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ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe

https://sites.google.com/site/nf2stuff/ might be useful if you want more recent drivers than what Nvidia has available for download on their website. I know some people have experienced BSODs with the WHQL drivers on nForce 2-based boards with versions of Windows beyond XP that the newer beta drivers have fixed in some cases.
 
cthulhu said:
https://sites.google.com/site/nf2stuff/ might be useful if you want more recent drivers than what Nvidia has available for download on their website. I know some people have experienced BSODs with the WHQL drivers on nForce 2-based boards with versions of Windows beyond XP that the newer beta drivers have fixed in some cases.
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Thanks for the link. The BSOD that I experienced was during the W7 setup. It's going to take some work on my part to get it sorted out.
 
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A7 progress update: Lots of new things happening today. Finally figured out what was going on with the SATA/RAID mobo issue. It seems that there was this innocuous little jumper tucked in behind the battery and it was staked to SATA OFF. What threw me off was the fact that I could see the SSD on the (press F4) SATA/RAID menu. Now I am able to use the on-board (2 ea) SATA connectors and see the SSD and CDROM on POST. The third party SATA to IDE adapter is now history. It should be noted, however, that the BIOS needs to be set for SCSI, and not RAID, if you intend to use only one SSD. Because of the previous SSD XP install, using the SATA to IDE adapter, the OS thinks it installed on an IDE HD (it didn't ask for the SATA driver [F6]). Therefore, attempting to boot using the on-board SATA connection will only allow XP to initialize the NTLDR, and then it dies at the XP 'Welcome' screen. I know what you are thinking, why doesn't he just run the setup CD and hit F6 under repair and add the SATA/RAID motherboard drivers. Not quite that simple, as the system has already been setup as IDE, and you would have to figure out how to slip those drivers in-place, somewhere deep in the system and registry. It might be possible but that's over my head. So, the easy way out was to reinstall the OS as a SATA SSD setup. Mission accomplished - the basic XP system is up and running, and I only need to get the games and some other miscellaneous software re-installed. As an aside, I've had the time to play with the setup this past week or so, as I recently underwent successful cataract surgery on my left eye. That makes me sort of a home bound prisoner as I have to have 3 different kinds of eye drops 4 time a day for 2 weeks running. On the 18th it starts all over again with the right eye.
 
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A7 progress update: I ran a FPS benchmark on H.A.W.X. and got 30 FPS throughout the entire mission. Not too shabby for a 11 year old mobo. The BIOS CPU and memory timings are set for "Aggressive" which bumps the core to 1.650 v, as the the default is 1.400. If you were blessed with patience of Job, you might be able to eek out 2.4 GHz, but I don't think the extra heat and all the fuss that goes along with it is going to give you much more of a kick in terms of FPS. I'm working on Doom 3 and I'll have something on that later on.
 
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A7 progress update: The above benchmark was obtained with a Viewsonic VX2262, which is a 22" flat panel LCD with a native resolution of 1680 x 1050, manufactured and purchased in 2008 . I also ran the H.A.W.X. FPS benchmark on my Asus Sabertooth 990FX just for sake of comparison. My big box has an 8350 w/16 GB of RAM, along with 2 XFX 7970's in CrossFire (definitely not cutting edge any more, but sill viable). The video was set for full anti-aliasing, high filtering, optimized shader cache and tessellation. The game was showing 60-62 FPS throughout the mission. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When playing both games side by side, you must give the edge to the bigger unit. However, there's not a whole lot left for discussion. The A7 running H.A.W.X. looked darn good at 30 FPS for its age. I would like to load-up some newer stuff but I'm not ready to deal with Steam.
 
I'm wondering how much longer Valve will continue supporting XP as a platform. They were quick to drop Windows 98SE when MS stopped supporting it in 2006. The same for Windows 2000 in 2010.

