Just bought this and I am having a problem even getting this to post. Fans boot and HD starts to boot. No video image, monitor resets and then blanks.
I stripped out unnecesary components- still no joy.
I have an Thermaltake XaserIII 480 with adapter and EZ 4 plug molex connected.
SATA 1 Port using WD 80 gig HD
Pentium D 805 w/ stock heatsink.
Inno3d 6200 TC video in 1st PCI 16 slot.
2X1 Gig PNY memory in Black series of slots.
I will be trying to use only one stock of memory, and then will be taking MB out of case and trying to boot on non-conducitve surface. Anyone else got advice?
I've had it now for almost a week and have started noticing problems. Many forums are now littered with complaints, mainly aimed at the Marvell issue.
I mistakenly had set up my system the first time with the Intel chipset and using "Standard IDE"... system worked fine other than the issue with the Marvell. Benchmarks ran fine and 3DMark06 looked great.
I then reinstalled the OS, this time doing the PITA F6 procedure and set up the drives on the Intel controller using RAID (but didn't actually set up a RAID, simply wanted the AHCI with the ability to in the future set up RAID).
This morning I tried to run the 3DMark06 benchmark and while it ran to completion, the graphics screen seemed all corrupted throughout...I'm thinking power problem but it didn't have this issue last go around. Can setting up the drives differently have caused this from a power perspective or is this just one of the possibly many things wrong with this board?
I am wondering if I should RMA it back to zipzoom and get the Intel board, which has always been my choice, except this time the extra SATAII ports provided by the Marvell persuaded me to give ASUS a shot...ironic, isn't it!
In your opinion, based on what you know, will the issues with this board be resolved by BIOS/driver updates? It is a PITA to take my rig apart to swap out the motherboard but I will bite the bullet and get the Intel 975X board if this board can't be fixed via BIOS/driver updates.
I've had this m/b for a few week's and I have to say that it has many bug's in it. As far as i know, no one has gotten the marvell sata driver's to work and on the intel side people have gotten many mixed result's. I gave up trying to make a raid on this board. Asus support is nowere to be found, I think if any one want's to rate it then yhey should test all of the components of the board
quote: I've had this m/b for a few week's and I have to say that it has many bug's in it. As far as i know, no one has gotten the marvell sata driver's to work and on the intel side people have gotten many mixed result's. I gave up trying to make a raid on this board. Asus support is nowere to be found, I think if any one want's to rate it then yhey should test all of the components of the board
Email me and I will provide you with an updated bios that solves the USB issue and voltage spikes. I still have not had an issue with the Marvell RAID setup and two Raptors.
As far as the motherboard goes, it looks pretty good. NB/SB are passively cooled, the layout is good and the MOSFETs are heatsinked (I've heard of problems with the voltage regulators on cheaper intel boards failing, often because they got too hot). I like how Anandtech's motherboard articles are very critical and mention things that other sites seem to glaze over, such as if the board's voltage regulator is three, four or eight phase.
quote: considering this processors penchant for electricity
It is corrected. I had it marked on the final edit but missed it before publication, excuse the Homer moment please. :-) It is a good board but we felt like Asus did not go all the way on it and should have considering the price point. Although the board is not in retail yet we were somewhat disappointed with the bios also. Asus is working on a new release at this time and we hope to be able to test it in the next roundup.
quote: When may we expect the ANANDTECH 975x shootout ?
We should be finished in about three weeks. We have two additional boards in house and another two on their way. We will also have an overclocking shoot out with the Presler and Cedar Mill chips.
If the board is not 100% compatible, both physically and electrically with the upcoming Conroe family of processors, I suggest that everybody take a pass. It would be just another case of Intel screwing us again with fast-track (deliberately-?)planned obsolescence ---- just as they did on the LGA775 family when the earlier boards and chipsets were (er...) "found" not to be compatible with their dual-core offerings ---which of course nicely inflates demand for Intel chipsets. And again where Yonah has exactly the same pin-count as the Pentium-M, but deliberately physically incompatible such that even the latest Pentium-M motherboards will not work with Yonah. After all, Intel needs to recoup its recent $350million investment in expanding its chip-set fabrication capability and as fast as possible. Would not like to disappoint the stockholders.
