The worst motherboard I have ever owned...

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yoitsmeremember
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The worst motherboard I have ever owned...

Post by yoitsmeremember » Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:01 am

I normally don't like to rant, but quite frankly I am so upset with the quality of this particular motherboard, I want to save everyone else the trouble. What motherboard, you ask? It is none other than the Maximus III Gene, a uATX board made by Asus. But first, let me get a few things strait.
  • - I have not overclocked anything (CPU, GPU, memory, etc.) on this motherboard. Everything is at stock clocks.
    - I have nothing against Asus in particular. I am using their monitor, and I really like it.
    - I purchased the motherboard in November of last year.
    - I dual boot to both XP x64 and 7 x64, but only use 7 when I need DX10/11.
So, what are the problems? Well, where to begin...

1. Design
Okay, to be fair, it's not all bad, it does have attached power/reset buttons. However, that's about where the good ends. My primary complaint is the PCI(e) slot design. As you may know, the Lynnfield processors integrate 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on-die, moving lanes normally found on the north bridge into two sets of x8 lanes.

The motherboard obviously makes use of these lanes, but there's a catch. If you are only using one graphics card, the only way to connect it via all 16 lanes is via the top slot. If the card is placed in the bottom slot, only 8 of the 16 lanes will be used. If you're using two cards, this isn't an issue as you'll only get 8 lanes to each no matter what. So, why is this a problem?

Well, all modern graphics cards are dual-slot, taking up the slot the card is placed in as well as the slot below it. If you use the top slot to get all 16 lanes to one card, this then prevents you from using the PCIe slot directly below it. It's worth noting that if you wanted to use another PCIe card, and put it in the other "x16" slot (really an x8 ), you'd rob those 8 lanes from the top slot, regardless of how many lanes the card requires. In short, there is no way to use a dual-slot graphics card in x16 and make use of the PCIe lanes on the north bridge.

2. Memory Compatibility
Back when I bought the board, I bought 8GB of RAM that I thought would work with it. It wasn't on the memory compatibility list, but it was identical (spec-wise, e.g. voltage, freq, timings, etc.) to other RAM that was. However, it didn't work in the board--and the RAM wasn't at fault. I tested it in a friend's machine to verify that it was good. I returned it for memory that was directly off the list, which did work, but the RMA cost me, both time and money. On previous machines I've built, I've never bought memory directly off the compat list, and have never had issues.

Asus has since released numerous BIOS updates to improve memory compatibility, so this may no longer be an issue, but better safe than sorry IMHO.

3. Hardware/Drivers
This board is all solid capacitors, and has good cooling for components. But alas, the problems overshadow the positive points. First off, I had problems with the IEEE 1394 (AKA Firewire) on the board. Simply put, it would work for some time, and then die. Windows would still (usually) detect devices being plugged in, but the connection itself would not work.

I even tried connecting it directly to my friends machine to transfer some files via TCP/IP over 1394. His machine has a Texas Instruments 1394 controller, whereas this board has a VIA (ick!) controller. I like VIA's NanoITX boards, but their 1394 controller certainly isn't a strong point. After a while of transferring files, the connection would simply die--the file transfer would time out, and nothing short of rebooting the system could restore it. However, it was just my machine with the VIA controller that needed to be rebooted--his continued to function perfectly.

This could be a driver issue, but Asus never releases updated drivers. As you'll see, this is a problem elsewhere.

I like to use integrated audio for several reasons. However, the drivers Asus provides for the integrated VT2020 (yes, that's VIA Technologies :() are terrible (V6.0.1.7430). I would get random BSoDs, usually when playing games, and each one would point to the VIA audio drivers. VIA doesn't let you download drivers for this device on their site, and eventually I ended up just downloading the drivers for the same device on a different motherboard on Asus's site. Uhm, hello Asus, if you're listening, why should this be so hard? You have the drivers on your site, why not list them with all compatible motherboards? Oh, but wait, it gets better...meet my friend X-Fi.

Creative's X-Fi implementation is supposedly "on the motherboard." However, from what I've read it's basically completely done in software with little or no components on the motherboard itself. X-Fi would be great if it ever worked. Okay, so it works sometimes, but every time I tried to load a saved game in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion the system would BSoD and list Creative's X-Fi driver as the culprit. Interestingly enough, it doesn't BSoD when you start a new game, so if you could somehow play though the entire game in one sitting (Hah!) or just leave it running the the background (and hope you don't need to reboot and the system doesn't crash) until you did, and never died, you would probably have no issues. Impractical? Extremely.

