Anyone have a A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard?

[Nom]

OK, I've been running the system now for 3 days straight with no
lockups. Trick was removing SLI and going with a single 16x PCIe
6800GT. This is with all my DIMMs installed. I've even run Prime95
for at least 12 hours, with no lockups or errors at all.

Note that with both of my eVGA 6800GT cards installed in SLI
configuration, I'd never get to 24 hours before a hardware lockup.

Since I've made the machine as bare-bones as possible, it's pretty
clear that my system is stable when NOT running in a SLI hardware
config.

So... now I guess it's time to put the second 6800GT back in, go back
into SLI config, and see what happens.

What is bothering me is that if SLI brings back my hardware freezes,
there's really nothing else I can do or remove to make the system more
stable - everything has already been pulled... And I already tested
SLI with only two DIMMs (instead of four).

So, put me down on the list as one with an unstable Asus SLI system...

Curiouser and Curiouser !

I'm assuming you've already updated the Motherboard BIOS to the latest
version ? Do the same with the GFX BIOSs (you'll have to contact the
manufacturer to obtain the necessary files).

It's probably worth trying a different PSU, just for testing purposes.
Whilst yours can supply plenty of juice, you may find it's slightly low on
one of the rails or something. Does it have the 24-pin ATX connector, or the
older 20-pin ? And you have connected the 4-pin Molex to the input on the
motherboard haven't you ?

 

[fsda]

Curiouser and Curiouser !

I'm assuming you've already updated the Motherboard BIOS to the latest
version ? Do the same with the GFX BIOSs (you'll have to contact the
manufacturer to obtain the necessary files).

It's probably worth trying a different PSU, just for testing purposes.
Whilst yours can supply plenty of juice, you may find it's slightly
low on one of the rails or something. Does it have the 24-pin ATX
connector, or the older 20-pin ? And you have connected the 4-pin
Molex to the input on the motherboard haven't you ?

I'm using the latest _release_ BIOS from Asus (version 1.002). They
have tons of beta BIOSes, but I'm reluctant to try them.

I'll check the video card BIOSes - not sure where to find the version
number, although I do remember seeing that they had stickers on the
cards. But, they don't list during POST.

I don't have another PSU to try.

Mine has the 24-pin connector. Yes, I have connected to the 4-pin Molex
on the motherboard. (In fact, if I don't do this, the BIOS gives a
warning during POST.)

Right now I have the "primary" card on the PCIe power connector from the
power supply. The second card I am powering through two Molex
connectors from the power supply, going through a Y-cable to PCIe power
connector of the second card.

What I really want to do is to take the PSU's single PCIe power
connector, and use a Y-cable to convert this to two PCIe power
connectors and use it to power both cards. I contacted Enermax about
this, and this is what they recommend doing, but everytime I ask them
about when they will have their Y-cable ready for sale, they say "check
back in two weeks".

Does anyone know a source for such a Y-cable? I.e. convert the PSU's
single PCIe power output to two seperate PCIe power outputs to power two
6800GTs?

Thanks.

 

[Nom]

I'm using the latest _release_ BIOS from Asus (version 1.002). They
have tons of beta BIOSes, but I'm reluctant to try them.

Try them all !

If they're rubbish, you can always flash back to the one you have now. I
think it's fairly likely that one will fix your problem, as we've pretty
much eliminated everything else !

I'll check the video card BIOSes - not sure where to find the version
number, although I do remember seeing that they had stickers on the
cards. But, they don't list during POST.

I don't have another PSU to try.

Mine has the 24-pin connector. Yes, I have connected to the 4-pin
Molex on the motherboard. (In fact, if I don't do this, the BIOS
gives a warning during POST.)

All should be well with the power side of things then.

 

[fsda]

Try them all !

If they're rubbish, you can always flash back to the one you have now.
I think it's fairly likely that one will fix your problem, as we've
pretty much eliminated everything else !


All should be well with the power side of things then.

