ASUS P5W DH - Problems + Fixes Thread

[dijef]

Hello.

Last week I started to have problems with graphics in games.
I started to see bugs on screen so I quit game.
I thought it could be high temperature so I clean my pc and tried again but problem still appeared.
Finally after two hours, I run game again, pc crashed and my graphics card not working anymore.

I had E6300 oc to 2.6
3g ddr2 @ 750mhz
gf 9800gtx+ oc by bfg

It was working fine for over year in that configuration.

I thought it was graphics card problem, but I put new one from friend and I had bugs on screen. I format hard drive and installed new system (vista)
but it didn't help. same n xp sp3

I tried components and I think it is motherboard issue, is it need to be replaced or anyone met with it so far?

I just add that I have newest drivers for chipser, graphics and bios.
Screen bugs a lot in wow, but not in counter-strike 1.6.

I put all details in drivers control panel to minimum, ram speed at 667, 1.8ghz c2d. Same in game, it helped a bit, but pc going to crash in the mid of game, even if no bugs or screen are shown.

Please help.

[Chrysalis]

Ok I can confirm bios 2004 is fine on my cpu in windows 7 x64, well fine in that I can cinstall it and run without that BSOD 2901 fixes.

However now I am running windows 7 my cpu feels like a 386, everything that uses cpu is significantly slower.

2d graphics - scrolling heavy webpages, mirc, html email in outlook all show jerkyness but did not in XP.
nod32 - files that took 2 or 3 secs to scan in XP now take over 30 seconds (10 times increase in process time) sometimes when I download files I get a connect reset error as nod32 is taking too long to scan.

also I have an issue with the intel ahci drivers.

I installed with ahci enabled and can confirm the microsoft ahci drivers are operational.
I then install the stable version of intels driver which is currently 8.9 and my pc takes 5 minutes to boot (just sits there on loading screen for 5 minutes then will come to life) and in device manager the boot drive is not properly detected as shows as 'disk drive'. The 8.7 version boots normally but still doesnt detect the drive properly. The beta 9.x versions have the slow boot and still dont detect the drive. Drive is a WD black cavalier 640gig WD6401AALS.

Is my bios 2004 possibly causing some issue with windows 7? the changelogs for the bios indicate no operating system related fixes other than the 45nm fix in 2901. All the newer bios stop EIST from working properly so I prefer to stick with 2004.

Also what are the stock chipset voltages? ICH MCH FSB etc. thanks

Finally still no one knows why my 8800gt gfx card is extremely slow bios/post display? 7600gt was fast as normal.

[Falkentyne]

Pretty sure stock is 1.05 ich, 1.55 chipset, 1.20 fsb...
What cpu is that anyway?

[Chrysalis]

my cpu is a core2duo 6420 and thanks.

[Yolanda]

Hmm Win7 slower than XP, specially on ~2GHz CPUs, but not so slower. Test your system by simple benchmarks like SuperPI and 3DMark2001 or others.

Offtop. Moved to Giga P55-UD3R, Core i5-750 3.9GHz, but P5W DH is great and works at my ded's internet PC.
It's interesting 3DMark 2001 performance is the same in comparison of Core i5 3.9GHz with DDR3-1560 8-8-8-21-1T and Core2 Duo E8500 3.8GHz DDR2-800 5-6-6-18, but I thinked performance must be a bit faster, like SuperPI 1M faster about 20%.

[jdhaan]

I have been using this motherbord for three years for my gaming rig. (Great motherbord )

Currently Im using an E6600 overclocked to 3.2Ghz stable, but I've been thinking of upgrading it. Because of monitairy issues, I'd like to spend less then 200$.

So I was wondering if someone knows a processor that can run on the P5WDH without issues, with a greater overclock potential then the E6600.

Thanks!

[mikepaul]

What revision of the MB do you have? 1.02G has limited use with 45nm CPUs...

[jdhaan]

Hmm, thanks for reminding me. I just checked and I got the 1.02G revision, so upgrading my cpu is pretty much out of the question.

Now I'll need to upgrade my CPU, motherboard AND ram. :/

[Chrysalis]

Yolanda I did some digging, slow deskop performance is explained by a statement passmark made. Obviously people have been asking them why 2D performance on their benchmark is less than half of XP. Their answer was that in windows 7 (and also vista but not so much) microsoft made internal changes to the gdi in that things were optimised for multi threading and other new stuff but at the same time older type gdi graphics are now slower, their benchmark mainly tests older type gdi functions hence the poor result. Unfortenatly it seems most windows apps use the older functions as in my case the desktop usage is noticeably slower, games themselves seem fine so no problem with 3D. They even said overall XP accelerates more 2D onboard the graphics card than Windows 7 does. Since using the desktop is pretty much all 2D then it would explain why the processor is generally working harder in 2D mode.