After I upgraded the audio drivers (to V6.0.1.7600 from the "Maximus III Extreme" motherboard), the X-Fi control panel could no longer find the "X-Fi device" (don't remember the exact error), and X-Fi seemed to be disabled. Further proof was provided when I could actually load my Oblivion save! However, this had a darker turn I did not immediately realize--Mumble, my choice VoIP program, doesn't work w/o the X-Fi device installed and working! There's literally no sound out from the program, save for the Microsoft Sam TTS engine (possibly due to some mixing it was doing on the Direct Sound Voice Output). I can't hear other people talk, but they can hear me. The X-Fi does not work w/ the newer sound card drivers, and I don't want to downgrade those for reasons already discussed, or even reinstall X-Fi at this point if I want any hope of playing Oblivion (and quite probably other games). I'm also not completely sure that even the upgraded audio drivers have fixed all the problems, they just haven't caused a BSoD...yet.

If I had known what I know now, back when I bought the motherboard, I would have returned it for a refund, eaten the restocking fee, and bought something else. Better yet, never bought it in the first place. However, there wasn't much else available at the time that was LGA1156 that I could confirm would recognize 8GB of RAM. Lesson learned, but hopefully this will keep you from having to go through the same terrible experience I did.

TL;DR version
Don't waste your time or money on this motherboard.

Update Aug 17, 2010:

First off, I am now strictly running Win7 (to avoid BSoDs related to the audio drivers, and more importantly, for development reasons), there are no sound-related BSoDs thanks to its virtualized audio subsystem. As I don't see any updates to the audio drivers on Asus's site, this will still be a problem if you are using XP. But, if you are using Win7, read on...

Several BIOS revisions have come out since the original posting. These are 1801, and 2001. 1801 greatly reduced the occurrences of BSoDs, but there were still a few remaining every now and then. After updating to 2001, I have not had a BSoD yet, and I hope to remain that way. These BIOS updates have drastically changed the system's stability under Windows 7. It has finally, months later, made this board a worthwhile purchase, for me, at least. I only wish I could have avoided the months of prior frustration.
Last edited by yoitsmeremember on Mon Aug 16, 2010 9:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

danimal
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Re: The worst motherboard I have ever owned...

Post by danimal » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:12 am

yoitsmeremember wrote: Well, all modern graphics cards are dual-slot, taking up the slot the card is placed in as well as the slot below it. If you use the top slot to get all 16 lanes to one card, this then prevents you from using the PCIe slot directly below it. It's worth noting that if you wanted to use another PCIe card, and put it in the other "x16" slot (really an x8 ), you'd rob those 8 lanes from the top slot, regardless of how many lanes the card requires. In short, there is no way to use a dual-slot graphics card in x16 and make use of the PCIe lanes on the north bridge.
you do realize that the 1156 platform is crippled, it can't run full bandwidth in both slots at the same time? so i wonder if all 1156 motherboards would have the same issue with limited bandwidth in the second slot.

for the amount of ram that you wanted, i7 920 probably would have been a better way to go.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:26 am

That should rather read:

TL;DR I didnt research my options well enough before buying, and got the wrong stuff

... no offense, but thats the gist of what youre saying.

quest_for_silence
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Re: The worst motherboard I have ever owned...

Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:11 am

yoitsmeremember wrote:In short, there is no way to use a dual-slot graphics card in x16 and make use of the PCIe lanes on the north bridge.

It might not be a real problem: see what happens with an HD5870.
yoitsmeremember wrote:Don't waste your time or money on this motherboard.

Lots of mobos (expecially supposed hi-end ones) turn out to be problematic (or crappy at all, sometime): among tier-1 vendors I have had not so good experiences with DFI, eVGA and MSI.

Regards,
Luca
Last edited by quest_for_silence on Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:51 am, edited 2 times in total.

quest_for_silence
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Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:22 am

Wibla wrote:I didnt research my options well enough before buying, and got the wrong stuff

I mean it might be a bit unfair to say so, as very often information around the web are inaccurate, or they lack at all.