OK, I've operated for two days now with no hardware lock with TWO
6800GT's in the machine. However, this is in standard video card mode -
i.e. SLI is not activated in the Nvidia driver.

Next step now is to put the driver into SLI mode, and see if the system
starts to freeze once a day again.

 

[Nom]

OK, I've operated for two days now with no hardware lock with TWO
6800GT's in the machine. However, this is in standard video card
mode - i.e. SLI is not activated in the Nvidia driver.

Next step now is to put the driver into SLI mode, and see if the
system starts to freeze once a day again.

Since your original posts, I've found out that your problem *is* BIOS
related.

Lots and lots of folks are having all sorts of issues with the original 1002
BIOS.

Get some of the later ones slapped on there - there are plenty of Betas
around.

 

[fsda]

OK, I've operated for two days now with no hardware lock with TWO
6800GT's in the machine. However, this is in standard video card mode
- i.e. SLI is not activated in the Nvidia driver.

Next step now is to put the driver into SLI mode, and see if the
system starts to freeze once a day again.

OK, after showing that I can run for days at a time with either:
- one 6800GT installed
- two 6800GT's installed, but in "normal" driver mode

I reactivated "SLI" mode in the Nvidia driver, and the machine hardware
locked in the first few hours.

Actually, what happened when it locked was, I had a browser page open, I
then loaded the Nvidia Nalu 6800 demo, and while it was loading, the
browser window pulled itself to the foreground (with Nalu behind it).
When I minimized the browser window (bringin Nalu to the foreground),
the machine hardware locked (with no repeating sound). This is
consistent with some of my other hardware lockups in SLI mode - I've
even had them while using only Windows explorer, so I don't believe this
is even "3D mode" related.

So, clearly, with the latest release Asus BIOS and release Nvidia
drivers, my machine is: - stable with one or two eVGA 6800GTs installed
in my A8N-SLI. - unstable, with complete hardware lockups, when the
Nvidia driver is in SLI mode.

Hard for me to recommend SLI to anyone right now...

 

[fsda]

Since your original posts, I've found out that your problem *is* BIOS
related.

Lots and lots of folks are having all sorts of issues with the
original 1002 BIOS.

Get some of the later ones slapped on there - there are plenty of
Betas around.

Could you please point me to where you received this information? They
have at least 5 versions of Beta BIOS 1003, and I've heard that some of
them are completely flaky. I'd need to know specifically which is the
most stable, and which specifically addresses my problem. I am running
two RAID sets right now, and I can't afford to have a wimpy BIOS screw
them up.

Thanks.

 

[RJT]

Could you please point me to where you received this information? They
have at least 5 versions of Beta BIOS 1003, and I've heard that some of
them are completely flaky. I'd need to know specifically which is the
most stable, and which specifically addresses my problem. I am running
two RAID sets right now, and I can't afford to have a wimpy BIOS screw
them up.

For what it's worth: I've updated my bios with every (beta) version
available, and my nForce striped-RAID never gave me problems, kept
working beautifully, even with two NCQ drives and NCQ enabled. In the
latest 1003 bios release there's a txt file explaining every change
made in every bios version.

 

[fsda]

For what it's worth: I've updated my bios with every (beta) version
available, and my nForce striped-RAID never gave me problems, kept
working beautifully, even with two NCQ drives and NCQ enabled. In the
latest 1003 bios release there's a txt file explaining every change
made in every bios version.

Well, I updated with 1003.7 Beta last night, activated SLI, and in under
six hours the machine hardware locked again.

I now see that the release 1003 finally showed up, and finally there is
a list of fixes. Nothing indicates that it will solve my hardware
freeze problem with SLI, but of course I will update with this version.

 

[fsda]

Well, I updated with 1003.7 Beta last night, activated SLI, and in
under six hours the machine hardware locked again.

I now see that the release 1003 finally showed up, and finally there
is a list of fixes. Nothing indicates that it will solve my hardware
freeze problem with SLI, but of course I will update with this
version.

