Asus A7V133 questions.

[lhgpoobaa]

A couple of questions.

1. i think i got sold a A7V133 raid when i didnt really want one. my hard drives were attached to a promise controller. i unplugged them and put them into the normal primary master & slave positions.
question. how do i turn off the promise controller alltogether? it still tries to detect drives at startup (stopping the bootup for 10 seconds or so) and registers as an unsupported device in win 2k.

2. how can you definitively tell the difference between the 133 and the 133 raid? does the standard 133 have the alternate hard drive cable plugin ports and the promise ultraATA100 controller too?

3. regarding the Asus probe hardware monitoring program.
have just found that its missreading most of my hardware, the worst being the core temp by over 10 deg C!
ive heard there is a patch for that... anyone know where i can get it?

thanx in advance

This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[jlanka]

Most RAID mobos will have 4 as opposed to 2 (non-RAID) IDE ports.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

hmmmms
*cracks open case*

what do we have in here...
2 standard IDE primary master/slave & secondary...
&
2 alternate promise ports...
hmmms again.


This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[Guest]

The A7V133 is a very good motherboard, so don't be sorry.

The Promise IDE connectors sit together as a pair, the standard IDE connectors sit in group with the floppy connector. The blue connector is primary controller.

If your board has RAID you have 4 IDE connectors in all.
If you have a promise bios post, then you must have a RAID version.
But RAID can be disabled, so you have 4 standard IDE controllers.
The Promise Controller is switched between RAID100 and Normal IDE100 by 2 jumpers on the A7V133 motherboard. They are called JP13 and JP14 if both are at pins 1 and 2 you select normal ATA100, if they are placed on pins 2 and 3 you select RAID operation.

You can disable the Promise IDE in your CMOS setup.
In section "BOOT" you disable "Load Onboard ATA Bios"

The Asus Probe does not show a too high temperature, but does show higher temps than other programs, because it makes an estimate of your core temp, based on the surface temp. If you want the actually meassured surface temp, you can use a program like MBM5 (Motherboard Monitor 5), but this is only useful if you wish to compare your temps with others.

All this can be read at Asus homepage, you can even download the manual for your motherboard if you have lost it.

Hope this helps you.


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Engage!

 

[khha4113]

1. i think i got sold a A7V133 raid when i didnt really want one.

All <b>A7V133</b> mobos have <b>Promise RAID</b> controller.
You can turn it off in BIOS under <font color=blue><b>Boot Menu</b></font color=blue> (Option <b><font color=red>Load Onboard ATA BIOS</font color=red></b> to <b>disabled</b>).



Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Cool. that explains much.
thanx heaps..
a couple of queries though...
when i first got it i installed win98 (wanted 2000) while my drives were still on the promise controller and it worked ok.
even though my drive were not (and could not be set up to raid)
one being 40gig, the other 16.8
so how was that possible if they were on a riad controller?

also...
so which temp do i take as an accurate reading of the core? the one reading 54 in the bois or 65 via probe.
last thing...
i found i had to set my voltage in the bios to 1.70 to get a biosreported & probe reported core voltage of 1.745
ever heard of this happening before? innaccurate voltages?

off to disable my promise controller
regards.


This behavior must not continue! Feel the BURNING STARE of my HAMSTER... and change your ways!

 

[khha4113]

when i first got it i installed win98 (wanted 2000) while my drives were still on the promise controller and it worked ok.
even though my drive were not (and could not be set up to raid)
one being 40gig, the other 16.8
so how was that possible if they were on a riad controller?

Promise controller can function either ATA100 or RAID. By default, <b>A7V133</b> mobo has it set up as ATA100 (page 20 on manual, JP13 and JP14 have jumper on 1-2).

so which temp do i take as an accurate reading of the core? the one reading 54 in the bois or 65 via probe.

BIOS. My Asus probe also show higher than my MBM 4.18 11C difference.


Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[dmcmahon]

All of the information provided by the other posters is of very high quality so I will only add the following:

1. Disabling the Promise controller in the BIOS will speed up your boot time, but the device will still show up in device manager with a ? because it's still detected on the PCI bus. You can safely ignore this, but if it bothers you then just install the Promise driver (you can download it from Asus's or Promise's web sites).

2. Re. the probe and temperatures, I routinely get temps in the 46-55C range from Asus probe, and these numbers agree with the BIOS. (Though my CPU is only 1.2G.) You may have a cooling issue, though the numbers you cite are still (barely) passable (60C is considered the outer edge).

 

[Guest]

Asus Probe is the most accurate, as it try to estimate the actual core temperature, instead of just showing the temperature meassured at the surface.
Promise Raid on Asus A7V133 does not have all functions of the original Promise Raid. That may be the reason your previous setup cannot be transfered to it.
It is recommended by Promise to use 2 disks of similar size and make, maybe Asus changed that to a requirement.

All Asus boards I have tested gives the core a little extra voltage, but if you use the AUTO setting in BIOS, you may get a little less than specified by AMD. This is perfectly normal, I prefer manual setting, and the little extra voltage. The extra voltage often enables processors to run faster when you overclock, but that is a chapter for itself. You may try the AUTO setting and see if your temp falls a little, it is too high. You may also consider checking airflow in your case, moving cables that hinders airflow, and maybe buy a new CPU cooler. Your cooling is inadequate.

Note RAID works best if both drives are IDENTICAL!

Best of luck...

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Engage!