I have 3 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Systems with AMD CPUs and have found the
systems to be fairly stable and would like to keep my upgrade path of
AMD / ASUS. My desire is to reuse as many components as is reasonably
possible from the systems. So the more options I leave available, the
better...
Could I get your suggestions on what ASUS AMD MoBo would you recommend?
What AMD Processor for the above would be a good tradeoff between
horsepower and cost?
Do you feel that the 64 Bit CPUs are a good value at this point in
time?
If so, what memory configurations would you recommend for the above?
The applications for the systems include: Windows Media Center and
general business applications and consumer use. I don't expect any
will be used as Gaming machines.
thanks,
Ron
Back in May '05 I picked up an A8V with a new Venice core 3000+ (Athlon
64) from Monarch, who burned it in for 24 hours before shipping it to
me. I had planned to replace my old A7V8X with Athlon XP 2600+,
keeping my $$$ ATI video card (which never seemed at home in the old
mobo, for bios reasons or what I don't know) and 2 512 MB and 1 256 MB
DIMMs of 3500 DDR CAS 2.0 memory, plus all the other junk in the box.
Unfortunately when I planned to do the switch I broke my right clavicle
in a high-speed bicycling crash, lost a lot of skin, tore several
muscles in my right arm and upper back and couldn't do bugger all for
months. The A8V sat in its carton as a doorstop for months.
This Sunday, after more fits with the video card I determined the time
was ripe to do the deed and hoisted the old box off the desk, blew the
dust out and laid out the two board manuals, cables, tools, new HDs (a
couple Seagate 160 GB SATA drives a mate of mine works at Seagate got
for me) and began the transplant surgery.
Most things between the A7V8X and A8V were the same, but they added USB
pins on the far (from the CPU) end of the board so I can finally use
all 4 USB ports on the front of my Lian Li case. Onboard audio
changed, the flange i used with my 5.1 has no place to connect, besides
there are now sockets in the I/O stack for front, side, rear, center
and subwoofer, which I'll have to sort out (i just plugged speakers
into center for now.) I went from 2 firewire ports to 1, not that I
use it a lot so did mind. There must be about a dozen USB ports on
this beast, but I'll only need the front four in any case. Otherwise
all seemed to transfer in good order.
POST utterly failed and I had no video. Not so much as a beep or voice
message telling me what's wrong. So typical.
After a moment of Modified Stationary Panic I sat down to the task of
simplification, ripping bits off the board and disconnecting from power
until I got to the least bits and put in my standby very simple AGP
video card (if you don't have one of these and have one of the G-Whizzy
sort, you're really at Murphy's door and pounding with both fists)
Still nada.
Pulled out all the memory.
Video. POST. Some fiddling and I got into setup and tried to find
things familiar with what I had on the A7V8X. Not much looks the same,
but it appeard most of the trouble was with trying to run on 2 512 MB
sticks which aren't Dual Channel. So it's up with one stick in for the
moment. Began hooking the other bits up, drives, and such and finally
Windows decided I was up to something dodgy with all this new,
unfamiliar hardware and requested registration, which went without a
hitch.
The next problem to sort out is all the new hardware detected, which
Windows insists upon being auto-detected and sorted out by it, (as IF)
I've got the driver disks and wot and will address those next weekend
when I have time.
Starting about 8:30, I was up and on the internet by 12:15, ready to
snipe an auction on eBay, which I conceded as it was already beyond my
cap.
So I managed the switch so far, but still have the memory thing to sort
out, as I'd like to stay with both 512 MB DIMMs as new ones are a bit
more cash I don't want to spend at the mo.
Memory is A1 B1 A2 B2 and I have my DIMM in A2, as instructed by the
manual (which is sorely lacking in detail on this matter.) Anyone who
knows how to run 2 x 512 MB non-dual channel, please feel free to
reply.
ATI video card often causes some beeps in the morning, insisting
there's a power problem with the card's aux power connector (maybe this
was what all the fuss was with the A7V8X?) so I power down, jiggle the
connector and power up and it's ready to rock.
Speed. Oh my. That old 2600+ was a quick jobby. I used to watch it
chew through SETI sets at a quick pace, compared to the Pentium M at
work. I brought SETI up (even though it's near the end of it's life as
BOINC has replaced it and I haven't sorted that all out yet) and it's a
virtual chainsaw compared to the old CPU and it's only running at 1800
MHz, + whatever Auto overclocking the A8V has it up to.
Boot-up is considerably longer than the A7V8X was, and I don't know
why, yet. Seems to spend a lot of time scanning IDE devices and
sitting there with a cursor in the upper left before telling me it's
got some issue that only Setup can resolve or I can F2 and skip it and
go with default settings.
I really need a couple hours going over this stuff so I have it all
taken care of and understood, otherwise it seems to be an absolute
peach.
