So, I'm reading all the problems with the A8N-SLI, which has me a little concerned. It's probably going to be 2 - 3 weeks before I order whatever board I'm going to get. Should I go ahead and just get the A8N-SLI and hope all gets fixed or should I go with the Gigabyte board or hold out for the MSI or DFI boards? I've gone with a 3500+ A64, 2x512MB sticks of OCZ PC-3200 Platinum Edition Rev2 and 2xAsus v9999's (GeForce 6800 Ultra's). Yea, I actually found a place with 2 6800 pci-e ultras in stock so I jumped on it.
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Which SLI board?
- Thread starter LittleMe
- Start date
I'm leaning towards the MSI board actually... reason why is because the previous generation Neo2 was just about the best overclocking board for the 939's.
I have to assume they did just as good with their new board.
Shouldnt be more then a few weeks now.
I might should add, ASUS has a reputation for fixing problems with BIOS upgrades. They listen well to their customers and I have to believe that eventually the Asus board will become one of the best. Seems to always happen... cant go wrong with that one.
I have to assume they did just as good with their new board.
Shouldnt be more then a few weeks now.
I might should add, ASUS has a reputation for fixing problems with BIOS upgrades. They listen well to their customers and I have to believe that eventually the Asus board will become one of the best. Seems to always happen... cant go wrong with that one.
Steel Chicken
Supreme [H]ardness
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DFI when it comes out. if its anything like the 754 mobo, it will seriously roxors
Lee Enfield
Limp Gawd
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Steel Chicken said:
I second that
Bah.. I'm starting to wonder about DFI.
Seems everyone is going nuts over it, but beyond some very high voltage options I see no reason to go with it.
The few numbers out now show it's performance to be exactly that of the MSI.
Time will tell of course.
Seems everyone is going nuts over it, but beyond some very high voltage options I see no reason to go with it.
The few numbers out now show it's performance to be exactly that of the MSI.
Time will tell of course.
LittleMe said:
The ASUS board isn't that bad if you're not using NCQ SATA hard drives. Even then, if you're not going to do a large overclock, it's fine. What has happened with me is since I have NCQ SATA hard drives, I can use the last final BIOS (1002), and only do a mild CPU overclock, but keep using my hard drives. If I switch to one of the current beta BIOSes, the SATA ports no longer see my hard drives, but I can probably set a much stronger overclock without the BIOS reporting a false CPU overclock error on POSTing.
Regardless of what board you get, make sure you PSU is hefty. A lot of the so-called stability issues with the A8N-SLI are due to using either too weak of a power supply in general, or due to someone using a 20 pin PSU, even though it can be used per-se. Finally, there's a thread where some guy had a heck of a time getting SLI to work even though both video cards were the same brand and model, he had to flash one BIOS so that they matched. So if SLI won't work, might be worth it to make sure both cards have the same BIOS, even if you got your cards at the same time
As for boards...I do think the ASUS will be fine with the next final BIOS, which is probably out soon, but even if you don't order from that German site that someone linked to, I've seen ETA's for the MSI boards at zipzoomfly.com around the 25th or 28th or so for the MSI, and I think I saw a Canadian site that ships to the USA claim they will have the DFI on or around the 31st. Guess to me it would almost be a coin flip, DFI will be the stronger overclocker most likely, MSI's onboard sound will be a soundblaster chip so might save the expense of a soundblaster card...err...yeah.
Arvig, I saw everybody talking about the PSU problems so I went ahead and got the PCP&C 510 SLI Deluxe. The bummer is, I picked up 4 of the 300 maxtor SATA 16MB buffer drives. The one's it seems everybody is having problems with. I'm still going to use a 74gig raptor for the boot drive. Is the problem with the NCQ SATA drives on both SATA controllers or just the Nvidia controller?
LittleMe said:
I have two 16mb NCQ Maxtors, so I know how you feel. :/
Don't know, I never tried the Silicon Image ports.
I have an ASUS A8N-SLI, and I can use BIOS 1002 fine. So I'm at least okay until the next final comes out, I just can't overclock past a FSB of 210....so maybe if you get a strong overclocking board like the DFI is rumored/assumed to be, and if thus they don't really tweak with the BIOS much, it won't be a factor.
But anyway, I'd assume the Silicon Image ports would be okay. I also haven't seen any complaints about the Gigabyte board, but I don't know if that's because it's okay even with NCQ drives and the Nvidia ports, or because less people have that board and thus no-one has complained yet.
Or to put it another way, maybe with luck for you it's only the ASUS and it's NVidia ports when it comes to NCQ drives...or with luck for everyone it's only this series of beta BIOSes on the ASUS, since BIOS 1002 has no problem with NCQ drives.
I'm really wanting it to be just a problem with the BIOS. I've loved every ASUS board I've ever had. Love my p4c-800e more than any other board I've ever had. Plus, I wanted to keep the board matching the 2 asus 6800u's I'm getting. Thinking of leaning more towards just getting the a8n-sli, using the onboard sata for my raptor and getting a nice sata raid card that'll do raid5. But as other's are saying, that DFI board looks nice.
LittleMe said:
I already have the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, so I'm REALLY wanting it to be the BIOS, but I do think it will be, since 1002 has no problems with the NCQ drives.
For what it's worth, I think I've seen posts somewhere saying that people with onboard Promise RAID controllers had no problems with NCQ drives, so maybe if nothing else a Promise RAID card might be okay for the drives.
What I think I'll do is give ASUS until 1st week of Febuary or so, by the the DFI's and/or the MSI will be in stock. If around then there isn't a new final BIOS, or if the final doesn't like the NCQ drives (or if it's also wonky with overclocking past 210 FSB), I'll then take a restocking hit and RMA this ASUS (or if I have to, sell it for a loss on eBay) and get the DFI or maybe the MSI. I've had good luck with both brands, so almost a coin toss for me. Also hopefully one or two people will have posted reports about both boards if people have had them for a week.
