**"OFFICIAL"** Asus P4S8X Thread

[Disappointed]

Asus P4S-8X Rules
You guys have to check this out. I bumped my voltage up to 1.7v vcore and 2.7v memory with a P4 2.53 and 512mb Corsair XMS3200 cas2 to run stable at 155fsb and 193.75 (DDR 387) memory with a CAS latency of 1.5,2,2 1t P4@2.94 unbelievable. Links below to Sandra Score
http://pages.prodigy.net/ellingsen1/sandracpu1.JPG
http://pages.prodigy.net/ellingsen1/sandramem.JPG

 

[BobDobbs]

What is the deal with installation of the P4 putting a HUGE freaking BEND in my Asus motherboard?

I just got a P4S8X and a 2.53GHz P4. I haven't installed the board yet, 'cause I'm waiting on the memory to get here. But I did install the processor and fan assembly on the mobo a couple of days ago. I just now was looking at the board and noticed quite a significant bend in the board near the processor. Scary bend. When I unlatch the fan/heatsink assembly, relieving the tension on the board, it straightens out.

I did a search or two, and from what I saw it looks like this is a known phenomenon. However, as someone somewhere said, it scares the crap out of me to look at it -- it just doesn't look like it could possibly be good for the board.

Has anybody else here noticed the same thing? Do you know if there's anything I can do about it? I've worked with PC boards for many years, and I know bends are not always problematic, but this just does not look healthy! What do you think?

Thanks.

Charles:Q

 

[First]

BobDobbs, there's nothing to worry about, that's quite common. If you're using the HSF (heatsink and fan) that came with your P4 processor, there won't be any problems, despite the bend in your board.

 

[Andi316]

dbett:

Can you tell me the exact Driver Name that WinXP will use for the Promise Chip?
Thanks...

Andi

 

[flawedexistence]

I'm really enjoying this thread! One question though. Serial ATA and Firewire ports aside, is there any real advantage to getting this board as opposed to the P4S533? Seems like the DDR400 situation is a bit of a red herring right now.

 

[dbett]

Well I've played around with some overclocking and here are my results.

I can get the CPU External Frequency up to 149MHz at 1.7volts. That's with my 2.53GHz P4, so it ends up at 2.83GHz. The memory frequency is then bumped to 186 and I have the voltage set to 2.6. I left the memory timings on auto ("By SPD") since it didn't seem to like any changes (that's with 2 sticks of 512Mb Corsair 2700 with CL of 2).

I also have my GF4 Ti 4600 bumped up (using Gainward's automatic "enhanced mode settings" to 314MHz core clock and 680MHz memory clock).

At those settings I'm able to boot into windows, complete 3D Mark (for a score of 12,105) and get through 10 cycles of Sandra's burn in tests (although just selecting the cpu and memory tests).

The temps seem ok and everything is stable so far (knock on wood). I'm going to leave it here and do regular stuff (games, video and image editing, playing music, etc.) to see if the PCI clock setting (which has to go up to 37 MHz to get the CPU frequency to 149) is acceptable to everything. We'll see.

BobDobbs

My board also has a bend. I was worried when I first saw it, but everything seems fine so apparently its a "feature not a bug."

Andi316

I installed three drivers.

(1) Fasttrack TX4000
(2) Fasttrack 376
(3) Fasttrack 620

When you install the 376 driver and reboot it then detects new hardware and installs a second instance of the same driver. One of the readme files says its supposed to do this. Since there are 2 of the "376" hardware controllers, it may be a RAID driver for the two Serial ATA connections (and the 620 is for the ATA-133). But I'm not sure since none of the readme files on the CD are clear as to what's what.

Maybe I'll eventually remove the two 376 devices (and possibly to TX4600 as well) to see what happens. But right now everything is working fine, so I think I'll leave it alone for a while and actually use the computer.

 

[dbett]

Originally posted by: flawedexistence
I'm really enjoying this thread! One question though. Serial ATA and Firewire ports aside, is there any real advantage to getting this board as opposed to the P4S533? Seems like the DDR400 situation is a bit of a red herring right now.

Well the other main advantage is the AGP 8X. That may be useful once someone other than crappy ATI releases an 8X video card.

Oh and the 648 based boards have a better northbridge/southbridge connection (significantly increasing throughput). So that will (probably) help general performance, everything else being equal.