XP stopped being supported coming up on two years ago now, besides XP POS Ready 2009 which isn't really mainstream.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I'm wondering how much longer Valve will continue supporting XP as a platform. They were quick to drop Windows 98SE when MS stopped supporting it in 2006. The same for Windows 2000 in 2010.

XP stopped being supported coming up on two years ago now, besides XP POS Ready 2009 which isn't really mainstream.
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I suppose I'm not in the main stream as far the latest and greatest must have this or that for gaming. If they drop XP it will not be without consequences. The very thing they wanted to avert, piracy, will become rampant once again. I can be content with what the likes of GOG has to offer, and at a fraction of the price and no hassle.
 
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A7 progress update: I recently ordered "Doom 3 BFG Edition" and received it the other day ($8.95 shrink wrapped w/ shipping incl). I wanted Doom 3 because its release date was 2004, and just about the right time for the hardware in this project. I was excited to get the game setup and running on the A7, but all of that was short lived as Doom 3 bombed. Here's what I saw:

QA Timing INIT: 000171ms
D3BFG 1.1400 win-x86 Nov 9 2012 10:38:21
2205 MHz AMD CPU with MMX & 3DNow! & SSE
3072 MB System Memory
512 MB Video Memory
--------- Game Map Shutdown ----------
--------------------------------------
********************
ERROR: SSE2 not supported!
********************
Unknown command 'vid_restart'
SSE2 not supported!
Shutting down OpenGL subsystem
...shutting down QGL

There's some help out there for this, but I don't have the time patience for it right now. The heart of the problem seems to be the Nvidia GeForce 7800 video card. It's kind of disheartening, as Nvidia didn't seem to address this failure head on. To tell the truth, I don't think I've ever had a game dump like his one. Anyway, I tried to run it on my big box's XP HD, and it was even worse. I may give it a shot on my W7 laptop and see how it goes. I have a PIII Intel tweener that it might run on, and there's a possibility it would run on my Gigabyte backup with the Crossfire 5950's. I could put a PCI video card in the A7, but that's a down grade and not part of project plan, as I don't want to give up that good AGP performance. More on some of the older games that are running okay later.

Dang it! I'm very disappointed over this. Down but not out.

Late Edit: After reviewing the fine print on the back of the Doom 3 BFG CD box, it looks like the minimum requirements for an OS are Vista/W7 and a GeForce 9800/ATI Radeon HD 5850. My bad - look before you leap. What I should have ordered was "Doom 3" not "Doom 3 BFG" I'll work on that this weekend. BTW, some people did get Doom 3 BFG to work on XP w/ SP2, but that's not much of a consolation for me.
 
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The problem you're having is not the video card, it's your CPU. There was never a CPU on the Socket 462 platform that supported SSE2 instructions, which that game seems to require because of the error it's throwing:

"ERROR: SSE2 not supported!"

I'm sure the people that got that game working on Windows XP were using Pentium 4s, which have supported SSE2 since the original Socket 423 variants in 2000.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The problem you're having is not the video card, it's your CPU. There was never a CPU on the Socket 462 platform that supported SSE2 instructions, which that game seems to require because of the error it's throwing:

"ERROR: SSE2 not supported!"

I'm sure the people that got that game working on Windows XP were using Pentium 4s, which have supported SSE2 since the original Socket 423 variants in 2000.
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The SS2E error is/was prevalent with Nivida video cards. The real problem lies with Doom 3 BFG specs. It requires at least Vista or W7 and a 64-bit CPU. Wrong game for the A7. A compatible version of Doom 3 is on the way.
[h=2]Models for Socket A (Socket 462)[/h]
[h=3]Barton (130 nm)[/h]
  • L1-Cache: 64 + 64 KiB (Data + Instructions)
  • L2-Cache: 512 KiB, fullspeed
  • MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
  • Socket A (EV6)
  • Front side bus: 166 MHz – 200 MHz (FSB 333 – 400)
  • VCore: 1.6 – 1.65 V
  • First release: September 17, 2004
  • Clockrate: 2000–2200 MHz (Sempron 3000+, Sempron 3300+)
 
A7 progress update: I finally received Doom 3 ($0.99 + $4.25) from the west coast today. It was postmarked January 19th, and mailed out 1st class. I'll try to get it installed tonight or tomorrow and let you know how it goes. This version of Doom is from 2004 and that would be spot on for this build. All in all, this project is near completion, and is slowly but surely winding down.
 
