Asus P4R800-VM - any good??

[James Anderson]

I'm thinking of buying one of these. It's a fairly new model with an ATI
chipset, but I haven't seen much info on it.

Has anyone here had any experience, good or bad, with this one?

Thanks,
James

 

[Paul]

I'm thinking of buying one of these. It's a fairly new model with an ATI
chipset, but I haven't seen much info on it.

Has anyone here had any experience, good or bad, with this one?

Thanks,
James

There is not enough traffic in abxzone.com about that motherboard. I would
say stay away for now. If you use the more established/popular boards,
more of the bugs get posted on here or abxzone, so there will be
fewer surprises.

Or, you could be a hero and test it for us ))

This xbitlabs blurb lists the characteristics of several boards using
the same chipset as the P4R800-VM. Perhaps you could research all of
those boards, and see if there is a common thread to people's experience
with them:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20030625024714.html

MSI MS-7003
Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M
ASUS P4R800-VM
Shuttle XPC ST61G Barebone
Sapphire Axion 9100 ?
CP Technology ARS300M ? several models...

Paul

 

[mrgreg]

I have one. What are you looking to do with the board?

Forget about overclocking it's not supported.

Feel like changing your memory timings oops no can't do that either choices
are fast or slow.

I could go on but you get the gist of it the board has about the same bios
options as you would find on a Compaq or the like.

Also if you are going to use a cpu with hyperthreading you have to run
either win XP or a newer flavour of Linux which supports it because you can
not turn it off. Onboard sound is halfway decent and the onboard video is a
bit better than what you will find on an NF2 board. If you are looking for a
integrated motherboard with halfway decent performance and don't care about
the mentioned limitations it will do you fine mine does run stable. If
you're looking for something you will be able to tweak run away.

 

[Bledge]

There were 3 users of the P4R800-VM who posted here recently in
the last 3 weeks. Google for "P4R800-VM" on the asus newsgroup
if your news server do not have these.

One has delayed boot up problem.
I have a problem with USB 2.0 showing as unknown USB device
in Win XP Pro + SP1, still unresolved.
The third person has experimented the most on this board and has
RMA'd it due to unresolved problems.

There is not enough traffic in abxzone.com about that motherboard. I would
say stay away for now. If you use the more established/popular boards,
more of the bugs get posted on here or abxzone, so there will be
fewer surprises.

Or, you could be a hero and test it for us ))

This xbitlabs blurb lists the characteristics of several boards using
the same chipset as the P4R800-VM. Perhaps you could research all of
those boards, and see if there is a common thread to people's experience
with them:

MSI MS-7003
Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M
ASUS P4R800-VM
Shuttle XPC ST61G Barebone
Sapphire Axion 9100 ?
CP Technology ARS300M ? several models...

Please post your research here.

/bledge 13 Jan 2004

 

[steve]

mrgreg

I've been trying to install a fresh copy of XP for two days now and I
keep getting BSOD, I've made it into the graphical portion of XP, but
only because I've had to disable USB support, when USB support was
enabled it would hang during the text portion of Windows XP setup
waiting for me to hit the enter key to proceed, but was hung.

I have a WD102AA 10.2 Gig HD, settings set for AUTO (tried with and
without 32bit mode)

2GHz Intel P4
ASUS P4R800-VM with two sticks of 256 Meg Corsair DDR mem
24x CDROM
ALite-On Combo drive



I've reformated the drive, booted with Win98 disk CD support, and ran
winnt from the I386 directory, I get past the text portion of XPs
install now but when it starts the graphical portion it blue screens
and says that it has stopped to prevent any more damage from
happening, the stop codes vary each time. Could it have anything to
do with the shared video memory. I've tried all factory defaults and
forcing AGP and UMA to 64 Meg, but it still blue screens, I've tried
keeping FAT32 and allowing XP to convert to NTFS still BSOD

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Steven

 

[mrgreg]

mrgreg

I've been trying to install a fresh copy of XP for two days now and I
keep getting BSOD, I've made it into the graphical portion of XP, but
only because I've had to disable USB support, when USB support was
enabled it would hang during the text portion of Windows XP setup
waiting for me to hit the enter key to proceed, but was hung.

I have a WD102AA 10.2 Gig HD, settings set for AUTO (tried with and
without 32bit mode)

2GHz Intel P4
ASUS P4R800-VM with two sticks of 256 Meg Corsair DDR mem
24x CDROM
ALite-On Combo drive



I've reformated the drive, booted with Win98 disk CD support, and ran
winnt from the I386 directory, I get past the text portion of XPs
install now but when it starts the graphical portion it blue screens
and says that it has stopped to prevent any more damage from
happening, the stop codes vary each time. Could it have anything to
do with the shared video memory. I've tried all factory defaults and
forcing AGP and UMA to 64 Meg, but it still blue screens, I've tried
keeping FAT32 and allowing XP to convert to NTFS still BSOD

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Steven

First off I would try to rule out the RAM try the install with only one
stick installed if it still doesn't work try the other. Secound try only one
CDROM and the hard disc each set as master on it's own channel the idea is
to get running first and then try installing the other items after. I had no
trouble installing XP on a drive which previously had win2000pro installed
on it I just booted off the win XP disc and let it handle the formatting
chores. How old is the hard disc? Maybe try doing a low level format using a
WD Data Lifeguard tools disc which you can probably download from WD. The
one thing I did find however is with my supplied driver disc I could not
install the drivers had to download the newest ones from ATI and burn to
disc on another machine to do the driver install. Just something to keep in
mind for after you get the OS installed.
Let us know if you get it running.

