[Bar81]

Originally Posted by s1xth

I havent overclocked yet...

[cuke2u]

Hi, good for you s1xth, and when you wish to go the overclocking route I'm sure that many of here will be able to help you. In the meantime, this http://www.cdrinfo.com/fw/Overclocki...Xpress3200.pdf might help you....
ChrisC

[s1xth]

Thanks guys for the overclocking help...but I have to admit, I just had my first problem with this board. :-( I was running a Creative Sound Blaster XFi since I built the machine, at first everything seemed ok, but this previous week I kept getting "no audi device detected" everytime I would try play an audio source, to my surprise the board would drop the card and i would have to restart the machine to get it to redetect, and even that sometimes did not work. I wasnt sure if it is driver related/Windows XP 64 related or what. I am now back to the onboard sound (ehhhh). So has anyone had any issues with the Sound Blaster Xfi on this board? I havent tried using a different PCI slot or anything, but just wondering if there are any reports of problems esp under Windows x64...

Thanks guys!

[s1xth]

Well I gave up with the Xfi card. I am actually pretty happy with the onboard sound being the audiphile I am, I can deal with it. I have never been a fan of Creative and crap driver support. Ever since I got the card its been a problem, but then again I do have the very first revision of the board. (got it the seocnd week it came out). i updated the Reatek drivers from Realteks site and sounds pretty darn good.

[cuke2u]

Hi, yes the XFi has issues with this motherboard, but then it also has issues with many other motherboards too, so you are not alone. If you search about for relevent forums you will find out what attempts have been made to rectify the problems and whether they've been successful.
I'm running a Audigy Gamer with my Asus, this is giving me no issues whatsoever...
ChrisC

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by s1xth

Well I gave up with the Xfi card. I am actually pretty happy with the onboard sound being the audiphile I am, I can deal with it. I have never been a fan of Creative and crap driver support. Ever since I got the card its been a problem, but then again I do have the very first revision of the board. (got it the seocnd week it came out). i updated the Reatek drivers from Realteks site and sounds pretty darn good.

Im running an xfi-elitePro with no problems.

[s1xth]

From my experience with the Xfi card from my preivous board (Epox 9NPA Ultra Nforce 4 Ultra) was that the card just sucked. I kept using it even with the problems just becuase of the sound and onboard on that card sucks. From the forums I have read was the first three revisions of this board had major issues. I should have sent it back after my first week with it (almost a year and half ago). I built another gaming rid for my buddy a few months ago and he got an Xfi and I noticed as soon as i took it out of the box it was visibly different...1. heatsink on the audio processor, different caps and hynix ram chip instead of a samsung on mine (whether that is a difference or not)...the card was a PCB verison F*** something, mine is a A**** something....so thats prolly why I had problems maybe...but the onboard sound isnt that bad!

[Viscid]

Originally Posted by Viscid

Hey guys.

I have the A8R32-MVP DELUXE and am having memory issues.

I cannot put any memory into the B channels (DIMM_B1 or DIMM_B2)

I have two 1 GB sticks of DDR PC3200, and right now have them both in DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2, but this shouldn't be the correct configuration, and I doubt dual channel is working.

If I put memory into DIMM_B1 or DIMM_B2, the computer does not boot. It turns on but does not POST, no beeps. It does not matter which memory module I use.

I have the latest BIOS (404.) Any suggestions?

Hey guys, late post.

I just got a new power supply (I had an antec 450 watt and now I got a Seasonic S12 500 Watt) and it fixed this issue. Dual channel works fine. The antec power supplies must have issues with this board.

My antec blew up on me. It was making a high pitched whine on and off for a few weeks, and one day it just wouldnt turn on at all. New power supply works wonders.

