nForce650 (Asus P5N-E SLI) compatibility

[multics]

>When entering the bios,it give me some feedback information :
> i got the QDR FSB at 1333 (perfect this IS the fsb of my cpu)
> i got the QDR MHZ memory at 800 mhz, so that also ok, this is some pc800.

Sounds good to me.



> But in the advanced menu/Cpu configuration the bios > send me information about the cpu speed at 664, with
> a multiplier of 8. So i guess it's the way this
Guess so, too. Altough your *real* CPU freq is 2.66Ghz.


> Also, i've read that LDT is Lighting Data Transfert
> , is about the speed transfert beetween bus. It on 5
> by detected bios, i've tried to make it at maximum,
> 8. The card refused to boot. I had to remove the
> battery onboard, and make a clearrtc to make it
> booting again. I've set it up back to the default
> LDT 5. That's fine.
Yeah. Don't push things too hard if it is not necessary.


> I expect to buy a SATA hard drive.
Sure! You _want_ SATA and nothing else!

> And i dont see any options in the bios to tell the
> 1st boot device should be the SATA1 - instead of
> Master hd1 ide1 port.Maybe is because, there is no
> SATA plugged.
> Do i have to unplug all my IDE drive while
> installing the system on SATA, then replug them ?
Sorry, I have only SATA devices attached.

I could image that if you have a PATA drive
attached to one ofthe IDE connectors and it is
bootable it will boot from there.
?? Just guessing.

Btw, I would recommend switching off the boot
image. If you do that you'l see that you
can press F8 to select the boot drive.

And another thing regarding memory: Did
you check your memory using memtest86?

http://www.memtest86.com/

I _definitely_ recommend doing that.

Greetings
Multics.

[pingouin]

More

Hello everybody,

I wanted to add some informations.

I've just received more RAM, 2 others PC800 1go.
The bios see very well all the memory (4096 if i remerber well)
But after the boot, an free -m give me only :

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3546 732 2813 0 27 575
-/+ buffers/cache: 129 3416
Swap: 478 0 478

I got well configured my kernel to support 1G to 4go memory.

But i know it's in the manual mobo, that some memory will not be appears.(on windows systems !!)

Also, just installed geforce 8800 Ultra (Asus EN8800Ultra) with nvidia drivers :

NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 100.14.11 Wed Jun 13 18:21:22 PDT 2007


Model: GeForce 8800 Ultra
IRQ: 11
Video BIOS: 60.80.18.00.12
Card Type: PCI-E
DMA Size: 40 bits
DMA Mask: 0xffffffffff
Bus Location: 01.00.0

For now, no troubles, UT2K4 works well, Blender is ok. Have to re-install Quake4 to check.


Best.


Edit : I've build a new 2.6.22.1 kernel, this time i check in the option for the memory that i have more than 4G (thus the bios told me 4096) :
CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G=y

and then....all memory is reconized also by kernel :

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 4054 505 3548 0 22 375
-/+ buffers/cache: 107 3946
Swap: 478 0 478

Perfect !

Best.

[davidm]

Hi guys, I was looking for some informations about the Asus P5N-E SLI m/b that has a nForce650 chipset. Is this chipset fully supported in the kernel?
Does anyone have any success/failure stories about this m/b ?

Many thanks
Davide

I have had extremely bad luck with this m/b. The first one I got died for no reason... it worked great for 2 weeks then crapped out. The second one ran well for 5 weeks, then a capacitor blew up. The third one ran for one day without trouble, now refuses to boot at all. Nothing... the fans spin up, no POST, no beeps, no video, no nothing. If I hold the power switch in for 5 seconds, the fans shut off, but no sign of life from the m/b other than that.

Perhaps I have something going on that I don't understand...?

CPU: E4400 Core2 Duo, 2GHz
Memory: Kingston 1GB- 667 MHz x 2 (on the QVL for this board)
Power supply: Thermaltake 430W

I've had the same CPU and memory all through this ordeal. I bought a second power supply of the same type, thinking this may improve the situation, but to no avail. I've tried to run the system outside the case, in case there was some grounding issues, no change. I've tried moving the RAM sticks around to different channels, different combinations of slots, and number of sticks. WHen it was running, CPU temperature never exceeded 41C at full load, about 34C at light loading.

Any thoughts??? I am very frustrated with this product.

[pingouin]

Hello

Yeap, as you said ?bad luck?....i absolutly dont know what can produce the troubles you have/had (will have ? :/ )

All i can say, is stuffs you surely already know : i dont know if you bougth it througt internet, of in the shop in your town. There is garanty , so bring it back to your reseller, and...if you can afford it, take the p5n32-e sli for instance (if you dont need the two IDE ports).

