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ASUS A8V
Reviews Views Date of last review
3 7685 02-12-2006
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Recommended By Average Price Average Rating
100% of reviewers None indicated 8.3



Description: AMD Athlon 64 or 64FX
32-bit or 64-bit capable
Chipset: VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237
Front Side Bus 2000 MT/s
Dual-channel DDR400/333
AMD Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
AGP8X
HD: SATA, EIDE, RAID
ASUS WiFi-g
Crashfree BIOS (even after flashing)
IEEE 1394
USB 2.0
Onboard LAN, Audio
Keywords: 939 64-bit AMD AGP
Chipset: VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237
Connection Type: P,S,USB,SATA,PS/2,1394


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Old 01-31-2005, 05:10 PM   #1
highlandsun
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Posts: 1
Thanked: 0
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 8

Kernel (uname -r): 2.6.8-24.11-default
Distribution: SuSE 9.2



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It wasn't obvious to me, but a quick search revealed that the Marvell Yukon NIC is supported by the SysKonnect SK98xx driver.

The onboard Promise PDC20378 is only partially supported - the SATA ports are handled by the sata_promise driver but the PATA ports are unsupported. This is the reason I'm giving this board an '8'.

It seems that the audio is supported, I hear feedback from KDE, but I haven't tried anything extensive. Since this is basically a compile server, I haven't been too interested.

By the way, here is the output from lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 0282
0000:00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 1282
0000:00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 2282
0000:00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3282
0000:00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 4282
0000:00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 7282
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800 South]
0000:00:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:08.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20378 (FastTrak 378/SATA 378) (rev 02)
0000:00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter (rev 13)
0000:00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [K8T800 South]
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4153
0000:01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 ?? [Radeon 9550] (Secondary)

The video card is a Diamond Stealth S120 with Radeon 9550, obviously not part of the motherboard...
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Old 05-01-2005, 05:21 PM   #2
RickyRockRat
 
Registered: Apr 2005
Distribution: Red Hat - 6.2,7.3,9.0,FC3,FC4, FC5, Debian-3.1
Posts: 10
Thanked: 0
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 8

Kernel (uname -r): 2.6.11-1.14_FC3 (x86_64)
Distribution: Red Hat


The stock FC3 install is buggy - my system would freeze.
I am using a Chaintech Nvidia card FX5200 - works well w/ all modes I cared to try (Xinerama, twinhead, Svideo out works well)
This is considered a A8V Deluxe, not sure how it is different from the vanilla A8V. Here are more details:

VIA 8237
2 UDMA IDE
2 Serial ATA w/RAID (0,1,JBOD)
The promise PDC20387 controller provides
1 UDMA IDE
2 serial ATA w/RAID (0, 1, 0+1, multiple)

The promise controller can be overclocked much better than the VIA chipset. I am not convinced that the VIA chipset doesn't have a bug in the hardware, most likely DMA related.
Audio-
Realtek ALC850 8ch codec, S/PDIF out. I can get the Surround to work with 2 rear, 2 front, but I haven't gotten the side, center or LF to work yet. Not impressed with the sound compatibility but then maybe I don't know enough about ALSA to set it up right. The volume only works on master....so you have to adjust the surround separately.

I am giving it an 8 because of the sound and the lack of promise support for the PATA ide channel. I use it to watch DVDs on and intend to have it as a multimedia box. You can put 9 drives on the thing (10 if they get the promise PATA working). I have only had it a few months so I can't tell you the long term stability.

I like the 64 bit system. The only thing that I haven't been able to compile was mpg123. I installed dosbox, Chromium, Wine, Xine to name a few. Spent days fiddling with the sound and video card (the latter isn't the boards fault)
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Old 02-12-2006, 08:41 AM   #3
Razze
 
Registered: Dec 2004
Distribution: Gentoo, 2.6.16-gentoo-r11
Posts: 108
Thanked: 0
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 9

Kernel (uname -r): 2.6.15-gentoo-r4
Distribution: gentoo


The board does all that I need from it.

Things that just work without further tweaking:
- sata (SCSI_SATA_VIA)
- ide (BLK_DEV_VIA82CXXX), in UDMA6 mode with DMA enabled
- lan (SKGE gigabit module, I only have 100M network so I cannot say anything about performance for gigabit networks)
- hw-monitoring using lm_sensors (W83627HF, I2C_VIAPRO)
- Cool'n'quiet (kernel powersaving settings)

Things I have not tried, and cannot asy for sure that they are working:
- onboard sound (I have a terratec cmipci-based card)
- raid

For me this is an excellent car, a full 10, but as there are some features that I have not tried i give it a 9
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