Asus P5K Premium Problems + fixes thread

[IanB]

Honestly, I think the only reliable answer with the Premium is to do what you have done (and I am about to upgrade to) - use a hardware RAID card to add RAID capabilities, especially with the latest Samsung drives which are particularly recommendable right now for price/performance.

I'm also far more confident in the results: I am very suspicious of on-board RAID solutions since hearing odd reports of occasional hash errors using QuickPAR that can't easily be accounted for by overclocking or memory issues, but might be a result of poor drivers or an obscure chipset hardware bug. It's probably not an issue with the Intel Southbridge compared to nVidia, but I remain cautious. The other distinct advantages of off-board RAID make it the most sensible solution.

Note that there is a reported bug in the Intel Southbridge (not just on the Premium) restricting maximum bandwidth when connected directly to current SSDs. There has been discussion of this in the News forum.

[Biker]

Note that there is a reported bug in the Intel Southbridge (not just on the Premium) restricting maximum bandwidth when connected directly to current SSDs. There has been discussion of this in the News forum.

Bandwidth caps with crappy intel chipsets I can handle, I just want to know if this board falls over with SSD's connected as well of the rest of the SATA flakiness

[Biker]

New 0504 bios posted on Asus FTP here

No idea if it is a beta but I flashed it right away anyway

Test setup:

P5K Premium rev 2.00G (China)

WD Raptor 150GB @ SATA1
WD 120GB SATAII (in SATA II mode) @ SATA6.

All bios settings stock except ram Vdimm (2.2v)

Results:

1: ICH9R set to IDE mode: System boots into XP with no problems

2: ICH9R set to SATA mode in Bios: System soft reset 2 seconds after beginning to boot XP.

3: ICH9R set to ACHI mode in bios: System soft reset 2 seconds after beginning to boot XP.


Conclusion: >.<

[Biker]

Update:

After reflashing the new beta 0504 bios (using afudos /ip5k0504.rom from a bootable usb stick) and completeing yet another fresh install of WinXP with the ICH9R set to ACHI mode () I managed to get myself a stable XP desktop with this board at default clocks.


NB: I have so far not been able to flash back to bios version 0404 with any rev of Afudos. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED


The only drives connected during the install were a raptor 150gb and a sata dvd drive.

I am now testing the ICH9R ports with various SATA II drives:

Tested so far (not as boot drive):

2 WD 120GB drives in SATA II mode have booted fine with no probs...
1 Samsung HD501LJ 500GB in SATA II mode booted fine (1st time ever!)

Progress? Lets hope so ;-)

Next: the dreaded raid mode test


Intel drivers here for xp

The precise drivers used for this round of testing were:

Intel F6 floppy driver version used: 7.5.0.1017 (ACHI) - taken from Asus Download centre ....
Intel chipset update version used: 8.3.1.1009
Intel matrix storage manager version used:7.8.0.1012


ps. this 0504 bios seems pretty flaky even after a full afudos wipe and reflash.

No overclocking attempted yet...

[Biker]

w0000t!!

Successful test completed on Win XP with 2 x 120GB WD drives in Raid 0 and SATA II mode.

This is a great stride forward as before the system would hang with these SATA II drives attatched.

Edit: Also now tested with Samsung T166 drives and hours and hours of copying 100's of GB back and forth : no lockups / slowdowns; no i/o errors in event viewer.

I had one BAD_POOL_HEADER 0x00000019 BSOD on first attempt but just after F6 part of install but second install attempt error free was fine.

I also had a couple of slowdowns during install, but once finished the system is running at expected speed with no slow downs thus far.

So far tried overclocked :

400 x 9 : stable
450 x 8 : stable

looking good folks