Asus A7V Satisfaction Survey

[RadMan]

Thinking of going TBird. Wanted to know people's experiences.

Good , Bad, Ugly! Please include system configurations!

Thanks.

PS: Didn't see anyone else post such post

 

[MooseKnuckle]

RadMan,

Brand new, love the board. My Diamond MX-300 soundcard gave me the only trouble, had to manually load each device driver. Board so far is very stable, I'm running a Duron 700 w/ 96MB of PC100/ECC Compaq DIMMS. A Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and a Maxtor HD. I chose this board for upgrade over an Abit KT-7 because it has built-in Promise ATA100 controller and I plan on getting a 1GHZ T-bird for Christmas. BTW, the price was great too, 255 for mobo & CPU. That's my take.

 

[jonnyGURU]

I'd have to say the A7V, now that the 1.02 revision is everywhere, has proven to be a very good board. Typical problems like dead fan headers pop up, but even then not very often.

If you want straight up stability though, I'd have to recommend the MSI K7T-Pro.

 

[Gogga]

I first had the MSI K7T Pro and I had a lot of lockups in games and 3dmark2000 etc. I had to couldn't get it to work properly with Windows ME and I had to switch back to Win98 SE. Another strange problem I had with the MSI K7T Pro is poor harddisk performance with HDTach (32mbps burst speed under ATA66).

I switched the motherboard for an Asus A7V and it was stable right from the start. Harddisk performance is great (55mbps) again in ATA66 and I had no lockups with my Geforce2 MX anymore and the Detonator 3 drivers. The only complaint I have against the A7V is problems with IRQ sharing, especially with Sblive! cards. Otherwise it is a great motherboard!

Greets!
Gogga

 

[RadMan]

Moose, where did you buy your combo?

Gogga, what problems exactly? I have an SB Live! Platinum without the Live Drive (sold it).

Any other opinions out there?

 

[cage]

I'm happy with my A7V, I'm running a Duron 600 @ 800 (850-900 when i get a new cooler).

Problems:
When I try to update my bios from 1002 to 1004a I get windows protection erros when booting up, so I'm leaving the bios at 1002 for now until I can figure out whts wrong.

Also the BOOT UP TIME IS FRIGGEN SLOW, between 1 to 2 minutes?
I have no idea why that is.

Otherwise I'm happy at how easy it was to overclock, and how stable it is (No crashes or hangs for a week, since I got it)
My System
==> Duron 600 @ 800 1.70vCore <==
Termaltake Golden Orb
Asus A7V MB
128 MB PC 100 Ram
ATI Rage 128 32MB Video (Overclocked to 105/105)
AOpen HQ45 Case (250watt AMD Approved Power Supply, Extra Intake Fan)
Sound Blaster Live!
Cambridge Soundworks FPS 2000 Digital Speakers
Realtek 10/100 Base Network Card
Maxtor 15GB 7200 ATA/66 UDMA 4 HD
Maxtor 17GB 5400 ATA/33 UDMA 2 HD
Ricoh 6424 CD-RW

 

[jonnyGURU]

Gogga; you do realize that your experience with the MSI is an isolated incident, right?

That's part of the reason I hate when I, or anyone else, changes motherboards mid-stream. As far as you are concerned, all MSI boards are like that and that is simply inaccurate.

Where I work we sell hundreds of Socket A boards from four Asus, Abit, MSI and Biostar and fewer of the MSIs come back than any other brand.

 

[Gogga]

Johnny, you are right that it could be an isolated problem... But there was also 4 other people on the MSI newsgroup (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar)who had exactly the SAME problem with harddisk performance.. In their case the harddisk performance was even worse! I am not complaining about the difficulty of setting up the board, it was extremely stable once I got it set up well, but I was complaining about the strange harddisk performance related issue.

It also sounds like you think I have something against MSI boards. In my opinion MSI make the best motherboards in the world, they are reasonably priced and extremely reliable and overclocking friendly!
The only reason why I switched to an Asus board is because of the ability to change the multiplier. I had an P3 500E @ 735Mhz and a MSI 6309 in my system before I switched to an AMD Cpu and it was the most stable system I ever owned.

Radman: My computer would lock up while I was busy browsing the Internet with IE5.5. I later found that the Sblive! shared an IRQ with the USB controllers and I then moved the Sblive! to slot3 so it has an IRQ for itself. System is now completely stable.

 

[lostinspace]

My story;

If you don't mind fighting battles (maybe even need to enjoy it !) you can get the a7v running well. If you are in a hurry to get a system up and running (or don't enjoy battles) get something else.

The main reason I say this is the lack of knowlege about how to set this board up. From lack of information on how to install operating systems with the Promise controller to mixed messages about bios settings, to NO vendor support, this is not for everyone.

Remember, socket a boards are a drop in the ocean to asus compared to their intel market.

 

[RadMan]

Gogga, I know what you mean by the usb controllers. The K7V has the same problem with SB Live! Sound Cards. My Creative USB Modem shared an IRQ with the SB Live! and the modem needed to be unplugged and then replugged in to function.

Can you set the irq's for pci slots on the a7v like you can for the k7v?

 

[Mem]

My input on MSI K7T PRO,I did my homework on this,recommended ram,PSU,heatsink/fan &amp; my system is rock stable, I did not even have to reinstall Win98,so I`m very happy with this board,btw it`s been on now for 10 hours yes it`s virtually brand new ,but I`ve tried 3D games,etc &amp; it`s still purring along like a kitten definetly recommended by myself,I did consider the Asus A7V but too many people reporting problems, so that`s why I decided on this board.

 

[jonnyGURU]

&quot;It also sounds like you think I have something against MSI boards.&quot;

Sorry. Didn't mean to pigeon hole you with 99.9% of the people I talke to.

