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Install went perfect though the built-in ethernet ports weren't recognized by the WS 3 U1 install. In the interest of time I stabbed my Linksys 10/100 PCI card (rev 5.1 I think) in. Kudzu picked it right up and configured everything on reboot with no other drivers needed. This board uses the NVIDIA® NForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T chipset and everything else I've tested works fine as best I can tell. WS 3 found the USB ports and when I plugged in a USB pen drive it showed up under the mount tool where I could mount it with just a click of the mouse.

All in all I am very happy with this board under Linux. I am running an AMD Athlon XP 2400 overclocked to where the board thinks it's an Athlon XP 3200. I run it with three hard drives and Win98 on one of them. The funny thing is that Linux works far better on this board than Win98. When I first got it set up under Win98 I tried it with "the Windows sound" for Windows start and it stuttered bad - even with the nvidia Win98 drivers installed. Not even the faintest hint of a stutter under Linux.

Kind of makes a dad proud ;-).

Hotfeet

Works like a dream! The onboard sound worked fine without any setup. The onboard lan just required a driver (although I have not used it much at all). I haven't had a single problem with it running.

On a side note, it is a nice board and comes with everything you'll need and more in the box, including IDE cables and other goodies.

vasudevadas

Haven't tried the gigabit LAN yet but everything else works OK. NForce2 chipset, no trouble. Silicon Image si3112 SATA controller detected fine on installing Mandrake 10, which is more than can be said for the Windows XP installer! I run an Athlon XP3000+ on it with no troubles. I recommend this board.

p-static

I moved up to this board from an older VIA-based board, while keeping the same install, so I was honestly expecting more issues than it gave me. I had to rebuild some modules to get sound and USB2 working, and download the NVIDIA drivers for Gigabit Ethernet. However, I was able to pop in my old network card, so the transition was pretty painless. My biggest issue with this board is the voice thing it does on POST, where it says the system status out loud; I find it downright creepy.

Overall, the board is very easy to work with, but I only rated it an 8 because you still have to go to other places to get it fully functional.

Steel_J

Everything works out of the box.

No headaches here! USB 2.0, Firewire ,Gigabits ethernet also works fine.

Mr.Gosh

Installation went fine without any problems,
onbord sound, 100 Mbit Lan, firewire, usb 2.0 worked out of the box
didn`t test 1000 Mbit Lan until now

and I wasn`t able to install the NForce driver, but I also don`t know why I shoul?!?

jerm1701

Mandrake 10.1 Official installed and works perfectly with this MOBO. On board Audio, Lan, USB, etc.. all working. Note, I haven't tried the RAID.

Jeremy

cybersextant

Installed (2nd try, successful, today) to coexist with Win 98SE on same 80 GB drive (GRUB used for dual-boot option); partitioned the FAT32 initially with Partition Magic, then further refined for Linux installation using Disk Druid. Had problems with 1st install (yesterday), not due to MOBO itself but rather to a nasty little "e-GeForce4 MX4000" AGP card, which did not cooperate with X Windows at all. Replaced that with a Radeon 9550SE and chose the generic VEGA option that Red Hat install pointed me to. (Also chose text-mode log in that time around, just in case...) But the Radeon card yields a fine millions-of-colors display right out of the box. Like one of the other commentators on this page, I used a PCI NIC card rather than trying to detect/install the onboard Gigabit and 10/100. I am not using the RAID but boot hangs up for a while every time looking for hde and hdg because it thinks there's a RAID setup. Couldn't find a way to disable this in BIOS. Anyone have a clue?

cybersextant

Further to my last, it is easy to disable the RAID probing, but NOT in the BIOS setup. There's a jumper on the motherboard!

An alternative (which I tried before discovering the above) is to add the command "linux dd hde=noprobe hdg=noprobe" to boot...

Another note: downloading "NFORCE-Linux-x86-1.0-0292-pkg1.run" from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.0-0292.html and running it per instructions will get the on-board 10/100 adapter up and running nicely (kudzu will then detect it on reboot). Best to install a NIC first, though, making that card eth0 and then designating the on-board as eth1.

Still working on getting the on-board Marvell Gigabit adapter up and running...

Spudley

This is now my second A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard. The first one died unexpectedly (which will obviously detract from this review... which won't be good anyway).

Neither of the two built-in network ports worked, so I was forced to pull a card from another machine to get it online. One of the ports was not picked up at all; the other one was detected, but the drivers didn't work. This is a big problem, because the built-in high speed network port was one of the reasons I chose this board in the first place.