OK, well I "upgraded" to the release version of 1003 BIOS, and it took
me six hours to get my system RAID mirror (Nvidia) set back. Something
is incredibly flaky about my Nvidia SATA controller. I had had a little
flakiness a few weeks ago with it not seeing one of my two Raptor drives
sometimes while booting. After swapping power cables and a new SATA
cable, that problem had seemed to go away. In two months, it was only
one of the Raptor drives that seemed to have this issue.

But after flashing with 1003 this morning, it completely refused to
see either of my DiamondMax10 mirrored drives anymore. No
combinations of different SATA cables, power connectors, etc would get
them to be recognized by POST, either with RAID enabled or disabled.
It would sometimes see my Raptor drives, sometimes not, but never see
the DiamondMax10 drives. I removed literally every other drive from
the system, and still no go. Flashed back to 1002 and 1001, reset
CMOS several times, and no luck. At one point it seemed that as long
as I had an IDE DVD-ROM drive on the primary Nvidia IDE controller, it
would then see the DiamondMax10 drives. But then even that setup
didn't work. After a few more hours, it suddenly started seeing the
DiamondMax10 drives again, but then flashing up to 1003 lost them
again.

After about six hours of this, magically the DiamondMax10 drives
reappeared, and POST has found them through a few reboots. There is
nothing that I have done to make them reappear - this same exact
configuration didn't work for hours on end.

I have gotten back to 1003, and the drives are still visible.

Now that I am on 1003, the system is at least as unstable in SLI mode as
it was with BIOS 1001 and 1002. The new BIOS has not helped at all in
that regard. I did manage to hardware lock the machine with the Nalu
demo again while in SLI mode, and another time with the standard MS
Plus! Fish screensaver running. The machine has hardware locked twice
now in about six hours while in SLI mode.

Between this issue with my SATA controller being very flaky, and these
continual hardware locks in SLI mode, I'm starting to wonder if I have a
defective motherboard.

Has anyone else experienced anything like my extremely unplesant
experience with the A8N-SLI?

 

[Nom]

Could you please point me to where you received this information?
They have at least 5 versions of Beta BIOS 1003, and I've heard that
some of them are completely flaky. I'd need to know specifically
which is the most stable, and which specifically addresses my
problem. I am running two RAID sets right now, and I can't afford to
have a wimpy BIOS screw them up.

Take a look at

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

and

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13

 

[Rob Nicholson]

For what it's worth: I've updated my bios with every (beta) version

available, and my nForce striped-RAID never gave me problems, kept
working beautifully, even with two NCQ drives and NCQ enabled. In the
latest 1003 bios release there's a txt file explaining every change
made in every bios version.

Come out guys and gals - how about some clipping - my page down key is
getting worn out

 

[Nom]

Come out guys and gals - how about some clipping - my page down key is
getting worn out

Nah

 

[pkj]

Fsda:

If it makes you feel better, I've had much worse problems with an Asus
A8N-SLI Deluxe, than you did.

I got mine in mid-January, with the idea that I'd upgrade my old
system (an Athlon 800). From the minute I put it together, I had no
end of stability problems, and this was with default Bios settings (v
1002), and a single video card (eVga 6600GT). It started with read
errors on files as I was loading Windows, and went on to all sorts of
blue screens, corrupted files, corrupted registry entries, reboots for
no reason, device driver error messages, browser errors, etc. You name
it, and I had the problem. I reloaded Windows several times, replaced
the PSU, and replaced the video card, all making things more
expensive than I had originally figured on. No matter what I did, the
system acted like it was cursed.

In the end, it was pretty apparent that I had a hardware problem. I
had already ruled out the video card and the PSU. I tried removing
one of my two memory sticks, to see what might happen. The system
died, and wouldn't even turn on after that point. I took the whole
mess back to the store where I'd bought most of the parts, and he
narrowed the problem down to the motherboard. At that point, I RMA'ed
the motherboard back to Asus in Kentucky for (hopefully) a
replacement.

I have no idea what caused all my problems, but sending the
motherboard back came as a relief. I'm hoping I won't have issues
like this with the replacement when it arrives later this month.