For a good overview of the 648 chipset, see this Tom's Hardware article.

 

[vm]

You're making it hard on me to decide on a board here

i had already ordered a Soltek p4x400, but it got rejected (bank problem)..I had picked that bc the Asus was 60.00 more ;/

so the northbridge/southbridge are better on the SiS eh?

ugh..

 

[Andi316]

dbett

I think i'm too stupid for that. My system always reboots when i'm connecting the drive to the promise chip. I tried the "620" and the "376" driver, without success. Both drivers are marked with a red cross in the Device Manager, when the Promise Chip is activated, and the Drive is at the Secondary Master?!?

 

[Rick67]

BobDobbs,

My P4S8X was bent to hell after installing the retail P4 fan and heatsink. It scared the hell out of me! I removed the fan and heatsink and the mobo went back to normal. This can't be good for the board. I would think eventually something is going to give.

 

[Thraxen]

My P4S8X was bent to hell after installing the retail P4 fan and heatsink. It scared the hell out of me! I removed the fan and heatsink and the mobo went back to normal. This can't be good for the board. I would think eventually something is going to give.

Wow! I guess either mine didn't do that or I simply didn't notice. But I did think I was going to break something when I installed the heat sink. Flipping those levers to lock down the heat sink was quite nerve racking.

Anyway, has anyone else installed the 1004 Beta 2 BIOS? Anything major changed? I flashed the new BIOS and navigated the menus to see if anything obvious was changed, but I didn't see anything.

 

[Elvis2]

Has anyone gotten this board to run @ the 400 (ddr) mhz. setting using corsair XMS pc3200 ram?

 

[FodderMAN]

I was wondering if any of you haveing sudden reboot problems would mind ready this thread.

http://www.asusboards.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24000

you may find it interesting.

if you don't wanna follow the link, heres the basic idea

load either Asus Probe (off the driver CD ) or motherboard monitor ( http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ ) and watch your Vcore at idle and under load. if your board is like mine your Vcore is fluctuateing by more that 10% under heavy load. on several of the reboots I have had most happen under load and my Vcore hits 1.38 ( set in bios to 1.5) and even when I set my voltage to 1.55 it will drop to 1.44-1.41. not looking good


Thankyou for your time,
FodderMAN

 

[Andi316]

Ich have the same Problem with my P4S8X!

My Vcore is set to 1.725. At idle Asus Probe shows 1.69, and under load the Vcore is between 1.6 and 1.63...

 

[dbett]

Originally posted by: Andi316
dbett

I think i'm too stupid for that. My system always reboots when i'm connecting the drive to the promise chip. I tried the "620" and the "376" driver, without success. Both drivers are marked with a red cross in the Device Manager, when the Promise Chip is activated, and the Drive is at the Secondary Master?!?

Not sure the steps you are taking, but try this:

Put your hard drive as the only drive on the Primary IDE channel. Boot into Windows. Remove the various Promise hardware drivers in Windows hardware properties and reboot to make sure there gone. Reboot again and ...

Go into BIOS and make sure of three settings. First, under "Advanced: PCI Config" select "enabled" for the ATA controller. Second, select "yes" to the option that then appears right below that option (something like 'use the ATA controller first'). Third, under the Boot menu, chang the Other boot device to "SCSI/Onboard ATA." Restart.

Go back into Windows and using the Add/Remove hardware function, manually install all three drivers mentioned above (you didn't say you had the TX4000 driver, so check that). Reboot one extra time after getting all three installed, just to make sure.

Then turn everything off and unplug the computer.

Switch your hard drive over to the ATA_133 controller. Make sure of a few things here. One, that you're using an 80pin cable. Two, check the documentation for your drive as to how to set it up as the single drive on a channel. You may need to change a jumper (for example, it may not like being set as "master" if there's no slave.) Third, the drive should be connected to the master connection on the cable (the end connector, farthest away from the motherboard connector).

Then restart and enter the Fasttrack utility, use the auto config and you should be set (remember you have to hit "Ctrl-y" to save the configuration).

Good luck.

 

[dbett]

FodderMan:

I have similar vcore readings (using Asus probe), but no random rebooting (other than a few in the first few days when I was installing a lot of software). So not sure if that's the problem ???

 

[BobDobbs]

Thanks to all who replied regarding the heatsink installation causing the board to bend like crazy. I'm glad I'm not alone. So, if it's basically normal, I guess I'll relax a little. Thanks again.

