FWIW, I have 4 drives in RAID5 via the Silicon Image 3114. It is bootable, and appears to work great. I valued space and integrity over speed. It took about 36 hours to format and build the array during WinXP installation (drives crunching the whole time).

Read speed (from memory) was about 120MB / second (write speed from memory about 10-20MB) - I guess this means the 3114 has been cut back to 33mhz from it's capability to operate at 66mhz. Any way to double the PCI bus if I don't have anything else on it (haha)?

Tested the RAID5 by shutting down and unplugging a drive - no problamo and booted into windows AOK.

Only gripe is that the SiI GUI provides no feedback whatsoever on the state of the rebuild. I just get 'dripping' sounds every 5 seconds as (I assume) it does it's RAID5 magic in the background on VERY low priority. Judging on the time it took to format at "full pelt" - I feel my machine will be making dripping noises for about a month.

GUI reports the array as "Legacy" because it's bootable. It says "read the manual for more info" but there is no manual I can find.

Will post benchmarks if anyone is interested.

Question:

(1) Followed the first page of this FAQ to install. I note there are only 2 sets of NV drivers to install. My CD and the Asus site has many more programs / drivers like nTune etc. What else do I need to install and are they forwards compatible with these 'recommended' drivers I have installed?

(2) Can someone confirm if I put another XFX6600GT in the system, that I can run 4 monitors as my windows desktop?


3200+
4x160GB SATA Seagate (ST3160827AS) Drives in bootable RAID5
1GB RAM
XFX 6600GT
Antec 550 TrueControl

1) Followed the first page of this FAQ to install. I note there are only 2 sets of NV drivers to install. My CD and the Asus site has many more programs / drivers like nTune etc. What else do I need to install and are they forwards compatible with these 'recommended' drivers I have installed?

(2) Can someone confirm if I put another XFX6600GT in the system, that I can run 4 monitors as my windows desktop

1)There are more files on the cd / floppy than just the two drivers. The choice is yours when it comes to the software and yes they are compatible.

2)Yes you can.

Mike

does the pci lock actually work? because i set it to 33.33 but when using clockgen it always moves

Kanishka Jayasekara

Frequency 201 +
PCI Synchronization Mode - AUTO

Mike

Zhen-Jock Lau

Any luck yet?

Mike

Zhen-Jock Lau

Did you set your BIOS as per page 1?
Take three sticks of RAM out leave B1,

PS:I know you already did take the RAM out, it will just help to resolve your issue.
Stick with 66.93 drivers to fix this prob for now.
Are you getting a VGA failure, Beeeeeeeeeep Beep Beep when you boot and it doesn't, after installing the drivers?
Look in safe mode or standard (without video drivers) and see if there are any yellow exclamation marks anywhere in the Device Manager (excluding the display adaptors).
Try manually setting your 1 stick of RAM to 3-3-3-8 2T DDR 400 MHz
Clear CMOS and set BIOS again after changes in windows, such as after installing 66.93 drivers.
Try putting your card in slot 2.
I have a funny feeling that your display is reverting to extended mode, turn on extended mode in Display Properties, but don't make monitor two your primary display.
When your screen goes black, change DVI connectors.


>>>THe black screen is normal when detecting display (as long as it's not permanent), If you can get into windows in safe mode your card works!

Trying what I suggest is better than RMA'ing.

Don't give up, I'm sure you can get this to work!

The trick to SLI and Windows in general, is to never give up if something doesn’t work for you.
Try things that may be from your gut instincts or someone else’s! Even go contrary to known fixes and A+ fact!
Everybody has something a little different in his or her computer systems, just like a strand of DNA.

Just a little pep talk!

Mike

Ok, talk to you later!!!

My NBridge chipset fan is out, 22 days.....he gave me all he had now what?
i have the zalman heatsink but i dont know if it will be cool enough.

I'm actually at work at the moment, so I can't try stuff till I get home, which is like 8 hours from now =)
Will keep you posted if anything turns up.

The WinXP x64 black screen while detecting devices did happen to stay like that forever though, I left it overnight even.

> >>>Would you kick at receiving an extra 20% BONUS on your pay from work?
> >>>Bull, it shows good improvements in my system!!!
> >>>Do you always believe what you read?

No, cool, and only on the internet.

I'm undecided on the whole RAID 1 vs RAID 0 thing. I think the first thing I'll do when my new drives (WD 10k) arrive is to run some "real world" bench marks. Any test suggestions?


And for anyone: any brands of 6800 GT/Ultra that are particularly compatible (OC'ing or not) with the A8N-D?

Jamison Roof

I'm glad you have a sense of humor.

Cards, if you can get these, PVT45FUD you'll have the latest, I have two of them.

RAID, your call.

Mike

Simon Lu

Don't put a heat sink there without a fan.