And however experience is just such a thing that we're looking for right an instant before actually sorting it out (sorry for my english).

Regards,
Luca

faugusztin
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Post by faugusztin » Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:29 am

I allways spend about a 1-2 days, sometimes even more examining the selected product, reading reviews etc.

In this case you can clearly see some of the issues are because OP didn't invested time into this. Noticing layout problems and the fact, that all P55 boards work like he described is not a hard thing to find out.
Memory compatibility - well it is a hit or miss, the fact that the OP had luck so far doesn't mean the problems weren't present before.

The only real issue is what he described in post 3.

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:57 am

To be fair, these kind of quibbles could probably be said about most boards. My Gigabyte is great overall, but not without its share of annoyances and quirks. Unfortunately no motherboard is perfect, and even if you do your research before buying, you're probably going to run into some minor, unexpected issues.

quest_for_silence
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Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:55 pm

frostedflakes wrote:My Gigabyte is great overall, but not without its share of annoyances and quirks.

Hey, which complaint do you have on it (sorry for briefly hijacking the thread)?

I'm asking to you, as I'm just considering it (along with MSI GTM) in order to swap an infamous DFI LanParty.

Regards,
Luca

psyopper
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Post by psyopper » Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:25 am

My Gigabyte H55 board is on it's way back to Gigabyte today for a flaky LAN connection. 2 - 3 weeks for their RMA department to resolve the issue before sending me a replacement is their quote. I'm scared to see what they send back.

Fayd
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Post by Fayd » Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:42 am

in my history of building, the board that's given me the most headache was an epox. that's more headache than an ECS K7S5A Pro, which woud just forget its fsb clock speed occasionally.

after that comes an MSI P35 Neo2-FR. finicky as all hell, it'd fail booting >50% of the time.

after that, i got a gigabyte 790X. couldnt be happier. stable, no quirks to speak of, and flashing was a breeze.

yoitsmeremember
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Post by yoitsmeremember » Mon May 03, 2010 3:12 pm

danimal wrote:you do realize that the 1156 platform is crippled, it can't run full bandwidth in both slots at the same time? so i wonder if all 1156 motherboards would have the same issue with limited bandwidth in the second slot.

for the amount of ram that you wanted, i7 920 probably would have been a better way to go.
Yes, but I am using just 1 card. The smaller PCIe slot (an x4 slot) is on the north bridge, and won't steal lanes from the x16 if it were usable (i.e., not covered by the dual-slot card).

I also didn't want to go with the 920, as it uses more wattage, and doesn't have some of the clocking features that the Lynnfield offers.
Wibla wrote:That should rather read:

TL;DR I didnt research my options well enough before buying, and got the wrong stuff

... no offense, but thats the gist of what youre saying.
Hardly, if you read it, you'd know that. Please don't make judgments if you're not going to read the full post.

The only thing you could predict is the bad slot design assuming you happened to see the one line that indirectly tells you this buried in the 170-page manual. When you've never missed a subtle detail like that in a manual on completely new hardware, then come talk to me. However, bluescreens from bad driver support and various apps not working correctly as a consequence is a major annoyance and cannot be predicted from documents or even user experience when the board has been out for a few weeks at most when I purchased it.
frostedflakes wrote:To be fair, these kind of quibbles could probably be said about most boards. My Gigabyte is great overall, but not without its share of annoyances and quirks. Unfortunately no motherboard is perfect, and even if you do your research before buying, you're probably going to run into some minor, unexpected issues.
I have never had problems on any of my previous builds to this extent. My last build, an AMD X2 w/ a Gigabyte motherboard had 0 problems--oh, actually, the north bridge got a little too hot for comfort if you were using the stock cooler AND the onboard video, but I replaced the heatsink with something much more substantial and didn't use the onboard video.

On a side note, I've sort of fixed my problem with mumble...but in a fairly humorous way. I've since connected my primary monitor (Asus VH242H) via HDMI, and am instead using the audio over HDMI from my 5850. Interestingly enough, now I can hear other people! However, Microsoft Sam has gone silent, but hey, I'll take that over not being able to hear other people any day.

