The OFFICIAL Asus A8V is one INCREDIBLE motherboard, a true piece of art thread!

I thought the AGP/PCI clocks were based on the FSB clock...so even if you run the memory at a divider, wouldn't 250MHz FSB still take the AGP/PCI speed way out of spec without either a lock or AGP/PCI divider?

And even with the new BIOS adding the AGP/PCI lock back in, what about early production boards without these two resistors? Has this been confirmed, or just a rumor?

Just visited the Asus website and still only see the 1003 BIOS...is the 1005 a beta? Is the one being linked to a 'stock' version or a modded bios?

I'm putting together A8V/FX-53 systems for myself and my brother...I'd definitely like to avoid whatever problems are referenced here....can't find anyone having a specific issue with the FX-53 on the A8V, though.

If someone using the 020 bios can prove that the lock is working and post their serial #, then we can assume that any serials at least after this one or ones will be fixed.

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Originally posted by stevenmh
I thought the AGP/PCI clocks were based on the FSB clock...so even if you run the memory at a divider, wouldn't 250MHz FSB still take the AGP/PCI speed way out of spec without either a lock or AGP/PCI divider?

And even with the new BIOS adding the AGP/PCI lock back in, what about early production boards without these two resistors? Has this been confirmed, or just a rumor?

Just visited the Asus website and still only see the 1003 BIOS...is the 1005 a beta? Is the one being linked to a 'stock' version or a modded bios?

I'm putting together A8V/FX-53 systems for myself and my brother...I'd definitely like to avoid whatever problems are referenced here....can't find any specifics on any forums on anyone having problems, though.

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It's a beta bios. Asus always runs these betas in a series and then after awile, releases the last one as final.

And as far as the divider, yes at some point.

we have locks people, in bios anyway. testing soon but first i need food.

no serial no. sticker on the board that i can see. but the serial on the box is 45MGOJ2946

The serial sticker for mine is on the parallel port connector.

45MGOJ2986...so if the lock works on yours, I should be OK.

Just sent in a couple questions to Asus tech support...will post the response here when/if I receive one.

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Dear Asus Representative,

I recently purchased the A8V Deluxe board for use with an FX-53 processor. I haven't built the new system yet because I'm still waiting on a few parts, but I've read the manual thoroughly and am participating in several message board threads specific to the A8V. I have a couple of questions:

(1) I've read that the PCI/AGP lock doesn't work with the 1003 BIOS, but that the 1005 beta BIOS fixes this problem. However, I've also read that early production boards won't support this feature even with a fixed BIOS, due to requiring a couple of extra resistors that are being provided on newer boards. Can you tell me if this is true or not? If so, can you provide a serial number range to differientiate between the boards with and without the hardware to support a working lock? I purchased this board with the understanding that it would have this feature, and the manual clearly states that the feature is present, so if my board does not have it working I will need to RMA it.

(2) The manual is a little confusing on the use of the Promise IDE port. Is it possible to use the two Promise SATA ports in a RAID 0 configuration, and at the same time use the Promise IDE port for an independent IDE drive? The BIOS has an option for 'RAID' or 'IDE' under the Promise menu item, but it's not clear whether it affects just the IDE port or all ports on the Promise controller.

This is my first Asus board and it looks like it's an excellent choice. I can't wait to get it up and running. Thanks in advance for your help with the above two issues.

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Originally posted by stevenmh
The serial sticker for mine is on the parallel port connector.

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It's also on the side of the box. But again, we need someone's board that can prove the locks work.

im confident the locks are working. my 9800xt HATES any agp bus higher than about 74~75. i couldnt run 3dmark01se at 240x10 5:3(5:6 i think this asus system is stupid) with a dlt of 4. couldnt get past car low and wouldnt even post video on occasion.

3dmark01se has finished but the score sucked. lower than 215 1:1. aparently you need to get quite a increase in fsb to make up for the divider hit.

I'm still a little confused on the divider issue. Why are you running a divider...because your memory craps out before your board, or because the lock doesn't work with 1:1 even if your memory can handle it? In other words, if I have memory that will do 250, will the lock work if I set my FSB at 250 with 1:1 ratio?

my bh-5 wouldnt do over 220 before. so the only way to really test the locks would be to run a divider since 220/3 is only
73mhz agp, and ive never seen a ati card that would crap out as low as mine did. And my card would crap out with the divider before at that speed.

I dont see how the divider would make a diffrence since the last i knew your memory speed was a product of your fsb and not the other way around:confused:

I'll try 225x11 1:1 just in case my card likes agp bus less than it did before, at 75mhz it got flakey but at 220 it would be 73.33mhz, and post back results. i doubt my memory will do much more than 225 at this voltage im afraid so more vdimm=good:toast:

I understand what you're saying. That's what I was getting at in one of my posts above.... the memory divider shouldn't have anything to do with the PCI/AGP lock, it's a separate issue. In theory, the lock either works or it doesn't, the divider only sets the memory speed relative to FSB. The AGP/PCI bus is still going to scale up with FSB, regardless of the divider. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't have been a quirk in the previous BIOS that kept the lock from working when a 1:1 ratio was selected.

