mosi`s hall of the mountain king

I just bought a great-looking motherboard, asus p5w dh deluxe for Intel`s Socket 775. Let`s see what`s in the package:

Motherboard, 2 SATA cables, PATA cable, manual, driver CD`s software CD`s, MP3 in cable, remote control with USB connection IR receiver, antenna for Realtek wireless card (very fancy look).

After unpacking, plugging in all the connections, the problem was: how to plug all the harddrives (3x PATA Maxtor 16 Gb, 80 Gb, 300 Gb, 2 x Maxtor SATA 150 Gb and 2 x Samsung HD401LJ and HD400LJ) in, boot properly both Windows XP and Linux in a dualboot and be happy with the performance.

First, let`s review the hardware components:

• processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2400 GHz
• RAM: Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400, 2×1GB, DDR2-800, CL5
• Creative soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum soundcard
• Logitech Multimedia keyboard
• Logitech MX Revolution mouse
• Teac DVD RW

Problem 1: Corsair DDR2 RAM deffective (not related to the ASUS motherboard hardware)

The motheboard detected the processor fine, but I had problems with Corsair 2×1GB DDR2-800 memory. After booting Fedora Core6 from DVD, I selected the option memtest and voila, the second slot Corsair memory was defect. The symptoms included: random restarting in Windows XP (bluescreen hardly visible, it was really quick reboot), random restarts and hanging in Fedora Core 6. The OS runs stable, until the defective RAM area (in my case somewhere around 1.4 GB) is accessed. After that, God help you. The Fedora Core 6 after updating had ca. 250 Mb memory footprint with lots of services running Gnome 2.16 up and Firefox, whereas Windows XP around 400 MB with faster trashing of the memory when copying files or installing a game.

Problem 2: booting harddisk sequence and RAID0 on ASUS P5W DH Deluxe related to Windows XP installation

Before installing the Windows XP, you have to select proper boot device. My initial configuration was: boot from 400GB SATA-II Samsung HD401LJ, install Win XP on one NTFS partition, Linux Fedora Core 6 on another primary partition, keep a common logical partition free for both Windows and Linux access.

There are 3 hardware RAID options for the ASUS motherboard:

1. the Silicon Image SiI 4723 chip for RAID0 RAID1 and combined (BIG) mode for 2 harddrives when both are seen as one big partition. This is described as EZ RAID in ASUS terminology.
   You have to set-up the jumper on the motherboard to position 2-3 if you want RAID0 - fast raid. Apart from that, no other configuration is needed, your RAID0 is ready to go, which is fantastic! No drivers needed, no configurations, put the jumper where needed and everything works regardless of operating system. Well, at least it should work. In WinXP the RAID0 created from 2x SATA 1 150 Gb Maxtor drives worked quite OK, the real everyday speed of reading/copy from was ca. 76 Mb/s, writing/copy to on average 56 Mb/s, which is relatively great. Compared to newer SATA-2 Samsung HD401LJ harddrive its a boost from ca. 60 Mb/s reading and ca. 43 Mb/s writing. If you copy many (more than your RAM or copy cache) small files on NTFS, expect performance drops down to about 60% of the measured values here.
   The problem came when trying to boot Windows XP proffessional CD. If you turn the SiI 4723 RAID mode ON in the ASUS P5W DH BIOS, the Windows XP installation won`t even begin. The screen remains black, although the CD spins and the harddrive works. You cannot even define additional SCSI drivers for any device, as no blue installation screen shows up. Solution: turn the RAID off, install Windows XP, turn the RAID on. Logically, installing of WinXP on this RAID0 was not possible on my system (maybe updating the BIOS would help? Read more
   Another issue: SiI 4723 RAID0 detected correctly under Fedora Core 6 kernel 2.6.18, but the device /dev/sdc refused to mount: mount /dev/sdc1 (which is my 300 GB raid0) returns: device or resource busy, already mounted? No way! So maybe installing correct drivers for SiI 4723 would help, but I had no chance to try this option.
2. Second option is Jmicron JMB363 controller
   * 1x UltraDMA 133/100/66
   * 1x Serial SATA 3.0Gb/s
   * 1x External Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s (ASUS SATA-on-the-Go)
   The RAID setting here is only theoretical, because one SATA connector is on the motherboard, near the back-plane of your case, therefore the cable is a little short for reaching to the front, where normally your harddrives reside. The second connector is external !!! SATA and there is only one way to make this RAID happen in my configuration: put the cable through a hole in the computer case, which is a little inpractical. That makes one RAID option less. Besides that, detecting even a single harddrive with the original BIOS revision (August 2006) connected to Jmicron JMB363 SATA or PATA on master or slave takes more than 20 seconds! After booting from Fedora Core 6 and Gentoo LiveCD 2006.1 the 2.6.18 kernel says: Lost interrupt on device hda, retrying. This takes another 2 minutes !!! and then kernel continues to boot, but there are lots of kernel messages and the system is somehow slowed-down, even crippled. So no RAID on this either.
3. Intel ICH7R Southbridge with 3xSATA-2 (and 1xPATA)
   The problem with this device is: once you enable RAID option in BIOS, all 3 of the ports are seen as RAID. Which is a problem if you want to use 1st SATA as a boot device and 2nd and 3rd as RAID0. A nice feature of this chip is defining: emulate standard IDE for the SATA connectors in BIOS. If you select this option, you don`t need any drivers for your operating system. I don`t know if this options slows down the transfer rates of the SATA, but it didn`t matter, I was happy with this option for the HDD where operating systems reside.
   If you turn on the RAID mode, after booting you have to press Ctrl+I in order to define the RAID. The process is lengthy, estimated 10 seconds and more depending on the harddrives. This is annoying, because if you want to enter the BIOS setup (press Del right after booting), the BIOS boots (est. 10 seconds), runs the Intel Matrix storage RAID setup utility (10 seconds and more), and then you get the BIOS setup screen. Reset 5 times and you lost 100+ seconds !!!