EDIT: Fixed that too. For some reason Sam was set to use the "Default audio output", but it didn't register that it had changed to the ATI device, even after reboot? Anyway, manually setting it to the ATI output has fixed that.
Last edited by yoitsmeremember on Wed May 05, 2010 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

theycallmebruce
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Post by theycallmebruce » Mon May 03, 2010 5:50 pm

I have to agree that it's unfair to blame the OP. Bad drivers and memory compatibility issues are annoying. It seems like he tested the hardware fairly, and posts like this are useful so that others can be aware of the issues.

All you can really do is stick with brands you've had good experiences with, and avoid certain others like the plague. Using examples from this thread, I've had bad luck with drivers from Creative too. I've seen plenty of bad Epox boards (mainly leaky capacitors) when I worked at a computer store.

Gigabyte is my preferred motherboard manufacturer, with Asus as a second option if necessary. Also, it seems best to wait for a few BIOS revisions to come out before buying a motherboard if possible.

danimal
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Post by danimal » Tue May 04, 2010 11:16 am

yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:you do realize that the 1156 platform is crippled, it can't run full bandwidth in both slots at the same time? so i wonder if all 1156 motherboards would have the same issue with limited bandwidth in the second slot.

for the amount of ram that you wanted, i7 920 probably would have been a better way to go.
Yes, but I am using just 1 card. The smaller PCIe slot (an x4 slot) is on the north bridge, and won't steal lanes from the x16 if it were usable (i.e., not covered by the dual-slot card).

I also didn't want to go with the 920, as it uses more wattage, and doesn't have some of the clocking features that the Lynnfield offers.
you should have known that the smaller pcie slot was unusable by looking at a photo of the motherboard... i doubt that asus is the only mb manufacturer that puts the two slots right next to each other, so your criticism there is not valid.

you must have used 2-gig ram sticks? because the 1-gig sticks are generally more compatible... the 920 is a better choice for using large amounts of ram, and the increased wattage that you are worried about is due to more processing capability than the 1156 platform offers... you basically tried to go cheap here, when your needs would have been better served by stepping up to the plate for the 920.

as for using firewire to transfer data?? i can't see the sense in that at all, but whatever issues you are having are probably not due to the chipset... i agree that t.i. has the superior chipset, but firewire is largely a dead technology these days, you should have used ethernet to transfer your data.

yoitsmeremember
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Post by yoitsmeremember » Wed May 05, 2010 8:35 pm

danimal wrote:you should have known that the smaller pcie slot was unusable by looking at a photo of the motherboard... i doubt that asus is the only mb manufacturer that puts the two slots right next to each other, so your criticism there is not valid.

you must have used 2-gig ram sticks? because the 1-gig sticks are generally more compatible... the 920 is a better choice for using large amounts of ram, and the increased wattage that you are worried about is due to more processing capability than the 1156 platform offers... you basically tried to go cheap here, when your needs would have been better served by stepping up to the plate for the 920.

as for using firewire to transfer data?? i can't see the sense in that at all, but whatever issues you are having are probably not due to the chipset... i agree that t.i. has the superior chipset, but firewire is largely a dead technology these days, you should have used ethernet to transfer your data.
No, it has two x16 slots, I thought I could use the bottom slot w/o penalty, and still use the x4 slot above it. But there's no way to get 16 lanes to the bottom slot even if the top slot is empty (i.e. the bottom slot is really only physically a x16 slot with the option of, at most, 8 lanes), and that's my complaint.

"...the 920 is a better choice for using large amounts of ram." Why? "...the increased wattage that you are worried about is due to more processing capability than the 1156 platform offers." No. To quote Anandtech, "...the Nehalem architecture, thanks to its PCU and power gate transistors, was the most power efficient of the high end options." Also, it's not slower, as you'll see in the video encoding (which is what my machine is always doing when it isn't BSoDing) benchmarks that the 860 beats the 920. "...you basically tried to go cheap here..." Ironic, because when I bought it, the 860 was much more expensive (especially when you considered the cost of the motherboard) than the 920.

