the new drivers help.

Thanks,

--MF
 
In the bios cant you allocate buss rates? The raid cards are 8X so one would need to set it at 16-8-8. The first slot is 4X and to put a raid card (8X) there is just asking for trouble.
 
What brands of RAM seem to be working well on this board other than Corsair?
 
RAID compatibility update:

OK, I've updated all my drivers:

P6T = 1003 bios
Adaptec 51645 = 16343 firmware / scsiport driver
Highpoint Rocketraid 2314 = 2.4 bios / 2.2 vista64 driver
ATI 4870 = Catalyst 8.12 driver vista64

I set the rocketraid to disable "int13 support" (boot support)
but enabled "reallocate ebda" using the bios updater.

4x slot = Highpoint (4x length)
16x first slot = Radeon 4870
16x second slot = empty
16x third slot = Adaptec 51645 (8x length)

It seems my video corruption issues are fixed so far,
so I'm not sure what particular update fixed it, but there you go.
I can now use both raid cards simultaneously.
But I disabled most of the onboard stuff - Intel matrix is in IDE mode,
and the marvell SAS and IDE controllers are enabled
but the boot ROMs are disabled.

Not sure what I'm gonna do with that second 16x slot though.
 
Any suggestions for increasing boot times? Especially the 9 second "press <ESC> to boot" wait? I probably don't need 90% of what the P6T checks for, but I don't know which. I have a sata DVD and a sata HD. Rest of sys in sig.

BTW, just upgraded from the P4C-800-E Deluxe so I skipped the DDR2 cycle.
 
Excellent, thank you alamone.

Just a quick update, I've joined the ranks of the P6T Deluxe family over this past weekend and thus far I have ZERO complaints. I updated to the 0905 bios (may look at 1003 in a bit), connected all my hardware with no issues. I reset my 3.5GHz overclock and was able to easily get my 12gb G.Skill Ram to DDR3-1400 with no issue. Hell I didn't even really try any serious overclocking, I was just happy to see my memory operating at faster than DDR3-800 (stupid foxconn bios/board).

I'll pickup the RR-2680 later this week or next to round out this rig.

This board is solid thus far and I really should have listened to my initial instincts (and Kyle) and gotten it from the start.

--MF
 
So I just got my new rig setup and I'm having issues.

Setup
Asus P6T Deluxe (1003 bios)
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz
CORSAIR XMS3 6GB DDR3 1333 Triple Channel Kit x 2 (12GB!)
Fujitsu 73.5GB 15000 RPM SAS x 2 in RAID 0
BFG Tech 9800 GTX x 2 in SLI
CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W Power Supply
Antec P180 Case
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme Cooler

Problems
Random BSODs with memory_management errors
Random BSODs with IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors
On reboot, it forgets to boot from the RAID and tries to boot from external USB drives
Occasionally loses the RAID config, as in the RAID array disappears

Thoughts?
I haven't messed with the BIOS accept for telling it to boot from the RAID array and nothing else. I haven't tweaked it at all. Should I?

I'll keep reporting back.
 
Have you tried just booting off a single SATA drive, to isolate
whether the onboard marvell SAS is giving you problems?
Try acronis'ing them to a single disk and boot.

Currently I'm only using my marvell SAS for JBOD hotswap.
I'm booting from my Adaptec card.

Otherwise, try with only 6GB, or memtest86 as suggested.
I thought having the on-die memcontroller would fix these
issues with populating all the RAM slots, but maybe not?
Also, I've had some bad sticks that memtest86 still validated,
so it's not 100% guarantee that your sticks are good.

BTW, how's the noise on those 15k Fujitsus. 3.5" or 2.5"?
I have 2 15k savvios, and while they're fairly quiet
they have a rather annoying high pitched whine which
is probably the 15k motor, I plan on putting them in
a copper drive noise dampener.
 
maleficarus said:
Good revew. Question though: Why would we need that much RAM anyways? I mean, 12GB of memory for what exactly?
Click to expand...

If you run engineering software or cad software, then this would definitely do the trick. I'm running a Dell Precision 690 with dual xeons and 32gig of memory and let me tell you when I run simulations and analysis work, that memory starts to get used up quick.
 
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