On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:19:19 -0800, below0 wrote:
> To vent some of my frustration with ASUS I decided to post to a few places
> my review of a recently acquired K8V Deluxe AMD64 board. It seems this is
> the only thing I can do since ASUS chooses to utterly ignore all of my
> attempts at getting some sort of support. And this is supposed to be a
> "deluxe", premium product. I pity those who buy just the "regular"
> motherboard from this company.
>
> On the surface the K8V looks good. I was initially pleased when I got it,
> glancing at a nice looking board and spiffy accessories. This feeling
> quickly dissipated. While the basic functions of the board are acceptable
> (the CPU and memory do operate) the rest has a lot to wish for.
>
> The BIOS is full of useless features like "Instant Music" that lets you
> play music CDs from the BIOS. I cannot fathom anyone actually using this
> "feature".
Agreed this is pretty much useless. I suppose it might serve some very
minimal purpose as a hardware test of some kind, but I doubt anyone
would really miss it.
> Add to this an ability to make the board "speak" uselessly at
> startup
Yes, it speaks. Usually only if something goes wrong, unless you
configure it to tell you when it is booting.
> and have a custom picture flash for 1/2 of a second during boot.
I think this may be more to do with the video card. My old video card
would switch graphics modes between the different boot phases. This
would cause the display to blank out for a short while to resync. This
problem has vanished with the new video card.
> And to pay for all of these miracles you only need to forget about being
> able to use both a PCI sound card and the on-board sound (because the
> speaking BIOS does not like 2 sound devices and automatically disables the
> on-board).
This is nothing to do with the spoken POST message chip. More likely it
is the limitaions of MS Windows, or at least it's users. I would like
to see them correct this is a BIOS update, but to be honest it isn't a
priority for me. My add in card is a lot better then the on board.
> Why would you need 2 Sound cards if you need to mix sound from
> more then one incoming source
I'd be very surprised if the onboard sound was of especially high
quality. If you had a good reason to want that sort of function then
it'd make more sense to buy two good sound cards.
> when you can have the board speak in a
> mumbled voice "The system is booted!!!".
Sounds clear enough to me. Certainly understandable. BTW, I don't get
that message as I have it disabled!
> I mean that is the reason you
> paid for on-board sound! No?
I got onboard sound because these days you can't get a motherboard
without it. As far as I know all modern VIA south bridge chips support
sound. They probably also have ethernet capabilities too.
> The board comes with 2 SATA controllers, one part of the VIA chipset and
> the other a FastTrack 150 by Promise. Both can do cheesy "software" RAID.
Hardware RAID is very expensive. You wont find a single on motherboard
"RAID" chip that is anything other than software RAID.
> The SATA cables that come with the board do not lock onto the sockets so
> if you sneeze they will fall off the drives or the MB. Add to this the
> fact that the HDD activity LED will not function for the SATA drives
> unless they are in the RAID mode on the VIA controller. So if you only
> have 1 SATA HDD, forget about the HDD LED. Why would you need a
> functioning HDD LED which you will use nearly each time your PC is on
I haven't actually used the SATA seriously yet. I had PATA discs from
my old motherboard so I got an IDE controller card which is working very
nicely. Of course it doesn't light the LED either, but I don't really
miss it.
> when
> you can turn your PC into a $2000 single-function CD-player once in a
> decade?! I mean one has to have his priorities straight!
You think these are somehow related?
> I use mostly Linux.
Your most sensible comment so far! *
> There is a good driver in the 2.6 kernels for VIA SATA
> and a lousy one for Promise SATA so I am not going to be using the buggy
> driver and a secondary controller just for the sake of the LED which
> should have functioned properly in the first place.
The LED is not that important. Really, it isn't!
> As to support, if you try to go to the ASUS "support" page using Mozilla
> you will get a pretty error. SOL. The ASUS attitude is "Use what we tell
> you: IE". If you are strictly a Windows user you might not notice this but
> it is a major pain for me
Strange. I'm not sure what error you're talking about here. what URL
is it that you're having problems with?
> and I assume my money is the same color as
> someone's who uses Microsoft products.
It'll probably be a lot cleaner... *
> Yet I am to be put in the doghouse.
> Note that K8V is an AMD 64 board and thus most likely to be used by the
> Linux 64-bit crowd.
There is, of course, the Windows XP 64bit Beta release. I've tried it,
but hardware support is somewhat limited, eg no AGP! Linux is way ahead
here.
> Luckily, to make me feel more equal, ASUS placed the support forums in
> Taiwan and put them off-line for a good measure.
When was that? I can usually get through it is quite easilly.
> The FAQ is laughable. Web
> based support form is redirected straight into a trashcan.
Never really needed either.
> In summary, a lot of annoyances compounded by a total lack of commitment
> on the part of ASUS leads to a very unpleasant experience completely at
> odds with ASUS' (at this point in my opinion rather undeserved)
> reputation.
So far my experience is that the product works well. It gives me what I
want, which is a reliable base for 64 bit computer running Linux, Gentoo
at the moment.
Of course if you want my opinion on my old motherboard, an Abit
KR7A-133R, well I'd not recommend it. Usable stability was only
possible with a specific BIOS memory setting. Even then it would fail
memtest86, not the RAM BTW, but the motherboard. It was also supposed
to have uniprocessor IOAPIC, but it never worked. That board really was
worth some angry ranting.
--
Ian.
EOM<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
>> Stay informed about: K8V Deluxe ... not! 
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