Only four people complaining on the MSI message board?? That's actually a damn good ratio considering how many hundreds of thousands of units there are out there.

As far as you guys moving cards around to obtain different IRQs, was the IRQ Routing patch check box checked when you installed the 4 in 1? In many cases, I've found that it IS NOT checked by default.

 

[Kris]

Well, my A7V experience has lasted all of 20 minutes. In fact, that's why I am here now, on another computer. I got the board in today, pulled my 500e/6309 [Googa, I agree, that was the most stable setup I have ever run also, at 1.6 even. I won't be getting rid of it soon (and by the way, why won't the dam thing acknowledge more than 147?)] and installed everything, which amounted to a Sparkle, TNT2U, WDhdd, fdd, cdrom, and an 800tbird. Looked it over, and everything seemed fine, plugged it in, and it started up. No buttons pushed, no switches flipped. Ghost in the machine? Anyway, same happens I soon discovered regardless of what case connectors are connected. What sucks is it only stays on for a few seconds, then dies, not even to video bios. Well, time to seek aid... any ideas?

 

[jonnyGURU]

Did you hit the power switch?

Dead serious.

When you flip the switch on the power supply (assuming you have one) the fans only spin for 2 seconds and then stop. THAT'S NORMAL regardless, as you said, &quot;what ever case connectors are connected&quot;.

THEN you hit the power switch up front (hooked to the two pins on board).

 

[Citadel]

The A7V revision 1.02 is running great. No problems with any games or applications. Perhaps the pre - rev. 1.02 boards are having many problems?

 

[Kris]

Ok Johnny, that is what happened, I would flip the power supply switch, the fans would build up rpm, including cpu fan, and then quit. (Seemed like longer than 2 seconds however.) This happened with all case connectors, no connectors, and power switch alone. And I never left it on for more than a few seconds since I have no interest in smoke in my computer, and I wasn't sure what was going on. I will try your idea, greatly appreciated!

 

[Gogga]

Kris: You should then just push the power button on the computer!
When I first switched on the power supply it also started up and then
died 2 seconds later. Just push the power button on your comp then it
will startup!

I was also sorry that MSI 6309 can't go higher than 147Mhz... The
board just can't handle higher bus speeds than 147Mhz. Strange if you
consider how stable it runs at 147Mhz.

Radman: It is possible to assign IRQ's to specific PCI cards on the A7V

 

[MooseKnuckle]

RadMan,
Bought it at a local show,. The sound card problem had to do with the fact that I had a Microshaft Sidewinder gameport loaded, it then tried to load the sc gameport and everything was whacky. The sc loaded all the device drivers 4 times!. It wasn't until I installed my mouse drivers and got a irq error, that's when I realized the sc trouble. Removed the Sidewinder, deleted sc drivers and reinstalled, everything works great,. BTW, the Asus Probe software s*cks, I switched to Mobo Monitor 4.17. All and all, very happy with the board, but I've only owned Abit's in the past and I like there bios menus better. But, stability wise I think Asus is the way to go.

 

[Engineer]

Just to check in...I've had a 1.01.P version of the A7V for 3 weeks now and I've had no trouble with the exception of the 1.004a BIOS. Went back to 1.002 and running fine. 1 GHz TBird with Alpha6035 HS, 256Megs PC100 Ram, Maxtor DM+ 40 - 30G drive, Plextor 8/4/32A IDE burner, Toshiba 40X CD-ROM, Diamond V770 Ultra TNT2 Ultra card running Detonator 6.18 (?) drivers, Sound Blaster Live MP3+, and 3Com NIC (I don't remember number, but very common card)...

Good Luck!!!

 

[woodsman]

Same here for the MSI 6309 stable up to 147, and then total lock up after that.I thought that the Apacer 133 ram was crapping out.I bought 2 of the 600 Durons and I was going to use the Asus A7v to overclock, but I am not sure now. I like MSI boards, can you overclock the Duron 600 to 950 with them? Thanks everyone,this is my first non intel experience, and I think I am going to like it
woodsman

 

[TonyRic]

OK, I had alot of problems initially setting up my A7V with and without the ATA100 controller and this is what I came up with:

A7V 1.02 with 1004 bios
T-Bird 750@1050MHz (10x Mult and 105MHz FSB) temp at 44c with FOP32

20GB IBM and 20GB Matrox ATA66 Drives on IDE1
Toshiba 6x DVD Drive and S&amp;F 4x6x24 CDRW on IDE2
IDE 3 &amp; 4 (Promise ATA100 disabled through 1004 BIOS)

ATI XPert 2000 AGP
Promise FastTrak66 PCI Slot 1 with 2 Matrox 20GB HD Striped
PCI Slot 2 empty
Intel 10/100 NIC PCI Slot 3
SB Live PCI Slot 4
PCI Slot 5 empty

This works for me for Win98, 2000 and Mandrake...

Hope this helps anyone...

 

[Citadel]

TonyRic,
So in other words, you had to NOT use the Promise ATA100 controller? That is not right especially for people like me who have 5 IDE devices. Did you have IRQ conflicts with the ATA100 or just slow boot up?

 

[TonyRic]

I could use the 100... I chose not to because I go RAID... I have 6 IDE devices connected... I used the ATA100 for a couple days and it worked great, I just disabled it and went back to RAID...

 

[Braxus]

So what exactly are the revisions between the boards... ASUS latest revision for the A7V is 1.03.

1.00 original release
1.01 added dip switches for CPU multiplier
1.02 fixed HD LED problem? (My 1.01 board HD LED doesn't work)
1.03 ?

 

[RadMan]

Revision 1.01, 1.02, 1.03... are these physical changes to the board?