[cuke2u]

Hi, sounds like your PSU was failing as my Antec is working fine so I dn't think it's the motherboard. BTW, some Antec PSU's are actually made by seasonic, see here http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/370
ChrisC

[ralphnumbers]

Long story short, I bought one of these motherboards back in june to go with my then new 1900XTX. I had a oldschool raptor 75GB on sata1 and then a raid 0 between 2 80GB Seagates on sata 3 and 4. Lo and behold about once every 30-45 minutes i got this HORRIBLE stutter that had 2 phases of stalling, both very brief at around 1 second each, total symptom time about 3-4 seconds. Needless to say if this occured while i was trying to gun someone down in FEAR CTF, I lossed. Most of the hardware in this system came over from another box, and the new 1900XTX ran just fine in a NF4 Ultra board i had in another machine, so after messing around, reloading, updating, etc etc, I blamed the board and had it RMA'ed. That took around 3 weeks, and i did get a higher revision board back. But the odd stutter continued. Over the months of researching I found that every other Socket 939 crossfire express 3200 board ( DFI, Sapphire, Abit ) all have this problem in some degree. 4 months into it, im finally happy to report that i have narrowed down the cause to be the ULI SATA controller when in RAID mode, or AHCI mode. If i reduce the function of the integrated SATA to emulated P-IDE, the stuttering ceases. Granted bios 311 made an improvement to this problem, it did NOT resolve it. And having to make a sacrifice in drive throughput is just something i have to endure until i get pissed off enough to go out and get some 3ware pci card. Anyways, for those of you suffering from this problem... turn off the raid mode, reload the OS once again, and bam, your box will behave itself... Anyone know of any upcoming firmware specific to the controller itself that will address this? It seems to have been a problem for most users of the ULi chipset from all the forum reading ive done lately. And i cant believe that this chipset is being put into a enthusiest motherboard where people are going to notice it more likely than not. Ah well... im not a hardware engineer and i dont pretend to know how difficult their job is. But jesus... all ASUS had to do was say, turn off the raid buddy! and i would have been much happier. Comments?

[Bar81]

The Sapphire boards don't use the ULi chipset and don't exhibit the problem you're describing. Get yourself a quality board like A9RD580, flash in the modded reference BIOS and enjoy.

[ralphnumbers]

Originally Posted by Bar81

The Sapphire boards don't use the ULi chipset and don't exhibit the problem you're describing. Get yourself a quality board like A9RD580, flash in the modded reference BIOS and enjoy.

I was hoping to get by on the 200 bux i already dropped on this POS... Not to mention ive never owned a Sapphire product and therefore have no frame of reference to decide if it a decent piece of silicon other than your statement. Can anyone else give props to the sapphire board? Its only money... hehe

[Bar81]

Originally Posted by ralphnumbers

I was hoping to get by on the 200 bux i already dropped on this POS... Not to mention ive never owned a Sapphire product and therefore have no frame of reference to decide if it a decent piece of silicon other than your statement. Can anyone else give props to the sapphire board? Its only money... hehe

Grab a beer and read through this thread, tons of users and tips:

http://xtremesystems.org/forums/show...hlight=a9rd580

[s1xth]

I dunno about the guy above, but I am having no raid problems on my board, granted I downloaded the latest drivers from Uli (aka Nvidia now) and that seemed to fix any problems that were there. I also grabbed latest drivers from Realtek, Silicon Images and Marvell. They ALL have updated drivers that are NOT on Asus's website. Just a heads up to any VISTA people out there, Silicon IMages has a beta driver out from the sata/raid ports on the board, not sure if Uli ever will but maybe vista will have buitl in for that...not sure...but just my 02 cents.

[cuke2u]

Hi, I have 2 x 2 drives connected to the ULi chip, both in a raid_0 configuration. I've only ever had a slight occasional stutter with the on-board sound, like every 30 min or so. Now I've swopped to a CT Audigy gamer I've no stutter at all.

I doubt very much if the firmware will ever be updated for the ULi as they are now owned by NV.
0311 is a old bios now and not really longer relative to any current ones so I'd suggest you try to update, I've also always performed a fresh install on a raid HD which I have done several times now..
s1xth, agreed I've always used the latest drivers.
ChrisC

[ralphnumbers]

well... i do have an older raptor and ive read someplaces that it has some interesting habits that may be contributing to this. The mainboard has the latest firmware, and I'm using either the nvidia provided 2.20 driver or the 1.0whatever the hell came with the mainboards CD. The driver version seems to have very little effect for me. I dunno... like most people on several different forums the only solution is to get rid of the driver outright. I cant help but let my conspiracy theorist side start talking a bunch of bad noise about how nvidia is trying to sabotage Crossfire. HAHA

