Any Asus A7N266-VM tips?

[time]

I thought that nForce 1 was dual channel DDR-SDRAM, but it doesn't seem to make any difference on this board. Is there some secret to it, or has Asus short-changed me?

Are there any other settings that Buck, e_dawg, etc could suggest for smooth operation of this board? BTW Buck, I know you use Radeon 7000 with this board; should part of the nVidia drivers be uninstalled before trying one?

 

[Mercutio]

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[CougTek]

The Asus A7N266-VM is based on the nForce 220-D chipset, which only features a 64bit memory bus, not the dual thing like the 415 and 420 chipsets. So there's no dual-channel options for this motherboard.

 

[Buck]

BTW Buck, I know you use Radeon 7000 with this board; should part of the nVidia drivers be uninstalled before trying one?

Video drivers should be removed.

You are using both DIMM slots, correct? Subsequently, this will only improve video performance. Asus doesn't list the 220D chipset as supporting TwinBank memory, only the 420 and 415.

 

[time]

Filling both DIMM slots doesn't appear to make any difference to onboard 3D performance, Buck. Not surprising if it's only single channel.

Would I be right in concluding that the onboard video hits performance more than it should?

 

[Buck]

Would I be right in concluding that the onboard video hits performance more than it should?

Yup. Hence my mention of the Radeon 7000 (or better).

 

[CougTek]

Would I be right in concluding that the onboard video hits performance more than it should?

No, because since it only features a 2.1GB/s bandwidth, shared between the CPU and graphic, it shouldn't perform any better than what you see. It's about on par with a GeFarce 2MX 200 IIRC. This board isn't intended for gamers. And not even for games to start off.

But it's a very nice budget board for an office PC though. It never disapointed me or my customers. You only have to figure out that it isn't a good-for-everything product. As long as you keep it in its targeted market, it's simply great considering the price.

 

[Tannin]

Yup. They are great value. Kristi seems to have stopped complaining about them too. Either the drivers are working better now or she's figured out the secret trick, or else we don't happen to have sold any in the last couple of weeks. I'll ask her. I've only built one or two myself, and they were fine. Maybe it's just when you are doing upgrade installs or something. And as Coug says, they ain't the board for a gamer, but for a little business box, they seem to offer excellent value.

(PS: disclaimer of interest here: in this class of machine, I can't bring myself to care about performance unless it's absolutely dreadful. I just like stuff that works first up and doesn't require any attention afterwards.)