Also a corollary question --- is the 975X chip-set itself fully compatible with Conroe, or is it going to have a short and unhappy life like the 915/925 chipset ??
Gotta really admire Intel in the past couple of years. While their processor engineering lost its way, their marketing gurus have become geniuses at finding all sorts of neat ways of lubricating the screw and keeping the cash rolling in.
Besides price, what is the advantage of this board over the P5WDG2-WS? Is the P5WD2-E a better overclocker than the P5WDG2-WS? Would you recommend the P5WD2-E over the P5WDG2-WS, price aside?
quote: Besides price, what is the advantage of this board over the P5WDG2-WS? Is the P5WD2-E a better overclocker than the P5WDG2-WS? Would you recommend the P5WD2-E over the P5WDG2-WS, price aside?
The P5WD2-E is targeted towards the overclocking market and for mainstream use as it should come to market about $35~$50 less than the P5WDG2-WS. The other advantage it holds is the additional PCI-E slots and one additional PCI slot if you need them, otherwise the PCI-X slots on the G2-WS will certainly hold an advantage for the workstation crowd.
I personally think the G2-WS is a better board at this point in the release cycle mainly due to a more mature bios and the 8-phase power solution. However, we have several more 975X boards to review and will hold final judgement until that testing is completed.
In the initial 955EE review, there was a claim that the high heat levels might be related to the Intel supplied motherboard. Was there any difference with this ASUS board?
quote: In the initial 955EE review, there was a claim that the high heat levels might be related to the Intel supplied motherboard. Was there any difference with this ASUS board?
We did not notice the same thermal issues the first set of the Intel D975XBX boards had with the 955EE. In fact, our replacement D975XBX solved the initial thermal issues we noticed. However, the 955EE still runs very warm, we noticed 49c at idle and up to 68c under load on the Asus board with either the Gigabyte G-Power or Thermaltake Big Typhoon coolers. The provided Intel heatsink (840EE) ran at 55c idle and up to 73c under load but we understand this might not be the heatsink shipped in the retail kit. We are trying to procure one at this time to test it.
You say there is a problem with the 882 chips? Can you run the same test on boards that used the same south bridge with a Cmedia sound chip. I know a lot of boards used the c-media at first and am whondering if this is maybe a south bridge problem or just another sign of the low quality items/drivers that realtek seems to make.
Never been a realtek fan. Weather it be their low quality sound chips or their drivers.
The 882 family of codecs is very good for an on-board solution. I believe there is still a lot of work to be done in the drivers. However, the improvements made between the R1.20 release up to the R1.29 release have been significant. We actually could watch our BF2 benchmark come to a stop during the aircraft flyovers up until the R1.27 release. There is still some stuttering and frame rates drop into the teens but overall the CPU hit rate is around 9% compared to a 67% CPU hit in drivers up to R1.26. The overall sound quality has improved in games like Serious Sam II and F.E.A.R. also. We have not tested a 975X board with the CMedia solution but have just finished testing one with the Sigmatel solution (next article).
The review states that with two ATI cards inserted, the other PCI-E slots are not usable. Is this due to a real hardware limitation, or is it only because the ATI cards' coolers are too big? An example of a usage scenario that prompted this question: could I put a graphics card in one 16x slot running at 8x, an 8x PCI-E SCSI adapter in the other physical 16x slot, and then perhaps a 1x card in one of the remaining slots?
quote: The review states that with two ATI cards inserted, the other PCI-E slots are not usable. Is this due to a real hardware limitation, or is it only because the ATI cards' coolers are too big?
The slots are physically not available due to the two slot cooling solutions used on the cards. This would hold true for the 6800 Ultra or 7800GTX 512mb edition cards.
Your scenario about the slot assignments would work.
Interesting on the voltage for the CPU though having only 1.200V as the bottom limit seems a little bit limiting from my persepctive, good gaming performance though as it typically runs only 2nd to the Intel Nforce 4 SLI.
I also agree that 8 Phase Power would be nice, maybe in a future revision that is made to support Intel's NGMA processors.
