Author Topic: A7N8X-E mobo... help?  (Read 257 times)

Offline flakbait

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A7N8X-E mobo... help?
« on: July 08, 2005, 01:49:29 AM »
My A7N8X-E arrived with half a gig of Crucial PC3200 and an AMD Barton XP 3000+ (333MHz) plus a few other whiz-bang toys. Yes, I know DDR400 runs at 400FSB; I got a slightly slower processor due to a price break. While I don't have all the pieces just yet to hit the switch and turn it loose, I would like to know which drivers to bag since I've never dealt with an nForce before. Both of my previous rigs - an A7V8X last year, MSI something-or-other many moons ago - used VIA drivers. Well, both used VIA drivers until the MSI was brought back to life after the Asus was barfed on (no kidding, long story). Between the continual hiccups with VIA's rotten drivers, and all the "conflicts" they caused, I decided to try nForce. People seem to swear by them instead of at them, and that's good enough for me. Any other tips or tid-bits would be appreciated, greatly!

I'm also debating between SATA and IDE for the HDD. Either way I'm going Seagate, I'm just a puss when it comes to bagging the next hot toy on the block.



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Flakbait [Delta6]

Offline Schutt

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A7N8X-E mobo... help?
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2005, 04:43:31 AM »
I have the same motherboard. If i remember right you can download all the drivers at ASUS and check on the cd if you have all.

Its a bit complicated since it has so many features on board, you need the nforce chipset drivers, on board audio drivers, marvel network drivers, Sata drivers for the aditional chip, sata raid drivers.
Worked without problems for me, in that order. I think on the CD was a option to install all drivers which didnt install all, just look in the hardware info which is missing.

If you have a soundcard might want to disable the onboard sound and gameport. I think the gameport on my soundcard didnt work when i disabled the onboard gameport... no longer using any gameport now so i dont remember.

At start i had a problem with my memory, got it switched from the shop where i bought it. Anyway when your system crashes during XP install might be the memory. I think the newest bios fixes the problems but hard to flash when the system is instable. When i manually put the timings to 3T 333MHz for the mem it worked, but since i hava a 400Mhz FSB CPU i didnt want that and got other memory.

BTW you can still run the memory at 400Mhz eaven if your cpu is at 333 if i recall correct, but you need to look if that gives any speed gain since the uneven divider is usually worse than 1:1.

Make sure to put the mem in the right slots so you get the dual channel access.

If you run in any problems post em.. ill be reading here.

Offline Roscoroo

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A7N8X-E mobo... help?
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2005, 11:21:47 AM »
ive got a7n8x-e dlx

for win98se use the http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_win9x_4.27

for xp http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_5.10

use the international drivers they work the best.



the original sound driver from the cd gave me fits in ah ...  the international ones work great .
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Offline SarinGas

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A7N8X-E mobo... help?
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2005, 12:33:03 PM »
I am running the new Seagate Sata 150 drives. They are friggen awesome! The data transfer rate is super and they run cooler than the previous seagate data and ide drives. Just remember to hit f6 (if your installing win xp) at the prompt to load the sata drivers or your drive wont be seen when the OS tries to load.