If I may ask, where did you get your two ASUS 6800 Ultras? I've seen one or two places with them in stock, but for really high prices, even for ASUS brand cards.
GRAFiZ said:
The sad part is, the prices are already at that point. The lowest you can find a 6800u pci-e is 600 and that's not even in stock. Man, after tax and shipping these 2 cards I got were almost $1,800. If MSRP goes up, the retailers are going to pad the prices even more than they currently are.
LittleMe said:
Yeah, although I have heard that the N45 GPU chip, the one that the 6800GT's and Ultras are using will be more common come end of this month, and once in a while www.chumbo.com has BFG 6800GT OC's at $399.00, so maybe in a couple weeks there will be enough stock that there won't be as much gouging.
If it's any consolation, the one or two places I saw 6800 Ultras were even higher, like around $1000.00 per card!
Um...can you cancel your order? If you don't mind switching brands, this one is a eVGA, it's still pretty high, but I found 6800 Ultras for $650.00 each:
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merc...roduct_Code=190143&Category_Code=nvidia-PCI-E
Still over MSRP, but better then $800.00 per card. They also have XFX 6800 Ultra PCI-E cards for $680.00 per card as of the time stamp of this post.
LittleMe said:
Anyway...I will make one suggestion. Unless you're going to put your Maxtor Diamond Max 10's on the Silicon Image ports, or buy a RAID 5 card...don't get the ASUS motherboard. They JUST came out with a new final BIOS. In the long list of fixes is nothing about NCQ hard drives. Anyway, I just flashed to it...and it dropped my hard drives. Had to roll back to 1002. I'm going to be using that until the DFI board comes out, then hop to it...figure since I'd want to do a fresh reinstall of Windows then anyway, if it drops the drives on that board too, I can at least switch to the Sil ports then do the reinstall. :/
Man, that really blows. How's the RAID 5 of the Silicon Image controller? I guess I'm not really looking for something blazing just, going to be using it to hold all my recorded tv/media stuff from my mce2k5 box. Maybe I should just put 3 of those drives into the mce box and 1 in this box
LittleMe said:
Don't know, unless you're asking in general and not just me, again I never tried the Sil ports. I guess when I probably get a new board in a week or three, whenever the DFI hits the market anyway, if it won't take the hard drives, that's when I'll try the Silicon Image ports, and go from there.
Oh well...c'est la poop I guess. Not to flame ASUS, but I think lesson learned for me is don't buy a motherboard from them until it's been out a few months, or at least read the message boards and see what won't work with it before buying components. Guess their tendency to be first out with a product also means a rougher product.
If you look in the ASUS A8N-SLI owner's thread, I posted an e-mail I just sent to ASUS regarding the NCQ drives. If/when they answer (and with what), I'll post that too.
Yea, I saw that email, I'm really looking to see what they say. I'm sure the performance of the onboard Sil controller is out there, I'm gonna google it right now. If it's not too bad, maybe I'll still go with the Asus board. Still want to hear what they say in response to your email. That could determine if I buy one or not.
LittleMe said:
Their "non-answer" the first time I asked, where they just told me to roll back to 1002 and sit tight only took 3 or so days for them to reply, so we'll see. Of course, that implied to me they were actually working with a fix for the NCQ drives for the next final...now makes me think it was an answer to just get rid of me...
Well, now they've pulled the 1003 bios. This is all starting to worry me. I've looked at all the reviews for the Gigabyte board, and although it beat the a8n-sli by 1%-2% all the reviews say the ram slots are too close as well as the both x16/x8 ports. The ram I'm going to put in has heatspreaders on them so it's a no go unless I want stress/bend the ram sockets. Now I'm down to 3 boards and the asus is at the bottom right now.
LittleMe said:
If your memory has just normal heatspreaders, then I still think it would be okay, I saw a review on www.pcper.com of that board, and the memory they had problems with fitting is what I have, Corsair XMS XL Pro, the heatspreaders on it are a lot taller and a bit wider to fit the LED strip on top. But yeah, the memory slots did look close, I think they put some Corsair on with platinum heat spreaders, their normal ones, and those even touched.
Also, I THINK the gap on the Gigabyte is actually the industry standard...I don't think the MSI or the DFI will have more space. If they do, it won't be by much, the MSI and DFI are the reference design when it comes to the gap between the cards anyway.
One thing I didn't see in the reviews of the Gigabyte though, but have seen in posts is that it's touchy about what RAM it can take. I guess the owner's manual doesn't confirm this, but people have been having problems on another forum...tried looking for it, couldn't see it off hand.
In an odd way though, could be good that they pulled the 1003 BIOS...if nothing else, means they felt it was more beta then final, and yanked it when they figured that out. Otherwise...might mean they do a new 1003 final that fixes the NCQ. That and saw in one post where one guy ended up with a bunch of problems that ended with a corrupted OS and reinstalling with 1003 Final.
Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
That and I keep optimistic this way, it keeps the pessimistic thought out of my head, that ALL of the NForce 4 boards won't like NCQ or at least Maxtor NCQ drives, and it won't matter if I switch boards...that I HAVE to follow what I called lame advice yesterday and switch to different hard drives.If they work in the 1002 BIOS, then I'm sure at some point they'll work again in a newer BIOS. I guess it's just how long can you hold out. If it was me, I'd rather try and return a 200 dollar board rather than 1000bucks in drives. I guess if worst comes to worst I'd just go with a pci card sata raid card that supports ncq.
lt_wentoncha
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Arvig said:
James Earl Ray
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DFI should be the first choice, MSI second. I wouldnt even consider the ASUS.