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20 Comments
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Dfere - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Just bought this and I am having a problem even getting this to post. Fans boot and HD starts to boot. No video image, monitor resets and then blanks.I stripped out unnecesary components- still no joy.
I have an Thermaltake XaserIII 480 with adapter and EZ 4 plug molex connected.
SATA 1 Port using WD 80 gig HD
Pentium D 805 w/ stock heatsink.
Inno3d 6200 TC video in 1st PCI 16 slot.
2X1 Gig PNY memory in Black series of slots.
I will be trying to use only one stock of memory, and then will be taking MB out of case and trying to boot on non-conducitve surface. Anyone else got advice?
TechJunkie - Friday, March 3, 2006 - link
I've had it now for almost a week and have started noticing problems. Many forums are now littered with complaints, mainly aimed at the Marvell issue.I mistakenly had set up my system the first time with the Intel chipset and using "Standard IDE"... system worked fine other than the issue with the Marvell. Benchmarks ran fine and 3DMark06 looked great.
I then reinstalled the OS, this time doing the PITA F6 procedure and set up the drives on the Intel controller using RAID (but didn't actually set up a RAID, simply wanted the AHCI with the ability to in the future set up RAID).
This morning I tried to run the 3DMark06 benchmark and while it ran to completion, the graphics screen seemed all corrupted throughout...I'm thinking power problem but it didn't have this issue last go around. Can setting up the drives differently have caused this from a power perspective or is this just one of the possibly many things wrong with this board?
I am wondering if I should RMA it back to zipzoom and get the Intel board, which has always been my choice, except this time the extra SATAII ports provided by the Marvell persuaded me to give ASUS a shot...ironic, isn't it!
In your opinion, based on what you know, will the issues with this board be resolved by BIOS/driver updates? It is a PITA to take my rig apart to swap out the motherboard but I will bite the bullet and get the Intel 975X board if this board can't be fixed via BIOS/driver updates.
medic91b2 - Monday, February 6, 2006 - link
I've had this m/b for a few week's and I have to say that it has many bug's in it. As far as i know, no one has gotten the marvell sata driver's to work and on the intel side people have gotten many mixed result's. I gave up trying to make a raid on this board. Asus support is nowere to be found, I think if any one want's to rate it then yhey should test all of the components of the boardGary Key - Saturday, February 11, 2006 - link
Email me and I will provide you with an updated bios that solves the USB issue and voltage spikes. I still have not had an issue with the Marvell RAID setup and two Raptors.
Zucker2k - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link
Gary,Could you please e-mail me the updated bios? email: qommonsense@gmail.com. Thanks.
Richard.
Joepublic2 - Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - link
As far as the motherboard goes, it looks pretty good. NB/SB are passively cooled, the layout is good and the MOSFETs are heatsinked (I've heard of problems with the voltage regulators on cheaper intel boards failing, often because they got too hot). I like how Anandtech's motherboard articles are very critical and mention things that other sites seem to glaze over, such as if the board's voltage regulator is three, four or eight phase.should read "processor's"
Gary Key - Thursday, January 19, 2006 - link
It is corrected. I had it marked on the final edit but missed it before publication, excuse the Homer moment please. :-) It is a good board but we felt like Asus did not go all the way on it and should have considering the price point. Although the board is not in retail yet we were somewhat disappointed with the bios also. Asus is working on a new release at this time and we hope to be able to test it in the next roundup.
ghg - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
HiWhen may we expect the ANANDTECH 975x shootout ?
BR
Gary G.
Gary Key - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
We should be finished in about three weeks. We have two additional boards in house and another two on their way. We will also have an overclocking shoot out with the Presler and Cedar Mill chips.
ghg - Friday, March 3, 2006 - link
HiAny news about the 975x shootout ?