A7 progress update: Received Doom 3 (2004) and have a problem with CD #3. The last file, PAK004.PK4, only unpacks to 95%. Seems this is a notorious problem with this game, and ID Software has kind of side-stepped the issue down through the years. So, at this point I'm searching for that particular file. BTW, dumping all of the files to the HD does not fix the issue, as some have suggested. The file will not fully transfer from the CD. Anyone have PAK004.PK4?
 
A7 progress update: Doom 3 is up and running thanks to the 'pak004.pk4' file pointer from Plasma. I haven't had time to run through the whole game, but from what I've seen it looks pretty good at 800 x 600. The action is constant with no stutter noticed, no hangs, and the 2-speaker stereo sound is okay. I need to figure out a patch for no-cd as that is a real PITA (copy protection from yesteryear)(no Steam either). It my be a short while before I get back to he A7, as I'm in the middle of my new Asus Z170 build.
 
There are manuals and drivers that I can encounter online. I have also found one downloadable SATA Raid Mother ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe. I hope that helps or you may look at the Asus website.
 
Agent Orange said:
A7 progress update: Doom 3 is up and running thanks to the 'pak004.pk4' file pointer from Plasma. I haven't had time to run through the whole game, but from what I've seen it looks pretty good at 800 x 600. The action is constant with no stutter noticed, no hangs, and the 2-speaker stereo sound is okay. I need to figure out a patch for no-cd as that is a real PITA (copy protection from yesteryear)(no Steam either). It my be a short while before I get back to he A7, as I'm in the middle of my new Asus Z170 build.
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Steam 1.0 and 2.0 weren't too bad resource wise, but 3.0 and beyond is when they tossed any sort of optimization out the window. Modern versions of Steam use ridiculous amounts of disk space and consome more memory than most late 1990s computers had total.
 
Agent Orange said:
A7 progress update: Doom 3 is up and running thanks to the 'pak004.pk4' file pointer from Plasma. I haven't had time to run through the whole game, but from what I've seen it looks pretty good at 800 x 600. The action is constant with no stutter noticed, no hangs, and the 2-speaker stereo sound is okay. I need to figure out a patch for no-cd as that is a real PITA (copy protection from yesteryear)(no Steam either). It my be a short while before I get back to he A7, as I'm in the middle of my new Asus Z170 build.
Click to expand...

Found a patch today for DOOM 3 no CD. ( http://www.moddb.com/games/doom-iii/downloads/doom-3-131-fixed-patch-v2 ) The patch installs easily and solves the CD problem.
 
Doom 3 Update on the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe:

As previously stated Doom 3 was up and running but the resolution wasn't optimized. Attempting to set the resolution from the Doom 3 control panel works but my install wouldn't permit me to 'save' the settings for whatever reason.

My fix: Drill down into the Doom 3 folder Doom 3> d3xp> autoexec.cfg
Right click on the autoexec.cfg and open it with Notepad. Edit as follows: 'set r_customwidth 1366' and 'set r_customheight 768'. Please note that 1366 & 768 may be different on your system depending on the monitor, video card, and your own personal preferences.

Looks nice, runs nice, and sounds pretty good.
 
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W7 Update on the Asus A7N8X Deluxe:

I managed to get W7 to somewhat install, but I'm getting multiple BSOD's over driver issues. I was able to work around the previous RAID/SCSI driver issue and got W7 to see the SI drivers for the the SSD. It looks like W7 is just not destined for this board, and that's the end of the road for me on that mod. My next step is do some work on up dating the games library.
 
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