"as for using firewire to transfer data?? i can't see the sense in that at all..." Wait, Firewire can be used for something other than transferring data? "whatever issues you are having are probably not due to the chipset..." If not the hardware, then the drivers, but as far as I'm concerned, they're one package. If either doesn't work, it's useless to me. "...firewire is largely a dead technology these days, you should have used ethernet to transfer your data." Except, my video camera doesn't have Ethernet support, it has Firewire, so that's what I have to use. As for the computer-to-computer connection, that was just to test if it was my camera on the fritz, or indeed problems with my new computer (short of installing all the necessary components on his PC to transfer the video directly off the camera). I still can't transfer the video I've taken off the camera directly onto my Maximus III Gene, I have to connect it to my laptop (using its Firewire to connect to the camera), and then transfer from my laptop over Ethernet to my desktop.

psyopper
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Post by psyopper » Wed May 05, 2010 9:15 pm

There are lots of limitations to many of these motherboards. If you take a look at that motherboard at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131599

You will see that of all the issues you bring up, they are all covered in either the reviews or in the specifications of the board. Don't be angry at Asus because you didn't look at a photo first to see where/how the slots are laid out.

Do be frustrated that your memory didn't work, I can sympathise with that. Again don't be angry at Asus because you used memory that they told you wouldn't work.

Do be angry and frustrated with Asus about the crappy sound card drivers. Unfortunately I haven't seen a good thing from Creative since their sound cards still had game ports on them.

Your post is a good Caveat Emptor though, particularly about the sound card drivers and suspect 1394 port. You should be able to RMA that board for the 1394 alone. It does sound like Asus actually has a really good product with this motherboard, but killed it with a bunch of crappy components, and then charged way too much for it.

yoitsmeremember
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Post by yoitsmeremember » Wed May 05, 2010 9:47 pm

psyopper wrote:There are lots of limitations to many of these motherboards. If you take a look at that motherboard at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131599

You will see that of all the issues you bring up, they are all covered in either the reviews or in the specifications of the board. Don't be angry at Asus because you didn't look at a photo first to see where/how the slots are laid out.
Yes, they're listed NOW in the review, but not back when I bought it. In fact, I wrote a review on newegg about the slot issue to warn others about it.

I did look at the photo, but the photo doesn't tell you that you can't get 16 lanes to the bottom x16 slot. Neweggs specs don't even tell you. It just says "2 (support single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)."

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Post by bradc » Thu May 06, 2010 12:08 am

I always used to use Asus boards but problems like this have made me shy away recently. I had about 15 of them from the 440BX days (if you don't understand that, google it)

My woes started with a P5Q Deluxe that I was buying for my server to replace a Supermicro PDSGE (loved that board, only non-Asus board I'd had since about 1999) to use with my new PCIe raid cards. I wanted to enable raid on the southbridge to boot off a raid 1 array and it did not work with the raid cards installed, it refused to boot off the southbridge raid. I tried everything, latest bios, the oldest bios, moving the cards around, etc. The bios raid menu didn't come up with the PCIe cards in it and the board just didn't see them.

Express Gate, AI Nap and all that other useless crap were probably at fault for taking up useful bios space for important things :)

I bought a Gigabyte P45 DS4P which worked perfectly first time.

So when I bought my i7 975 cpu I went straight to the Gigabyte X58 UD4P and enjoyed that experience too!

Now I'm thinking of getting rid of my last Asus board, a P5N32-E SLI which has been a complete rock since the end of 2006 when I bought it without a single problem and I'm probably going to go with a P55A-UD7 for the extra PCIe lanes and an i5 680 (I have an app that loves a fast single core and I need the PCIe lanes) and all will be happy. I don't think I'll buy an Asus board again.

danimal
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Post by danimal » Sat May 08, 2010 9:41 am

yoitsmeremember wrote: No, it has two x16 slots, I thought I could use the bottom slot w/o penalty, and still use the x4 slot above it. But there's no way to get 16 lanes to the bottom slot even if the top slot is empty (i.e. the bottom slot is really only physically a x16 slot with the option of, at most, 8 lanes), and that's my complaint.
as i told you earlier:

"you do realize that the 1156 platform is crippled"

you bought into the wrong platform, regardless of who manufactured the motherboard.
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...the 920 is a better choice for using large amounts of ram."
Why?
tri-channel vs. dual-channel, a better memory controller, etc.
.. do your homework next time.
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...the increased wattage that you are worried about is due to more processing capability than the 1156 platform offers."
No. To quote Anandtech, "...the Nehalem architecture, thanks to its PCU and power gate transistors, was the most power efficient of the high end options." Also, it's not slower, as you'll see in the video encoding (which is what my machine is always doing when it isn't BSoDing) benchmarks that the 860 beats the 920.
wrong.