BR
Gary G.
kilkennycat - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
If the board is not 100% compatible, both physically and electrically with the upcoming Conroe family of processors, I suggest that everybody take a pass. It would be just another case of Intel screwing us again with fast-track (deliberately-?)planned obsolescence ---- just as they did on the LGA775 family when the earlier boards and chipsets were (er...) "found" not to be compatible with their dual-core offerings ---which of course nicely inflates demand for Intel chipsets. And again where Yonah has exactly the same pin-count as the Pentium-M, but deliberately physically incompatible such that even the latest Pentium-M motherboards will not work with Yonah. After all, Intel needs to recoup its recent $350million investment in expanding its chip-set fabrication capability and as fast as possible. Would not like to disappoint the stockholders.Also a corollary question --- is the 975X chip-set itself fully compatible with Conroe, or is it going to have a short and unhappy life like the 915/925 chipset ??
Gotta really admire Intel in the past couple of years. While their processor engineering lost its way, their marketing gurus have become geniuses at finding all sorts of neat ways of lubricating the screw and keeping the cash rolling in.
danidentity - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
Besides price, what is the advantage of this board over the P5WDG2-WS? Is the P5WD2-E a better overclocker than the P5WDG2-WS? Would you recommend the P5WD2-E over the P5WDG2-WS, price aside?Gary Key - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
The P5WD2-E is targeted towards the overclocking market and for mainstream use as it should come to market about $35~$50 less than the P5WDG2-WS. The other advantage it holds is the additional PCI-E slots and one additional PCI slot if you need them, otherwise the PCI-X slots on the G2-WS will certainly hold an advantage for the workstation crowd.
I personally think the G2-WS is a better board at this point in the release cycle mainly due to a more mature bios and the 8-phase power solution. However, we have several more 975X boards to review and will hold final judgement until that testing is completed.
mostlyprudent - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
In the initial 955EE review, there was a claim that the high heat levels might be related to the Intel supplied motherboard. Was there any difference with this ASUS board?Gary Key - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
We did not notice the same thermal issues the first set of the Intel D975XBX boards had with the 955EE. In fact, our replacement D975XBX solved the initial thermal issues we noticed. However, the 955EE still runs very warm, we noticed 49c at idle and up to 68c under load on the Asus board with either the Gigabyte G-Power or Thermaltake Big Typhoon coolers. The provided Intel heatsink (840EE) ran at 55c idle and up to 73c under load but we understand this might not be the heatsink shipped in the retail kit. We are trying to procure one at this time to test it.
Marlin1975 - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
You say there is a problem with the 882 chips? Can you run the same test on boards that used the same south bridge with a Cmedia sound chip. I know a lot of boards used the c-media at first and am whondering if this is maybe a south bridge problem or just another sign of the low quality items/drivers that realtek seems to make.Never been a realtek fan. Weather it be their low quality sound chips or their drivers.
Gary Key - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
The 882 family of codecs is very good for an on-board solution. I believe there is still a lot of work to be done in the drivers. However, the improvements made between the R1.20 release up to the R1.29 release have been significant. We actually could watch our BF2 benchmark come to a stop during the aircraft flyovers up until the R1.27 release. There is still some stuttering and frame rates drop into the teens but overall the CPU hit rate is around 9% compared to a 67% CPU hit in drivers up to R1.26. The overall sound quality has improved in games like Serious Sam II and F.E.A.R. also. We have not tested a 975X board with the CMedia solution but have just finished testing one with the Sigmatel solution (next article).ProviaFan - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
The review states that with two ATI cards inserted, the other PCI-E slots are not usable. Is this due to a real hardware limitation, or is it only because the ATI cards' coolers are too big? An example of a usage scenario that prompted this question: could I put a graphics card in one 16x slot running at 8x, an 8x PCI-E SCSI adapter in the other physical 16x slot, and then perhaps a 1x card in one of the remaining slots?Gary Key - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
The slots are physically not available due to the two slot cooling solutions used on the cards. This would hold true for the 6800 Ultra or 7800GTX 512mb edition cards.
Your scenario about the slot assignments would work.
coldpower27 - Monday, January 16, 2006 - link
Interesting on the voltage for the CPU though having only 1.200V as the bottom limit seems a little bit limiting from my persepctive, good gaming performance though as it typically runs only 2nd to the Intel Nforce 4 SLI.I also agree that 8 Phase Power would be nice, maybe in a future revision that is made to support Intel's NGMA processors.