In regards to nod32, it seems that app has a specific windows 7 issue in its http scanning so the slow http scans I am disregarding now, which leaves behind slow downs in real time nod32 scanning as well as other apps such as my creative console launcher. I have simply concluded I probably need a hardware upgrade if I want a completely smooth windows 7 experience, sure its possible as time goes by drivers get optimised but I considered that this board is showing its age and the fact the ahci drivers wont even work properly, starting to wish I just went with raid mode as I expect that would have been less problematic and I would have still got NCQ but I wanted the power saving enhancements of ahci. If I upgrade it will be a ICH10 board and the cpu needs to have high clocks, I have learned that the multi core thing is ok but hardly anything uses multi threading, most apps I use when maxed out simply either put 50% on each core or 100% on one core, hardly ever see 100% on both cores utilised. So with a quad core it would just be 25% on each core or 100% on 1 core with 3 cores idle.

Ironically my spare test pc is noticebly faster than this pc in Windows 7, this pc gets higher benchmarks and is rated higher on review sites but the other pc has higher real world performance. So that can only be down to the chipset or the way the cpu integrates with memory. The other machine is a amd64 X2 5600+ on a fairly new board less than 6 months old.

[Chrysalis]

Ok I am considering a as a temporary help I can push the overclock but it seems what I want isnt even easy.

Currently I am on 333fsb 2.66ghz clock on the 6420. EIST off but use C1E. The ram is ddr2-800

So I was thinking of going to 400fsb which gives a 3.2ghz cpu speed, and at this point I now realise why the 6420 was way less popular then the 6600. Hyperpath 3 is already off, I would need to set ram to spd, am I likely to hit any problems if I just set those 2 things and go for 400fsb?

[Chrysalis]

I am also considering a E7400, my primary issue is I need more clock speed for single threaded apps (rarely run multi threaded apps) this 7400 seems like I could get a decent boost without upgrading the board and the ram. At the same fsb I run now the 7400 will give me 3.3ghz a decent 30% increase. But a smaller cache. Will check this thread to try and find info on how well the cpu works with the board but if anyone has the answer handy please reply as will save me some time.

[Yolanda]

I think simply overclock your 6420 to 3.2GHz, it will be as fast as E7400 at 3.3GHz. It's more nice to upgrade later to 32nm Core i3.

[cmthomson]

Hmm, thanks for reminding me. I just checked and I got the 1.02G revision, so upgrading my cpu is pretty much out of the question.

Now I'll need to upgrade my CPU, motherboard AND ram. :/

I have a 1.02 board and upgraded from 6600 to 8500 a while back. It runs much cooler and a bit faster (bigger caches) but doesn't really overclock any better. I run the CPU at auto voltage because the 1.02 apparently doesn't have credible CPU voltage adjustment (see earlier posts in this thread).

[Chrysalis]

I think simply overclock your 6420 to 3.2GHz, it will be as fast as E7400 at 3.3GHz. It's more nice to upgrade later to 32nm Core i3.

so I just set 400fsb and expect no problems with my current settings?

if the board does 400fsb then the 7400 would give me 4ghz

[Yolanda]

Sure try FSB400, I think 3.2GHz will be too enough.

My board works well about 1,5 years with 3.8GHz E8500, but it's 1.04G revision, so I able to change CPU voltage, but some owners of older 1.02G revision says it can't be done.
Also not all 45 nm crystalls able to work at 4 GHz, specially from cheeper Pentium Dual Core and E7XXX lines or requires very high voltage (1.475V+) which can be cooled only using "supercoolers". Be ready that new chip will work only at ~3.8GHz+.

So overclocked 45 nm chip will be only about 15-25% faster, than 3.2GHz 65 nm "classic" Core2 Duo. In this case after two years of 45nms, it's a time to wait for a something newer like 32 nm LGA1156 in 2010.

[Nicognito]

********EDIT - I had a look on the first page and will check the tips&tricks there to see if they solve my problems - sorry! ********
Hi - 337 pages is to much info to browse so I will post my question and hopefully someone who know their way around this thread can help me out....