Anyways, to be realistic, all i and a lot of these people really want is hitch free gaming experience. We certainly friggin paid for it, and while im prepared to deal with a certain amount of unpredictability with brand new chipsets this whole sound hiccup hard driver controller problem has worked on my last nerve. Those of you that dont experience it either have the one brand of hard disk that they tested with this crap controller with, or arent performing the tasks that piss it off the most, so consider yourselves lucky i guess. The rest of us, are all going to have to buy AM2 cpus, DDR2 ram, and a board without a ULi southbridge in order to take advantage of the 1000 dollars worth of video card that we have purchased... BAH

[cuke2u]

Hi again, no help to you I know but I remember the isues that some Maxtor drives had with certain NV chipsets. Nobody bitched to NV about it, and Maxtor took the brunt, still at least they released a firmware upgrade that was meant to cure the isses which were far worse than hicupping. As far as I remember it was a inability to recognise the HD completely....
ChrisC

[dream_theatre]

It cant be as bad as the A8R MVP.

[SiLvABuLLetZ]

Hi guys, I'm over at www.dfi-street.com [ATI chipsets]. DFI's 3200 CFX has the same friggen issue, and the only fix is to RMA your board and hopefully receive a board that does not contain the ULI bug.

Has anyone figured out another way to fix.

[ralphnumbers]

So yea after about a month of running with the Hard disk controller in PATA-emulation mode, World of Warcraft like to exhibit input latency and periodic spurts of lag on any online game mostly. So I have starting looking into what this boards ACPI logic is doing to my IRQ's, and wouldnt you know it. theres a USB controller, a hard drive controller, and my sound card, and then my crossfire edition x1900 all on the same one. Oh wait, then theres my slave 1900XTX and another usb controller, and a network interface controller sharing that one. <sigh>

My attempts to guarantee that each device has its very own IRQ has ended up with 2 of the 3 usb controllers disabled, <from the device manager, as this board doesnt see fit to provide users with a means to shut them off in bios separately, its all or nothing, so for whatever thats worth...> my Audigy 2 ZS in the PCI slot between my 2 crossfire vid cards, and using the 2nd PCI based onboard nic card instead of the PCI-E based first nic card. All this and i STILL have the stupid PATA controller trying to sit on the same IRQ as my slave 1900XTX card. This has had a positive effect on the strange hitch ups, but they are still present.

Im at a loss here... I've hand built every PC I or my family have used since I was 15 years old, and while I've "held on" thru some quirky boards in my day until someone un-borqued it with a bios fix, this thing is presently at my wits end.

I will continue to bang out the IRQ sharing problems to the best of my free time ability, because, what choice do i have? I suppose though that if I dont figure it out by the time i recieve a year end bonus then I just bite off on a 975x board and a conroe chip. You better believe that the 975x i get wont be a friggin ASUS product. Ild thrown down on a Abit or DFI board right now if i had any certainty that it wouldnt mess with me in the same fashion, but based on their respective forum activities this doesnt seem to be the case.

Whats really nuts is reading the newegg "glowing" opinions of this board by random un-named supposed A8r32-MVP owners. This is truely perplexing since ive been thru a couple of these boards and the problems have always been the same. The only hypothesis i can draw up from that is 1. These users dont notice odd little hitch ups, somewhat akin to people not noticing the things i notice in consumer grade dog crap DVD players from best buy, as opposed to a nice pioneer elite or denon unit. 2. These people dont have the board but feel the need to stroke their made up e-peen to make people they will never meet, believe they own a bad ass system. 3. This really is a decent board and i have had the sincere displeasure of using 3 defective units. 4. ASUS sends their interns over to newegg to write glowing reviews to pump sales.

Anyways, if someone can atest to a working, little hitch free, socket 939 xpress 3200 board then im all ears.

[Bar81]

You people are killing me. The mobo is shit, this was determined pages ago. The only Xpress3200 board that doesn't suck ass is the one in my sig and possibly the Abit if they worked out all the bugs (check their forums).

[Bar81]

New Uli driver for those suffering:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/408

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by Bar81

New Uli driver for those suffering:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/408

You people are killing me. The mobo is shit, this was determined pages ago. The only Xpress3200 board that doesn't suck ass is the one in my sig and possibly the Abit if they worked out all the bugs (check their forums)

I see your still at it.
Every board as its issues even the Abit & sapphire & it only has 1 pci slot.
I have the Asus & DFI Mobo & i dont have those issues at all.
No hard drive freezing at all.