2-2-2-8 I never suggested those timings, I think anyway, and if I did my wife was bugging me at the time. It wont work. Keep them at 2.5-3-3-6-1T

Mike


PVT45FUD
http://www.eastluna.com/hardware/details.php?ProductID=0523
http://www.computerhq.com/hardware/partinfo-id-535526.html
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=321021 ***IN STOCK***
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PR...ode=190426 ***IN STOCK***

G.Skill in monday at the latest, Border thinks it's a detonator for a nuclear device. lol

Mike:

cant find the XFX card anywhere, did youget your Gskill?
i think if i go with2 x256 Gskill, it will still give me better performance than my current 2.5-3-3-6 1T corsair
second WD 740 is on its way, also looking into SATA DVDRW, anybody had experience? seem to be alot faster than IDE once.
zipzoomfly and Ajump, i really dont trust these two sites. really bad experience dealing with them, charged my order and sent me email saying that my billing and shipping ADD doesnt match. i dontknow, maybe i am just unlucky
i dont even wanna think about what is going to happen when you put the Gskill in your box, ......unstoppable
your final tuning will be very interesting.
Lu

Before purchasing I would send your attention to http://home.cfl.rr.com/dkman/myasuswoes.html . You may not like what you see. This is not the common black screen won't post error most people get. I did go through a little bit of that as well, but my SLI setup is simply unusable. I get a weird shakey horizontal blur across areas of the screen. It's annoying but live-able on graphics, but makes text unreadable. There are screens pics at the bottom of the link.

Asus A8N mobo $227
Asus N6800 GT video card $400 (x2)
Completely worthless game video priceless
PSU that might fix the issue $239
Still completely useless game video pricey
Asus stops responding to email nice!

Derek Kelly,

Sad story man.

Did you ever come here for help?

The ratio of people who come here with a non-functional unit for technical advice and walk out with a functional unit is 95%. The other 5% being hardware related. (ie: defective) those are pretty good stats. When the 5% come back with the new part in place they walk out with a fully functional unit, so that makes it a 100% rate of computer functionality with help from this forum.

The trick to SLI and Windows in general, is to never give up if something doesn’t work for you.
Try things that may be from your gut instincts or someone else’s! Even go contrary to known fixes and A+ fact!
Everybody has something a little different in his or her computer systems, just like a strand of DNA.

Just a little pep talk!

Mike

Simon Lu

I have an original ASUS chipset heatsink/fan for you, mikethellend@hotmail.com set up as a contact in MSN messenger.
I will give it to you, and pay shipping.

Mike

*Drakan*

"You cannot use the other PCI slots because 1 and 3 share interrupts with the PCIe graphics card slots.

The ASUS user guide (pg 2-25 ... or thereabouts) illustrates PCI slot 1 sharing interrupts with PCIe graphics slot 1 (blue); but what it does NOT show is that PCI slot 3 shares interrupts with PCIe graphics slot 2 (black)."

Hello Drakan,
I tried to install my Audigy Gamer both into PCI slot 2 and 3.
When I tried the PCI slot 2, the system wasn't able to see the card installed and I couldn't load the drivers.
When I moved the card to PCI slot 3, the Audigy was seen, but I had big troubles installing the drivers, because I kept receiving BSOD's.
Now that you tell me PCI slot 3 shares an IRQ with PCIe slot 2, I understand the reason why.
What I don't really understand is why the mainboard does not see the sound card into PCI slot 2.
At the end, I had to move the Audigy away from the case and enable the onboard sound.
Best regards.

I'm having troubles with this board, and think I'll RMA it to the shop as it won't coldboot and sometimes a reset won't help as well and it requires a few resets or sometimes the only thing that helps is a CMOS clear. I've tried replacing memory, tried different bios' but nothing seems to help. The only time the darned thing will ALWAYS start up is after a CMOS clear. After that it automaticly enters the bios because of a case open alert (doesn't matter if the case is closed or not?). When I only switch off case open warning, safe settings and reboot the problems arise. So it seems to me that the board is defective, because it always boots after a cmos clear, but as soon as I change anything in the bios it stops booting properly (and I HAVE to turn off case open warning, otherwise it just keeps on entering the bios with the warning that my case has been opened or tempered with).

Does anyone have a last idea, otherwise I'll extract it from my CM Stacker and RMA it tomorrow...

*Ton Wissink*

Hello Ton,
is this the first time you post here?
Some information regarding your system wouldn't be bad, in order to help other people having a better understanding of your issue.
Best regards.

blade0r



Just for the record, I helped someone in the US setup his SLI machine over the telephone this evening and he had his Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS in PCI2 and it works fine. SLI worked 100% first try. No BSOD's nothing, just a perfect install.

Mike

Hello guys,
here's the link to my Aquamark score:

http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=622036071

Is it any good?
I know it's probably quite bad, but consider I just installed everything and loaded the OS with the drivers.
No overclocking, no fine tuning, no optimization, nothing.
Best regards.

Ton



I can give you 100 things to try. RMA'ing is not the answer. You must try different things. RMA'ing is a big waste of time and you will probably have the same problem.

Please provide detailed information about your components.

Mike