Merom: Asus N4L-VM DH vs. Gigabyte GA-8I945GMMFY-RH

david25 · Post by **david25** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:35 pm

mrstoney wrote:Don't let the prospect of having to update the BIOS on the N4L-VM DH put you off too much. All you need is that old floppy drive sitting in your closet. You can download the latest update from Asus, put in on a floppy and use it to flash the board.

I did this successfully with a T7400.

As for the RAM stability, make sure you buy from the approved list (download the manual from the Asus site). I'm running 2gb Samsung without issues. I'll be installing a silent MSI 8600GTS in another week and will report back if I have any issues.

Just a heads up if you want to use a merom cpu, be sure to check the bios version before taking one of these boards home. I've been checking into merom supporting boards myself, and a quite a few (still) ship without bios support for merom, which makes them impossible to flash.

If the bios doesn't support merom, the only way to flash them is to pop in a yonah (or lower) cpu, or send the bios chip to back to support for flashing.

So it's better to know this beforehand, so you can check at the shop, and possibly let them flash the board.

Have you installed the 8600gts yet? Whats your power usage?

I'm around 65watts with a 8600gts and t7200

oilyrag37 · Post by **oilyrag37** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 4:10 am

hi there, im also looking for the asus mobo for my next build, but i've tried 3 e shops with no stock, the last said it was discontinued, but it's still on asus's website! At Amazon.uk there is one for sale for a mindboggling Â£226.92!!!!

if anyone has seen one available, love to know where, cheers.

david25 · Post by **david25** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:26 pm

oilyrag37 wrote:hi there, im also looking for the asus mobo for my next build, but i've tried 3 e shops with no stock, the last said it was discontinued, but it's still on asus's website! At Amazon.uk there is one for sale for a mindboggling Â£226.92!!!! if anyone has seen one available, love to know where, cheers.

If you are in the UK, you will have to look in europe... i cant find anyone with stock (cheap aopen's going on ebay though).

nzimmers · Post by **nzimmers** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:32 am

If you can get it. the MSI 945GT is a fantastic motherboard, the new drivers and Bios have fixed all the problem, and it's will allow overclocking and the PCI bus is frequency locked so there's no stability issues like on the Asus.

granted, you can only up the frequency by about 30mhz, but it's enough to give a 20-30% boost in cpu speed, not too shabby - plus dual land and 4xsataII....and socket 478 heatsink mounts!

dsub and dvi output..... I'm super happy with mine.