Sorry i have no idea from you troubles comes from. Maybe the heat of south bridge ?

This board lack a heat sink on the south bridge (the pcb allow to put one, 2 holes and the word HEAT SINK write on) mine is hot, but my case is always open, and i afraid the GF8800 ultra dont allow me to plug a heatsink ( the graphic card is just above one of the hole for heat sink)

So, dont wait to much for another troubles that maybe break other composents of your computer (cpu, memory...) bring it back would be my - not very usefull - advice.

Tell us about the next...
Best.

[davidm]

Hello

Yeap, as you said ?bad luck?....i absolutly dont know what can produce the troubles you have/had (will have ? :/ )

All i can say, is stuffs you surely already know : i dont know if you bougth it througt internet, of in the shop in your town. There is garanty , so bring it back to your reseller, and...if you can afford it, take the p5n32-e sli for instance (if you dont need the two IDE ports).

Sorry i have no idea from you troubles comes from. Maybe the heat of south bridge ?

This board lack a heat sink on the south bridge (the pcb allow to put one, 2 holes and the word HEAT SINK write on) mine is hot, but my case is always open, and i afraid the GF8800 ultra dont allow me to plug a heatsink ( the graphic card is just above one of the hole for heat sink)

So, dont wait to much for another troubles that maybe break other composents of your computer (cpu, memory...) bring it back would be my - not very usefull - advice.

Tell us about the next...
Best.

I put a stick-on heatsink on the southbridge.
Yes, it is still under warranty, but I will have to RMA this one back to ASUS... again.

[pingouin]

I put a stick-on heatsink on the southbridge.
Yes, it is still under warranty, but I will have to RMA this one back to ASUS... again.

Hello,

Yeah i know...it's not pleasant to send back some hardware....

This is why i never buy stuff by internet/shipment/ , i go to the nearest shop in my town, talk with reseller about my linux usage, and sometimes compatibility issues, he understand, and borrow me some stuffs that i can try (got it with mp3 players, and sata hd i just bought) with time this resseller knows me, and trust me (few weeks ago, he borrow me an Asus gf8500 gt while i waiting for my 8800, cause i dont have any pci-e graphic card, and the order was late)
I know internet is great for the price, not for the services, and if you have troubles, you have to pay to send stuff back...so the price is not always a good arguments.

So, send your card back - once again - to asus, maybe ask to change for another one (can you call someone ? ) or ask for some commercials arrangements maybe ? get a better board for the price of this one, after your send back several time this board

Good luck, and tell me what's happen next.

ps : Which is the heatsink you put on your south-bridge ? Do you have an picture/url to see it ? Which brand/Ref ? Or maybe a picture of it on your mobo ? Many thanks.

[davidm]

Hello,

Yeah i know...it's not pleasant to send back some hardware....

This is why i never buy stuff by internet/shipment/ , i go to the nearest shop in my town, talk with reseller about my linux usage, and sometimes compatibility issues, he understand, and borrow me some stuffs that i can try (got it with mp3 players, and sata hd i just bought) with time this resseller knows me, and trust me (few weeks ago, he borrow me an Asus gf8500 gt while i waiting for my 8800, cause i dont have any pci-e graphic card, and the order was late)
I know internet is great for the price, not for the services, and if you have troubles, you have to pay to send stuff back...so the price is not always a good arguments.

So, send your card back - once again - to asus, maybe ask to change for another one (can you call someone ? ) or ask for some commercials arrangements maybe ? get a better board for the price of this one, after your send back several time this board

Good luck, and tell me what's happen next.

ps : Which is the heatsink you put on your south-bridge ? Do you have an picture/url to see it ? Which brand/Ref ? Or maybe a picture of it on your mobo ? Many thanks.

In this case, I did buy this m/b locally. Unfortunately, since it failed more than 30 days after I bought it, their policy is for me to deal with the manufacturer directly .

I think I am going to order an Intel motherboard in place of the P5N-E, and if that works out, I will go ahead and RMA the P5N-E anyway.

As for the the stickon heatsink, I bought at CompUSA as part of a 'chipset cooler' package.

[glenmack]

Hello!

I'm new to all this forum stuff and I used to listen to my friends boasting about how their rigs benched and so forth not understanding quite what the hell they were talking about, I couldn't afford to buy the parts at the time and to be honest I didn't know how. I'm still pretty retarded and so my questions will be simple. Please humour me!
After several months of research I decided to jump into the fray and build a budget (sub 300 quid) rig, so away I went:

ASRock 775 DUAL-VSTA SKT VIA PT880 Pro (mobo)
XFX 6800XTreme 256MB DD3 (AGP grapics card)
Pentium 4 641 3.2 GHz (800 MHz with 2MB cache)
Kingston 1GB PC3200 DDR
and finally Artic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P (massive CPU fan)

and after the odd few extras, dvd drive and the like, it came to 309 quid, which I thought respectable. Until I put it together. The noise was like a 100 horses dragging 1000 rabid cats through a field of dogs that were on fire.