So I have had this mobo since 2006 with XP and now with Win7, my problem began when I had XP installed and it is that boot time is very long:
In XP it took 60-120 s after bios was read and initiated until I got to the logon screen for XP - always waiting with a black screen.

In Win7 everything runs smothly until I get to the Windows is starting text and here I have a long waiting time until the Windows Logo swirls into view.

Any thoughts? UPNP OS is enabled, Disabled 3,5" unit - as far as I can tell anyway.

Regards,
N

[Falkentyne]

I've never had PNP OS enabled. What's the point of having that enabled?

[Troop]

Hi folks,

Long time no post. I've had this mobo for over three years now with no issues. I run Windows Vista Business Edition (32bit). However over the holidays I want to go to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 edition.

Have any of you had any issues with doing this? Should I use the latest bios version or is 2801 fine? Just wanted to check before I format and get a BSOD.

Thanks.

[cmthomson]

when I had XP installed and it is that boot time is very long:
In XP it took 60-120 s after bios was read and initiated until I got to the logon screen

This is probably IDE device detection. Go to the IDE configuration screen and set all your empty slots to Not Installed, then set the detect time to the lowest value you're sure will allow spin-up and head load (I use 5 seconds). This should dramatically reduce your boot time.

[Pawelek]

Hi !

Recently I've put a nwe X3220 into my old good P5W DH Deluxe 1.03g. The new CPU worked fine on AUTO Vcore but I decided to see how far I can go with lowering that parameter (since this is Xeon). The VID is I quess 1.3125 (form CoreTemp) and revisoin G0 so I thought I might lower Vcore a little bit. At first I set 1.25 and encountered crashes while watching videos on youtube, back to AUTO problem has gone. Than tried 1.2625 and once again crash. Finally I set 1.275 and I hope this is enough (no hard stressing with Linx, Orthos etc but YT ok) for now. But... My question sounds: is this CPU somehow crap and needs so much "juice" or I need to change other setting in BIOS to lower Vcore more.

At present I have:
2.1V for RAM - 4x1GB PDP Patriot
1.275 for CPU - EIST enabled but in Windows set to not to change the multiplier so 2.40Ghz fixed
1.55 for MCH
HyperPath disabled
Other thing set AUTO

PSU is Seasonic S12 600W from I guess 2006

Best regards
kudlatypawelek

[Falkentyne]

If that cpu is a G0, and still in the "Conroe", but not "Wolfdale" family, then you should know:
1) default vcore for those E6x00/X6x00/Q6x00 chips was 1.35v.
2) The board has vdroop at load, so 1.275v bios is going to be like 1.21v at full load.

If the Xeon G0 had a vcore default of 1.25v, then that's news to me

[Pawelek]

Ok I know that def values are higher and def value should be smthing around 1.3...but I was hoping that Xeon can work fine with lower voltage. On one board I saw man having Q6600 at 3.0Ghz with 1.25V. I quess my CPU is more power consuming one.

[dogbert_2001]

I'm using BIOS 2801. Have been for a while.

On reboots, sometimes a network adapter disappears in Windows. I'd have to restart or cold boot to try to get it to show up again.

I tried to RMA it but they didn't do anything with it.

Found this related
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us

Edit: I found my issue.

I disabled the quick boot and fullscreen logo so I could see what happens at boot. Doing this let me see all the PCI devices that it finds. I kept looking for PCI Bridge Ethernet and kept rebooting to see what affects it.

Then I started playing with my network switch connections. I've found that when they're plugged into my DGS-2208, on the next reboot, the Ethernet disappears. Plugging them into two other switches that were 10/100 brought the Ethernet back.

Still an annoying problem. My other gigabit ethernet computers don't have this problem. So my only choice right now is to keep the P5W DH on a 10/100 switch.

[clavicle]

Realtek has released new WiFi drivers for Win7 for 8187l adapter of this mobo. Has anyone managed to use this mobo as AP using these drivers on Win7 platform? This software has few more options which I really couldn't get to work for me.

[G40RoCkEt]

Realtek has released new WiFi drivers for Win7 for 8187l adapter of this mobo. Has anyone managed to use this mobo as AP using these drivers on Win7 platform? This software has few more options which I really couldn't get to work for me.

I will try that because i want work with wi-fi too.

Let's see if the new drivers can be useful for us.

By the way, i make another upgrade, this time SSD Intel X-25 80GB.

Goodbye RAID0, nice to meet you.