Charles

 

[Disappointed]

New Asus P4S8X Review
http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=208

 

[ToBeMe]

Well......I sure as heck hope SiS & Asus as well as other companies get these boards problems worked out with bios updates ESPECIALLY now that the "DX" boards have been axxed! No boards with "true" or "official" DDR-400 support at all from SiS or Via! Also, there are huge threads over at Asusboards forums for people having problems with the P4S8X as well as the Abit boards................I'm lucky enough to have both running fine, but by the looks of some threads in other forums it appears there are numerous people with all kinds of problems..... IMHO the SiS 648 boards are very nice boards and with bios updates can be some of the best to date from SiS...........just sad to hear there will be no 648DX boards at all............

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

What?!? :Q No 648DX?!? WAAAA *pounds feet and fists on the ground*

I was specifically waiting for an official DDR400 board, since very few people seem to be o/c'ing that high. I really thought I might have a nice DDR400 P4 system by the end of this year. Oh well, looks like I'll shift gears and do the 1.6A/overclocking thing on a 333 mobo. This has probably been asked already, but is there any real advantages to getting the P4S8X over the P4S533, besides AGP8X? Might the MSI one be just as good/better?

*sniff* (mother wipes tears from his eyes)

Looks like it's not even worth spending the extra $$ on DDR400 at this point... comments/suggestions?

 

[fxer]

The legion hardware review of the P4S8X says you can only use either the IDE Raid or the Serial ATA RAID at any given time, you can't use them both. So you can only connect 6 drives to this motherboard, just something to keep in mind for full tower case users.

There is a thread about this at : http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=873281

 

[ToBeMe]

Well.......thought I ought to write this just as an FYI if nothing else....................

I know disappointed has apparently by what he's said had great luck with the P4S8X and I have not had terrible luck overall, but, I think everyone should take a look at threads at Asusboards.com and the newsgroups as well as other forums motherboard sections....................it appears the problems people are encountering with this board and memory, as well as stability (even with PC2700 and PC2100) are rivaled only by the old ECS K7S5A posts to paraphrase a comment in another forum! I don't know what's going on but it's worth a look to check out some of these problems before we have a rash of problem posts here IMHO..............I hope it's nothing but "user error" and that's what I was attributing it to at first.....but, it just keeps growing and getting worse............

 

[cbolton]

Hello,

I am about to receive the P4S8X mobo on Friday and despite all of the problems I have heard with the board and DDR400 I took the plunge to get:

CORSAIR MEMORY XMS 512MB 32MX8 PC-3200C2

with the mobo hoping that these issues will get figured out. If it doesn't than I overpaid for DDR400 memory.. I'll use it in my next mobo then I guess.

I wanted to know what settings in the BIOS do I need to set to move the RAM down to DDR333 speeds so this mobo will be stable using the Corsair memory for XP PRO OS loading and general use?

I am not an overclocking guru in fact this is the first PC I have ever built. Just want to get this mobo working and stable then I'll worry about overclocking memory, CPU later.

I would grealy appreciate anyone's insight on this...

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

cbolton,

I'm not an expert oc'er either, and most people here will give u better advice as i don't even own the board but ..

first thing you should do is flash your bios to latest version. then, check what settings it's at. in my experience, most mobo's will first come up with pretty conservative settings, it should be set at DDR333 right out of the box. So, an attempt at going DDR400 is technically overclocking to begin with..

with the mobo hoping that these issues will get figured out. If it doesn't than I overpaid for DDR400 memory.. I'll use it in my next mobo then I guess

with memory costing potentially twice as much as the mobo, I would actually do just what you did -- get the high end stuff so you can use it down the road...

Big luck and let us know how it is...

 

[skubik]

Well, I'm very close to buying a P4S8X and 2.53B and just using the micron pc2100 2x256 that runs 150fsb no problem @ max timings in it, but now after reading thusfar it's not worth the money to upgrade (Shuttle AK35GT/R w/ 1800+ AMD @ 1725mhz currently), guess we just wait for intel's new chipset with 8x support?

Also, Intel says *DO NOT INSTALL* the processor in a mainboard without it first installed in the case as the motherboard will most likely bend from the pressure of the stock retail HSF, the mounted mainboard will not bend since it's secured.... probably won't ruin the mobo but it's only going to flex so far before a trace breaks