[ralphnumbers]

as i stated in a post a bunch of weeks back, those of you who say they dont get this issue simply havent noticed it. or installed the ammount of crap into yer machine necessary to aggrivate it to a noticeable level for you.

I too have had a decent experience since finally clearing up the IRQ's with enough disabled devices to make crossfire an enjoyable experience. Also having that Uli hard disk controller turned off has made a difference, whether due to the irq position that its predisposed to taking gets into fights with the sound card or whether its just a stinking piece of gitchi gumi crap, i guess we will never know. In any case, IRQ sharing on certain devices shouldnt produce these effects anyway, thats been the way of the pc world since USB came out. But, ill prolly just demote this proc and memory to running a mythTV remote frontend and buy a god damned QX pentium in March. Hopefully by then all the issues with 975x will be worked out.

[cuke2u]

Hi, no I don't get these issue, period. Whether it be a 'old' installation of XP, Vista, or a 'young' install and whatever 'crap', I might have on my PC, rofl....
I've moved on now, have a Asus P5WDH Deluxe, I guess some people will also say this motherboard is 'crap' too. I guess they just don't know what they're talking about and perhaps leave it to us experts who seem to know what they are doing...
ChrisC

[laurin1]

Originally Posted by s1xth

Thanks guys for the overclocking help...but I have to admit, I just had my first problem with this board. :-( I was running a Creative Sound Blaster XFi since I built the machine, at first everything seemed ok, but this previous week I kept getting "no audi device detected" everytime I would try play an audio source, to my surprise the board would drop the card and i would have to restart the machine to get it to redetect, and even that sometimes did not work. I wasnt sure if it is driver related/Windows XP 64 related or what. I am now back to the onboard sound (ehhhh). So has anyone had any issues with the Sound Blaster Xfi on this board? I havent tried using a different PCI slot or anything, but just wondering if there are any reports of problems esp under Windows x64...

Thanks guys!

I have a very similar problem, but I'm using the Audigy 2. I'm also having the hard drive lockups described here. This motherboard is just crap.

[cuke2u]

Hi, I had a Audigy in my motherboard, brilliant sound, nice gameplay and no issues. The problems with the XFi can be traced back to Creative Technology, this motherboard wasn't the only one that XFi has problems with...
ChrisC

[laurin1]

Originally Posted by cuke2u

Hi, I had a Audigy in my motherboard, brilliant sound, nice gameplay and no issues. The problems with the XFi can be traced back to Creative Technology, this motherboard wasn't the only one that XFi has problems with...
ChrisC

Really, about once every few months, mine loses the ability to select 5.1 sound on (7.1 becomes the only option) and if you try to force it through the Control Panel, it completely loses sound. I have to reinstall the drivers to fix it.

[Nightowl225]

Originally Posted by cuke2u

Hi, I had a Audigy in my motherboard, brilliant sound, nice gameplay and no issues. The problems with the XFi can be traced back to Creative Technology, this motherboard wasn't the only one that XFi has problems with...
ChrisC

I know the feeling, I had an X-Fi XtremeMusic card, I had so much trouble towards last a few months ago, including extreme slowdowns in games like C&C Generals when having boatloads of units on screen doing things, and including having to set the PCI Latency to 192MS in the bios of my motherboard, to make the card work right, which I shouldn't have had to do. This trouble all started on an ASUS A8R-MVP Motherboard, which was a piece of junk. I can't complain about the A8R32-MVP, as I don't own one, cause I grabbed me an ABIT AT8 32X right away. My troubles continues up until a few months ago on my AT8 32X with the X-Fi.

Needless to say, I uninstalled the software/drivers and deleted everything in directories and registry entries pertaining to Creative, pulled the card from my machine, and stuck in a Turtlebeach Montego DDL and haven't had no trouble since.

What worked for me, to make Montego DDL work without any problems, was to not run the ULI Raid drivers, install the Microsoft Dual Core Hotfix, after installing the driver for my cpu, and then the AMD Dual Core Optimizer. I don't have no trouble with my Montego DDL, and guess what, I don't have the heart to pull it out, and use the onboard ALC882D codec, I like my Montego DDL too much.

To me, I prefer my Montego DDL over anything Creative has to off, and to me, my Montego DDL sounds better in games, music, and movies than anything Creative has to offer me.

[XtrATIcon]

*Deleted post*