it's all about 1)the number of cores that the app can take advantage of, and 2)the clock rate... so the only benchmarks that matter are those that compare similar clocks to begin with, using apps that can fully take advantage of all cores.

the i7 975 beats all comers at factory clocks, but since you can easily overclock a 920 to far exceed the factory i7 975 clock rate, those anandtech benchmarks are worthless.
yoitsmeremember wrote:"...you basically tried to go cheap here..." Ironic, because when I bought it, the 860 was much more expensive (especially when you considered the cost of the motherboard) than the 920.
no, the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform... and you would have been a lot further ahead in the long run.

just about everyone is telling you the same thing, but you feel compelled to argue against all logic :roll: :lol:
yoitsmeremember wrote:If not the hardware, then the drivers, but as far as I'm concerned, they're one package. If either doesn't work, it's useless to me.
how do you know that it's not an issue with your operating system, like a driver conflict? you already told us that you use winxp more than win7.
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...firewire is largely a dead technology these days, you should have used ethernet to transfer your data."
Except, my video camera doesn't have Ethernet support, it has Firewire, so that's what I have to use.
nobody ever suggested that you use ethernet for transferring from a video camera, because you were whining about transferring data between two computers, period.

it's dumb to use firewire for that.

danimal
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Post by danimal » Sat May 08, 2010 9:54 am

yoitsmeremember wrote: I did look at the photo, but the photo doesn't tell you that you can't get 16 lanes to the bottom x16 slot. Neweggs specs don't even tell you. It just says "2 (support single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)."
what does the owners manual tell you about the bottom 16x slot?

did you read the owners manual before buying the motherboard?

colm
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Re: The worst motherboard I have ever owned...

Post by colm » Sat May 08, 2010 3:18 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:In short, there is no way to use a dual-slot graphics card in x16 and make use of the PCIe lanes on the north bridge.

It might not be a real problem: see what happens with an HD5870.
yoitsmeremember wrote:Don't waste your time or money on this motherboard.

Lots of mobos (expecially supposed hi-end ones) turn out to be problematic (or crappy at all, sometime): among tier-1 vendors I have had not so good experiences with DFI, eVGA and MSI.

Regards,
Luca
I agree about msi. I did squeeze 4 years out of a 6728.. and finally burned the crazy missing mosfet pairs. I must have been going less than full throttle for a long time.

In my case it was not about ignoring options as well, it was a manufactured problem. the rant is real, there is some half butted stuff riding a good name...it always seems to be asian, and if not influenced by it (american cars today for example) gotta stay smarter than ever.

yoitsmeremember
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Post by yoitsmeremember » Sun May 23, 2010 12:31 am

danimal wrote:as i told you earlier:

"you do realize that the 1156 platform is crippled"

you bought into the wrong platform, regardless of who manufactured the motherboard.
No, it's possible to use both the 16 lanes for a graphics card AND the 4 lanes on the north bridge. What part of this don't you realize?
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...the 920 is a better choice for using large amounts of ram."
Why?
tri-channel vs. dual-channel, a better memory controller, etc.
.. do your homework next time.
All tests I have read show minimal if any memory performance improvement in triple vs. dual channel. "In the vast, vast majority of situations Lynnfield's dual channel DDR3 memory controller won't hurt it." (src) This is further shown by their encoding benchmarks, which show that peak frequency is basically all that matters when looking at encode time. Do your homework before replying.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...the increased wattage that you are worried about is due to more processing capability than the 1156 platform offers."
No. To quote Anandtech, "...the Nehalem architecture, thanks to its PCU and power gate transistors, was the most power efficient of the high end options." Also, it's not slower, as you'll see in the video encoding (which is what my machine is always doing when it isn't BSoDing) benchmarks that the 860 beats the 920.
wrong.

it's all about 1)the number of cores that the app can take advantage of, and 2)the clock rate... so the only benchmarks that matter are those that compare similar clocks to begin with, using apps that can fully take advantage of all cores.