One of the biggest annoyances of this motherboard (BIOS) is that if you reconfigure RAID to standard SATA or another HDD controller option, your boot sequence of harddrives gets reset. Which means: if you want to boot from the second master HDD, you set it as first boot device, windows sees the first partition as C: drive. After a small modification in AmiBIOS (e.g. change SATA from enhanced mode to native mode) the first boot device will be set to first master HDD.

Overall I had to reset about 50 times in order to learn all the tiny nuances of the AmiBIOS, RAID0, SATA, PATA, Enhanced mode, Native mode and other in order to boot properly according to my wishes and 6 harddrives + 1 DVD RW

Problem 3: AmiBIOS reboot does not protect your monitor or graphic card

I experienced strange behavior with this Ami BIOS revision (generally AmiBIOS chips can be found in almost all ASUS motherboards). When you hard-reset, the LCD screen shows funny artefacts, colored lines, squares or similar. “Normal” motherboards don`t do that. Instead, they just turn the graphic card off, showing only black screen, monitor gets: no signal from graphic card, which in return saves the LCD electronics from getting “shocked”. Please correct me, if I`m wrong, this is just a personal opinion.

Problem 4: Marvell yukon 88E8053 PCI-E gigabit ethernet

In short: does not work for me in Windows XP SP1 (negotiation with DHCP router fails, sending packets OK, cable OK, receiving packets: 0). Works flawlessly under Fedora Core 6 Linux.

The Realtek wireless card was not tested, appeared working under WinXP, probably not working due to missing drivers under Linux.

Problem 5: BIOS upgrade to latest revision failed. Badly. Miserably.

First, let me introduce the fancy marketing slogan bullshit ASUS tries to sell us, the computer freaks, geeks, gamers and bohems:

Please notice the CrashFree BIOS 3 and EZ-Flash2. Both should help you if the BIOS update goes wrong.

ASUS recommends upgrading updating the BIOS on several places:

http://event.asus.com/2006/mb/P5W_DH_DELUXE_faq.htm
and
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1198&l1=3&l2=11&l3=0

So after all the problems I had I decided to update the AMI Bios which is a 8 Mb Flash ROM,AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3.

Downloaded the latest BIOS firmware, flashed in Windows XP, reboot and …
nothing.
black screen,
reboot, still nothing, not a single beep.
Well. Called the support center in USA, they were quick and helpful. Their response: “The BIOS Chip should be updated only if really necessary. Didn`t you know that there is 1 to 10 chance that the AMI BIOS chip will burn?”

There are numerous websites describing similar outcomes: Google the BIOS problems for ASUS P5W DH Deluxe.

There is even a shop selling only the BIOS chips for ASUS. The price for this AMI BIOS chip for ASUS P5W DH Deluxe is: ca. 20 USD or 22 Eur +12 Eur porto. No, thanx. I had enough. I`m in a process of contacting the support center for a chip replacement. Let`s see in a few days/weeks/months.

Meanwhile, I returned immediately to my old motherboard provider: GIGABYTE.

I have a brand new Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 (rev. 1.0) for Intel Core2 Duo, working just fine, although the same Marvell Gigabit ethernet as in the ASUS motherboard is still not working under WinXP. Is there a monopoly for onboard ethernet adapters or what?

The only remaining problem is: how to get the data from RAID0 back? I heard that: Silicon Image SiI 4723 is compatible with Intel ICH8 raid controller. How compatible? I was able to see the RAID0 defined in the Intel matrix storage manager, I could verify the RAID in WindowsXP, could not detect it in Linux Fedora Core 6, but the Windows Disk manager shows 2 separate drives instead of 1 raid. I`ll try to solve this problem somehow.

Overall judgment of the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard:

+ remote control which is working only in windows and is plugged into a specified USB 2.0 port on the motherboard

+ realtek wireless acces point (or wireless card, depending on software config)

- all the problems with BIOS and harddrives and ethernet and slow booting and not booting and price and drivers only for windows and one BIOS chip instead of 2 BIOS chips (as usuall and standard in GIGABYTE motherboards since 4 years now, thank you, Chernobyl !!!)

If you want reliability, speed and support for Linux, don`t buy this one.

If you are sado-masochistic about resetting the computer about 50 times with a blazing speed ca. 20 sec. pro restart until you find the correct, poorly documented BIOS settings, go with ASUS P5W DH Deluxe. Asus, you should contact gamers BEFORE entering the motherboard market for advice with basic design concepts, not afterwards with BIOS updates.