Also as it turned out I had miscalculated my budget, which should have been around 75 quid as I had forgotten I needed food (like that is ever a major consideration in a gamers life anyway) and had to send most of it back... (not a shame after the horrible noise it had been making) I realised later after reading a bit more that my fan was on a constant 3200 prm, making most of the noise and I still don't know for certain if the graphics card was adding a lot to the noise level.

So now I'm left with the processor (LGA 775), the CPU fan, a 500W PSU a case, a CD/DVD drive (no r/w capability, didn't read enough, my fault) some screws and a floppy drive I found in the cellar of an old house (which I've had no problems with funnily enough).

What does all this whing have to do with the P5N-E SLI?

Well after a lot of teasing from my friends about how badly this went, I am slowly putting together a rig that I can work on over the next year or two, and I have decided on this one. Hopefully you will agree a sound choice, but as a novice I would like to know a few things...

1. Does the ASUS Q-fan work on only two of the three fan connectors? As I have read in some reviews?
2. Does anyone think it would be bad for me to go completely passively cooled considering I won't overclock much and my favourite games are Black and White, The Rollercoaster Tycoon/Tycoon series and WOW (when I have the subscription money)
3. I am seriously considering not getting any graphics cards for a while, waiting until the Direct X10 graphics cards with GDDR3 come down to a reasonable price and maybe go SLI, (one graphics card at a time though!) Will the onboard graphics tide me over with the above games?
4. Is it worth chucking the artic frezzer pro, or should I let Q-fan work its magic, I heard that once it gets down to 2700 rpm the noise isn't so bad (but I have no way of knowing as my last mobo had no fan control... ARGH! I was incredibly annoyed at that, but again my own fault for being a hardware retard)
5. Any other advice on SLI graphics cards, quiet cooling solutions or anything else I might have glaringly overlooked would be appreciated!

Best wishes. Glen Mack

[davidm]

What does all this whing have to do with the P5N-E SLI?


3. I am seriously considering not getting any graphics cards for a while, waiting until the Direct X10 graphics cards with GDDR3 come down to a reasonable price and maybe go SLI, (one graphics card at a time though!) Will the onboard graphics tide me over with the above games?

The P5N-E SLI doesn't have any built-in graphics.

[bissomitch]

P5N-E with both SATA and PATA drives attached

>When entering the bios,it give me some feedback information :
> i got the QDR FSB at 1333 (perfect this IS the fsb of my cpu)
> i got the QDR MHZ memory at 800 mhz, so that also ok, this is some pc800.

Sounds good to me.



> But in the advanced menu/Cpu configuration the bios > send me information about the cpu speed at 664, with
> a multiplier of 8. So i guess it's the way this
Guess so, too. Altough your *real* CPU freq is 2.66Ghz.

Whew. Thank you guys. I was seeing this same behavior on this processor and was worried. This is my first foray into the dual-core world and wasn't as sure of what was going on.

> Also, i've read that LDT is Lighting Data Transfert
> , is about the speed transfert beetween bus. It on 5
> by detected bios, i've tried to make it at maximum,
> 8. The card refused to boot. I had to remove the
> battery onboard, and make a clearrtc to make it
> booting again. I've set it up back to the default
> LDT 5. That's fine.
Yeah. Don't push things too hard if it is not necessary.


> I expect to buy a SATA hard drive.
Sure! You _want_ SATA and nothing else!

> And i dont see any options in the bios to tell the
> 1st boot device should be the SATA1 - instead of
> Master hd1 ide1 port.Maybe is because, there is no
> SATA plugged.
> Do i have to unplug all my IDE drive while
> installing the system on SATA, then replug them ?
Sorry, I have only SATA devices attached.

Yes, you need to disconnect the PATA drive to install the OS on the SATA drive. Once you have done that, you can reconnect the PATA and start copying info.

If you have just one SATA drive, you should not need to use RAID, the m/b handles the drive and WinXP Pro (what I'm using) saw the drive just fine.

Once you have both drives connected, there will be an option under the Boot parameters to prioritize the harddrives. You can pick which one is looked at first during boot.

I could image that if you have a PATA drive
attached to one ofthe IDE connectors and it is
bootable it will boot from there.
?? Just guessing.

Btw, I would recommend switching off the boot
image. If you do that you'l see that you
can press F8 to select the boot drive.

And another thing regarding memory: Did
you check your memory using memtest86?

http://www.memtest86.com/

I _definitely_ recommend doing that.

Greetings
Multics.