So basically, you know that before you couldn't get past a certain point on FSB, regardless of setting your memory speed lower, indicating that your AGP bus was going too far out of spec for the ATI card. Now you can ramp all the way up to 240MHz, but since your memory has to run async at that FSB, you're seeing a big performance hit. That's interesting....I had read that A64's didn't take a big hit running async. But that might have been an nForce3 250 preview I was reading. Anyway, the lock must be working, because regardless of memory divider, your AGP bus should be 240/3 = 80, and it's unlikely your 9800XT would take kindly to that. My 9800XT pukes in the mid-70's.

I looked at some screen shots of the BIOS, and the divider nomenclature doesn't make any sense. I would normally say that at 200MHz FSB, memory is running at 400MHz, but that's DDR 200x2, so the ratio is really 1:1. The Asus BIOS says that 1:1 is 200 MHz DDR, and 2:1 is 400 MHz DDR. So what do you set to get stock PC3200 speeds at 200MHz FSB? 1:1 or 2:1 ? It it's 1:1, why would you even need to have a 2:1 option...who's got memory that's going to do 800MHz? If it's 2:1, why would you bother putting the 1:1 option...who's going to buy a Socket 939 CPU and then buy memory that can only do 200MHz DDR?

yes. to get 1:1 you have to set 2:1 in bios. i noticed that on start up when i set 1:1 and got 45s superpi runs, checked cpu-z and sure enough i was only runn'n 100mhz. To make it easy just take what they say, example 5:3 and just make it 5:3x(2) in your head. say the divider a:b and you have a 200mhz fsb. (200xa)/b would give you your actualy fsb speed.

Got it. Makes sense now. Well, not that it makes sense for them to do it that way, but at least I understand how to select the right value in the BIOS.

Thanks for all the testing tonight. I feel better now knowing that the lock should work once I get my board up and running.

then this should make you cream your panties like a 19 year old prom date(or was that just mine:D )

http://www.mechwarrior.tv/pictures/270HTT.jpg

and the link to go along with it(since it shows 200fsb in 3dmark)

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7902373

Here's bandwidth running 224X12 @ 1:1. Timings are 2-3-2-5.

http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...dra_224X12.jpg

Mongoose420,

Let the world see it, man!

Mongoose420@ 270fsb, 5:4
GJ!!

lol thanks. used to the FM forums 800x600 rules so i post links. Plus it makes the lazy of you actualy click a button:stick: :D

also here's pifast and super pi. not to shabby for a 2.4ghz processor i dont think

http://www.mechwarrior.tv/pictures/270HTTpfast.jpg

http://www.mechwarrior.tv/pictures/270HTTsuperpi.jpg

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Originally posted by Mongoose420
you have a nvidia card legion? I tried 240x10 and a divider and 3dmark crashed right on video start up. R9800xt couldnt take that much agp bus i guess since i can bench at 220x11

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I'm using an R360 cored 9800 pro mate!
Just off to try bigtoes bios will report back later!

Quote:

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Originally posted by Mongoose420
lol thanks. used to the FM forums 800x600 rules so i post links. Plus it makes the lazy of you actualy click a button:stick: :D

also here's pifast and super pi. not to shabby for a 2.4ghz processor i dont think

http://www.mechwarrior.tv/pictures/270HTTpfast.jpg

http://www.mechwarrior.tv/pictures/270HTTsuperpi.jpg

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Oh, we LIKE piccies here.... (FUGGER has lots of b/w :D ) and encourage them.... just a slight resize here.
Mongoose420 PiFast @ 2.4gHz:

i cant wait till my v5 gets here. i'll match it up with my WW with a custom hold down adaptor and see what she's got. BTW i didnt test anything. figured out the most i could run HTT with my memory at 220 5/6 and went for it. i imagine 280 will fall also soon but im doing the forum shuffle with the locks news and proof(i dont think anyone can say at 270htt that the locks are not working)

and you're on 1005.20 right? from bigtoe?

yup. as soon as i was told the file need'd the .rom extension put on it i was flash'n away.

In fact i flashed use'n asus windows based flash menu that worked flawlessly btw(abits and DFI's both worked exelent for me as well tho).

im not prepared to go over 1.55v with the stock cooler. Wait till i get my v5 and keep a towl handy:banana:

well i seen what happens at 1.75v and the stock cooler allready with a bios bug. Lets just say i seen mid 60c temps and climbing very very fast as soon as i got into bios. it wasnt pretty. Given the fact ive allready not fried my new $500 dollar chip once im going to play it safe on the old vcore adjustments.

Does this happen to others? My A8V freezes on restart everytime after I lock the AGP/PCI freq. FYI, I am using Bigtoe's BIOS.