 

[Jason]

Is your processor a overheating? I had problems with a P3 OEM
overheating while I was trying to install win98 it made it part way
into the install and would overheat and lock up the computer. Look at
your resting tempature (should be in the BIOS) and see if it's a lot
higher than the motherboard temp. My processor temp was running at
like 160deg F at rest and going over 200 when under a load.

At least yours is running I can't even get a picture on my p4r800-vm.
Good luck.

~Rocco

 

[steve]

Thanks for the responses guys. I finally got it installed. The
Corsair memory that I bought was PC3200 CL2 (256 Meg, single sided)
but not the extrem matched pairs, and I had put the two 256 MB sticks
into the blue slots with the intention to run in DDR mode, but the
memory was not matched enough to handle DDR, I guess, hence the reason
for random reboots, and not being able to even complete installation
of Windows XP. I moved the memory into the first two slots one blue
and one black (with the intention to now run in single channel mode),
memory counts up to 512 Meg (less shared vid mem), and the system
seemed to be stable. The manual really doesn't show this
configuration, should I continue to run with two sticks (since it did
freeze last night when I opened media play 9, I'm going to try and
remove a stick tonight to and retry media player 9 tonight.



thx again.


Steven

 

[Ric]

My p4r800-vm is working, I believe. :-\

Initally, the onboard LAN would not work. Using another computer I down
loaded all the latest/greatest from ATI and ASUS. No go.
USB also detected at 1.1 not 2.0 under XP Pro with SP1.

Alas.

The reseller didn't have another in stock, so
I installed an Intel Pro 100 nic to use the system until one came in.

With the Pro100 installed, the onboard LAN started working.
After some boots, however it would stop working.

Speculation is some kind of IRQ issue, I have the BIOS to show a PnP
OS, a setting I normally leave at NO. No issues after several boots
-- but this has only been one day. So I am not convinced.

After all the XP patches etc, I removed the USB device from the device
manager and rebooted. This time it is successfully functioning as a
USB2.0 port. Something was needed by XP, that I didn't have on the
install CD, and needed an (not couting the SP, 20 critical and 40
other) update.

I do have an HT processor, 512meg ram, some of which is shared video,
not the matched pair. So far the games I played have worked well. The
Sims, DeltaForce(series), Ghost Recon, and GTA Vice City.
I don't think this board will go to the next generation, like HL2, but
that will be another day.

 

[Bledge]

Thanks for the responses guys. I finally got it installed. The
Corsair memory that I bought was PC3200 CL2 (256 Meg, single sided)
but not the extrem matched pairs, and I had put the two 256 MB sticks
into the blue slots with the intention to run in DDR mode, but the
memory was not matched enough to handle DDR, I guess, hence the reason
for random reboots, and not being able to even complete installation
of Windows XP. I moved the memory into the first two slots one blue
and one black (with the intention to now run in single channel mode),
memory counts up to 512 Meg (less shared vid mem), and the system
seemed to be stable. The manual really doesn't show this
configuration, should I continue to run with two sticks (since it did
freeze last night when I opened media play 9, I'm going to try and
remove a stick tonight to and retry media player 9 tonight.

Did you try with the BIOS setting =SLOW for the RAM timing?
I think Ric <[email protected]> had a problem with the FAST
timing.
I have the setting=SLOW and am running in dual
channel mode(blue slots) using two pieces of
Apacer 256MB DDR400 CL3.
There are 8 chips per piece, and all have the same markings
and datecode so I suppose they are well matched.
The chips are rated as certified in the Asus manual.
The photo shows certified Kingston ValueRAM DDR400 CL3
using chips with the same markings except for datecode.
I prefer Apacer to Kingston ValueRAM.
Both are rated "lifetime warranty" FWIW.

It's a bummer to use PC3200 CL2 with SLOW settings but
I expect you want to get it running stable first.
Note that the Asus manual states that you can use
the blue slots ONLY for PC3200. This implies if
you are using 256MB x2 now and want to upgrade
to 1GB, you need to change to 512MB x2 and not
just add another 256MB x2 in the black slots unless
you drop the timings down to PC2700.

Do you have the USB2.0 controller showing up
correctly in Device Manager ?

/bledge 16 Jan 2004

 

[Bledge]

My p4r800-vm is working, I believe. :-\

Initally, the onboard LAN would not work. Using another computer I down
loaded all the latest/greatest from ATI and ASUS. No go.