Two of the USB ports are also not recognised; I think they are part of the same subsystem as the unrecognised network card.

The on-board sound card is recognised and plays audio beautifully, but I've not been able to get it to accept input from my microphone.

The original motherboard also had some issues with the SATA interface, but the new one is fine with that.

Overall, I would not recommend this motherboard. Yes, it works, and yes, the problems can be surmounted, but I've tried two of them, and I've had the same problems with them both, so my verdict is: you'll be better off with something different.

keefaz

Works without a pain.

Drivers enabled as modules :
- on board sound : snd_intel8x0
- Gigabyte lan : sk98lin
- agp : agpgart, nvidia_agp
- sensor : i2c_nforce2, asb100

IDE driver enabled as built-in :
- AMD and nVidia IDE support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_AMD74XX)

I don't use the nvidia on board card, but I tried it once :
- I downloaded the nforce drivers from nvidia
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
- I compiled and installed only nvnet (I use alsa snd_intel8x0 for sound)
All worked fine

The only issue I had is I did not succeed with enable the Wake on Lan
feature of the Gigabyte lan card (I can live without that)

I recommend also compile and install the sk98lin driver from
http://www.syskonnect.de/syskonnect/support/driver/d0102_driver.html
It will install a man page for the sk98lin driver and ethtool support,
also a good instructions readme file

Gnea

I've got the A7N8X Deluxe without the Wifi option but it does have the Gigabit LAN option. With a regular 2.4 kernel-based installation, half of the hardware, including both nics, will not be detected. The only solutions are a) to find an installation method with a 2.6 kernel (they exist today) OR b) get a spare PCI NIC and toss it in a slot that will be recognized. This board literally requires a 2.6 kernel to be of any use but when it's there, this board performs like a champ! Next step is to obtain some SATA drives. I recommend this board to anyone who's got the time, patience and skill to make it work.

Chunder

I'm a total Linux n00b, yet managed to get (almost) everything up and running without any problems.

The only thing I'm struggling with is getting the onboard 5.1 digital output to work - preliminary Googling suggests that others have managed it (albeit not with a straightforward solution...) so fingers crossed...

My USB mouse and memory card reader are detected, although I haven't figured out how to access the memory cards yet.

No major complaints yet, anyway - and if I can get a Linux distro running on it, then I'm sure that anyone can :-)

(P.S. /me waves hello to everyone!)

jerm1701

I upgraded from MDK 10.1 (see above) to Mandriva 2005LE. I had major issues with random freezing. I tried everything I could think of to keep this board from freezing under Mandriva, included in this topic, and nothing worked.

In the end, I had to reformat and re-install MDK 10.1.

Jeremy

Emmanuel_uk

Worked perfectly well with mandriva 10.2 (and 10.1 as well).
Was my first build and first linux PC

bb002

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This board is great! Mandriva detected everything without any troubles at all! The voive that announces the POST status is pretty creepy as another reviewer mentioned. Luckily there is an option in the BIOS to disable it. I'm dual booting with windows 98SE. 98 ocasionally crashes but I think that's more due to win98 having a 2Ghz limitation and I'm running a AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (about 2.1Ghz).

R_Shackleford

Solid board. I use the nForce drivers, but the ethernet works fine with the forcedeth driver. The AthlonXP 3000+ produces a good bit of heat. If you O/C it, make sure you have adequate cooling. I rate it 9 only because of the RAID bios delay. Otherwise, it rocks! I agree with bb002, disable the creepy POST announcer voice.

Mizzou_Engineer

A buddy of mine gave me this board with a Duron 1600 to use in my HTPC.

Things that do not work with Debian Lenny out of the box:
- Onboard sound via the rear ports (NForce2 APU)
- CPU thermal diode
- BIOS cannot be flashed from a FreeDOS CD-ROM

Things that do work:
- SATA controller
- PATA controller
- Hardware sensors
- USB controller
- PCI controller
- AGP controller

The board itself is decent but not stellar. The included Silicon Image SATA-150 controller was big plus as PCI SATA cards just generally don't seem to work well (and I've tried several) and this controller works flawlessly. The large numbers of USB ports was also nice to have as well as I did not need a USB hub to connect the various peripherals hooked up to my HTPC. The two LAN interfaces are nice, especially since one is gigabit. The board is fanless, which is a positive, but it does throw off a bit of heat, so decent case ventilation is a must. It also overvolts CPUs a bit- my Duron has a nominal Vcore of 1.500 volts yet the A7N8X-E overvolts it to 1.55 to 1.57 volts as a matter of course, even if I manually set the Vcore to 1.500 volts.