the i7 975 beats all comers at factory clocks, but since you can easily overclock a 920 to far exceed the factory i7 975 clock rate, those anandtech benchmarks are worthless.
x264 can easily take advantage of all cores. Also, it's not like overclocking could cause permanent damage to the CPU/motherboard. Oh, wait.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:"...you basically tried to go cheap here..." Ironic, because when I bought it, the 860 was much more expensive (especially when you considered the cost of the motherboard) than the 920.
no, the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform... and you would have been a lot further ahead in the long run.

just about everyone is telling you the same thing, but you feel compelled to argue against all logic :roll: :lol:
Paying more for memory would save me money....how? Also, no, other people here are not telling me the same, thing, it's just you, over and over.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:If not the hardware, then the drivers, but as far as I'm concerned, they're one package. If either doesn't work, it's useless to me.
how do you know that it's not an issue with your operating system, like a driver conflict? you already told us that you use winxp more than win7.
Because I get issues in Win7 as well. "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." Not as specific as the BSoDs in WinXP x64, but still there.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:"...firewire is largely a dead technology these days, you should have used ethernet to transfer your data."
Except, my video camera doesn't have Ethernet support, it has Firewire, so that's what I have to use.
nobody ever suggested that you use ethernet for transferring from a video camera, because you were whining about transferring data between two computers, period.

it's dumb to use firewire for that.
Right, but it served as an example to show that the problem was definitely on this motherboard's IEEE1394, and not the camera or his machine.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote: I did look at the photo, but the photo doesn't tell you that you can't get 16 lanes to the bottom x16 slot. Neweggs specs don't even tell you. It just says "2 (support single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)."
what does the owners manual tell you about the bottom 16x slot?

did you read the owners manual before buying the motherboard?
Yes, but let me tell you the extent of what the manual says. On page 2-25, in a little notes subsection, it says, and I quote, "In single VGA card mode, use first the PCIe 2.0 x16_1 slot for a PCI Express x16 graphics card for better performance." First off, it makes no direct mention of what "better performance" actually means. Secondly, it's buried 51 pages in and placed in a little notes afterthought box. So yes, I read the manual, but no, I didn't read it in its entirety, or that particular line.

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Post by danimal » Sun May 23, 2010 3:06 pm

yoitsmeremember wrote:All tests I have read show minimal if any memory performance improvement in triple vs. dual channel.
not true, but i told you it was better largely because tri-channel memory is a better solution for addressing large amounts of ram... and then there is this thing called "bandwidth"... oh, never mind.

overclocking ram doesn't always improve performance, so don't try telling us about "peak frequency".
yoitsmeremember wrote: x264 can easily take advantage of all cores. Also, it's not like overclocking could cause permanent damage to the CPU/motherboard. Oh, wait.
imagine that.

you bought into a crippled socket platform, told us that you wanted to overclock it, and then learned about 1156 socket burn after the fact :roll:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:"...you basically tried to go cheap here..." Ironic, because when I bought it, the 860 was much more expensive (especially when you considered the cost of the motherboard) than the 920.
no, the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform... and you would have been a lot further ahead in the long run.

just about everyone is telling you the same thing, but you feel compelled to argue against all logic :roll: :lol:
Paying more for memory would save me money....how?
see above:

" the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform"

yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:If not the hardware, then the drivers, but as far as I'm concerned, they're one package. If either doesn't work, it's useless to me.
how do you know that it's not an issue with your operating system, like a driver conflict? you already told us that you use winxp more than win7.
Because I get issues in Win7 as well. "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." Not as specific as the BSoDs in WinXP x64, but still there.
no bsod? sounds like different failure mode.
yoitsmeremember wrote: it says, and I quote, "In single VGA card mode, use first the PCIe 2.0 x16_1 slot for a PCI Express x16 graphics card for better performance."
which reminds me of your first post to this thread:
yoitsmeremember wrote: No, it's possible to use both the 16 lanes for a graphics card AND the 4 lanes on the north bridge. What part of this don't you realize?