So the latest ATi catalyst drivers did not solve the USB 2.0 problem?

I have not installed ATi's latest drivers yet.

USB also detected at 1.1 not 2.0 under XP Pro with SP1.

In my case, the onboard LAN shows up OK in device manager
using the Asus CD drivers but this is a standalone PC so I am
unable to confirm if it will be ok when connected to a LAN.

Alas.

The reseller didn't have another in stock, so
I installed an Intel Pro 100 nic to use the system until one came in.

With the Pro100 installed, the onboard LAN started working.
After some boots, however it would stop working.

Speculation is some kind of IRQ issue, I have the BIOS to show a PnP
OS, a setting I normally leave at NO. No issues after several boots
-- but this has only been one day. So I am not convinced.

I left the BIOS settings for PNP OS=No.
RAM timing =SLOW (default) as I am using 256MB x2 DDR400 CL3
in dual channel mode(blue slots).

After all the XP patches etc, I removed the USB device from the device
manager and rebooted. This time it is successfully functioning as a
USB2.0 port. Something was needed by XP, that I didn't have on the
install CD, and needed an (not couting the SP, 20 critical and 40
other) update.

Thanks for this update on USB2.0.
Did you remove ALL the USB devices including USB1.1 or just
the ?unknown USB device in device manager.
I have only installed SP1.

I do have a USB2.0 inkjet printer (Canon i255) connected to
USB5/6 (front panel) but since I do not have any
"enhanced USB controller" I expect it is only running at USB1.1.

The unknown USB2.0 device remains unresolved for me now.
With your positive results, I try removing the USB devices
and do a few reboots too. :^)

I do have an HT processor, 512meg ram, some of which is shared video,
not the matched pair. So far the games I played have worked well. The
Sims, DeltaForce(series), Ghost Recon, and GTA Vice City.
I don't think this board will go to the next generation, like HL2, but
that will be another day.

I have a P4 2.6c (HT, FSB800), 256MB x2 DDR400 of which 64MB is
assigned to the onboard video RAM.

The system seems to be running fine with the exception of the USB2.0
problem.

/bledge 16 Jan 2004

 

[Ric]

Thanks for this update on USB2.0.
Did you remove ALL the USB devices including USB1.1 or just
the ?unknown USB device in device manager.
I have only installed SP1.

hmmm, he ponders, Yes I believe I did remove all the yellow bang and
all the USB devices listed.

The system seems to be running fine with the exception of the USB2.0
problem.

/bledge 16 Jan 2004

Another 24 hrs and the onboard nic is still fine -- but no reboots, just
sleep mode.

 

[steve]

Yup, tried the slow setting and still there are random lock ups and 1
reboot too. I removed one stick as well and also swapped the sticks,
to test to see if maybe one was bad (Corsair 256M CL2 Value Select
ram, both sticks are from the same lot and each stick has 8 SS chips
with the same markings on each) and still got it to freeze. However,
it has frozen merly by (randomly) clicking on a dialog boxes system
menu and as the system menu was being displayed (still somewhat
transparent) it froze too, so I'm leaning towards it being an ATI
video issue, no event log update or BSOD, so this must be a very low
level, kernel level crash (ie) video. I also ran MemTest86 on my
memory with setting the vga BIOS settings to the smallest (32M) to
test as much mem as possible and it passed (ran several passes too).
Media Player 9 with visualization turned on seems to effect it more so
as well, simply by moving the mouse back and forth over the
visualization has caused it to freeze at least once.

Intel P4 2GHz
Windows XP SP1 (patched with all critical updates and DX 9.0a too)
Sound Blaster Modem
Latest BIOS 1002
Latest Catylist Drivers from ATI site



Vcore 1.6v
CPU 3.392V @ 77f, MB temp @ 77f
+12 @ 12.28v
+5v @ 5.134v


this things making me gray

 

[steve]

OKAY, now I know what it's like to be at wits end and back again.

System freezing and rebooting no longer happening.

The Corsair Value Select DDR 400 PC3200 memory that was in the system
I believe was fine, since I replaced it with Corsair Xtrem 256Meg 2
sticks DDR400 PC3500 with CL2 and the platinum heat thingee (this
memory was in the Asus mfg manual as tested and recommended) , placing
each stick into one of the blue slots. The system was still freezing
up, even with the Xtrem memory, so not a memory speed issue, (and
what's strange is I thought that after putting in this Xtrem memory I
would see some BIOS message displayed at boot indicating that it was
running in dual channel mode, but none oh well, back to the problem).

I then ran the ATI Catalyst uninstall utility and uninstalled all ATI
Catalyst drivers and software.

Rebooted the system set the BIOS settings for AGP/PCI and installed a
Raedon 7500 vga card, booted the system back into XP and installed the
drivers from the disk I got with the card.

No more freezing, problem fixed. Looks like the IGA and or drivers
are not ready yet, hopefully ATI update them with ones that work.