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Post by yoitsmeremember » Sun May 23, 2010 3:51 pm

danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:All tests I have read show minimal if any memory performance improvement in triple vs. dual channel.
not true, but i told you it was better largely because tri-channel memory is a better solution for addressing large amounts of ram... and then there is this thing called "bandwidth"... oh, never mind.

overclocking ram doesn't always improve performance, so don't try telling us about "peak frequency".
It doesn't matter. It doesn't translate into faster encoding, so I really, really, really don't care.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote: x264 can easily take advantage of all cores. Also, it's not like overclocking could cause permanent damage to the CPU/motherboard. Oh, wait.
imagine that.

you bought into a crippled socket platform, told us that you wanted to overclock it, and then learned about 1156 socket burn after the fact :roll:
Funny, because I never said I wanted to overclock it. At this point you're just trolling.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote: no, the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform... and you would have been a lot further ahead in the long run.

just about everyone is telling you the same thing, but you feel compelled to argue against all logic :roll: :lol:
Paying more for memory would save me money....how?
see above:

" the cost of the additional memory for the 920 would have made up for your mistake of paying the price premium for a new platform"
No, the marginal cost of the RAM would have exceeded the premium for the MB/CPU combo.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote: how do you know that it's not an issue with your operating system, like a driver conflict? you already told us that you use winxp more than win7.
Because I get issues in Win7 as well. "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." Not as specific as the BSoDs in WinXP x64, but still there.
no bsod? sounds like different failure mode.
That is a BSoD. Google it.
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote: it says, and I quote, "In single VGA card mode, use first the PCIe 2.0 x16_1 slot for a PCI Express x16 graphics card for better performance."
which reminds me of your first post to this thread:
yoitsmeremember wrote: No, it's possible to use both the 16 lanes for a graphics card AND the 4 lanes on the north bridge. What part of this don't you realize?
Right, technically possible, but physically impossible, because all modern graphics cards are dual slot.

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Post by Wibla » Sun May 23, 2010 4:42 pm

So it basically comes back to what was stated way up there in the beginning of the thread..

LGA-1156 is gimped compared to LGA-1366, there are no two ways around that. LGA-1366 on the other hand, is alot more expensive, and I have serious problems trying to justify either platform at this time, with one being gimped and the other pushing TCO way up.


I think all points that can be made in this thread has been made, at this point it has reverted to throwing crap around, which doesnt help anyone.

TL;DR: Stop beating a dead horse.

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Post by danimal » Mon May 24, 2010 5:03 pm

yoitsmeremember wrote: It doesn't matter. It doesn't translate into faster encoding, so I really, really, really don't care.
riiight, who needs more ram for video work :roll:
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote: x264 can easily take advantage of all cores. Also, it's not like overclocking could cause permanent damage to the CPU/motherboard. Oh, wait.
imagine that.

you bought into a crippled socket platform, told us that you wanted to overclock it, and then learned about 1156 socket burn after the fact :roll:
Funny, because I never said I wanted to overclock it. At this point you're just trolling.
whoops, i guess i got confused when you inferred that overclocking causes socket burn on all platforms, instead of just the crippled 1156 socket that you bought into :lol:
yoitsmeremember wrote:No, the marginal cost of the RAM would have exceeded the premium for the MB/CPU combo.
wrong again, which you would have known if you had done your homework in the first place.
yoitsmeremember wrote: That is a BSoD. Google it.
but a different failure mode. google it.
yoitsmeremember wrote:
danimal wrote:
yoitsmeremember wrote: it says, and I quote, "In single VGA card mode, use first the PCIe 2.0 x16_1 slot for a PCI Express x16 graphics card for better performance."
which reminds me of your first post to this thread:
yoitsmeremember wrote: No, it's possible to use both the 16 lanes for a graphics card AND the 4 lanes on the north bridge. What part of this don't you realize?
Right, technically possible, but physically impossible, because all modern graphics cards are dual slot.
which you could have easily seen when you looked at the picture of the motherboard.

wait, haven't we been here before?

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Post by merlin » Tue May 25, 2010 1:15 pm

Definitely beating a more than dead horse at this point. Agree to disagree time I think and it's clear the OP didn't know what he was getting at the time and had some issues, but there's nothing conclusive about anything here regarding the board outside of 1156 limitations.

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:53 pm

All asus board suck.

That's just a rule. I hate that company ever since the K6-2/ k6-3 era when I had to deal with them.

blech. I have a simple p45 board now from Asus. upon looking at it though, I think it really isnt made by asus. The fancy boards I wouldnt touch.

buy Intel boards and intel chipsets. then buy low voltage Crucial ram. Two together is most tried and true aside from like buying a Tyan board.

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