F-i90HD Many problems

[davejm]

Well it seems I'm getting no joy, so I either have to look at getting another motherboard or another TV card which seems ridiculous.

That Abit board isn't great for me, as I need something with a back panel optical audio connector.

[Cov]

If you need optical audio socket, I wouldn't know ANY motherboard that has this socket on board.
(Yells: hello ASUS and co !! have you thought about this yet ? ... Wake up for a minute ... ADD OPTICAL SOCKETS ON YOUR BOARDS, ok !!!)

Ergo: you need a seperate audio PCI card.

Here are some examples (google):

1) Cheap & Cheerful ... DGFSPC 6 Channel 5.1 PCI Sound Card SPDIF Optical In/Out H254 ... £ 4.99 or ... Trust Sound Expert Optical 514DX 5.1 ... £15.59
2) For quality lovers ... Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio - 24-bit - 96 kHz - 7.1 ... £26.74
3) High End ... RME HDSP 9632 Hammerfall DSP 24/96 ... $ 549.95 or ... MARC 2 ... £ 109.99

(Oh, and by the way ... Asus & co please abolish the parallel printerport, PS/2 sockets and the floppy socket from all products, thanks)
(Ah, and Gigabyte ... how could you bring a motherboard on the market with PCI-E (x4) instead of (x16) ? .... what the f*** ?)

[BUFF]

If you need optical audio socket, I wouldn't know ANY motherboard that has this socket on board.

loads of abits do - some even have optical SPDIF in as well as out.

(Ah, and Gigabyte ... how could you bring a motherboard on the market with PCI-E (x4) instead of (x16) ? .... what the f*** ?)

possibly that's all the chipset allows?

[Cov]

Hi Buff ... yeah, that's right. I didn't check, the Abit IP 35 Pro for example comes with optical sockets on board. Nice, nice.

I'm planning to transfer my huge Mini Disk collection (500+) via optical port to mp3 on hard drive.
But mATX boards will never come with these ports I guess.

It was the logical and overdue step from tape (compact cassette) to digital medium (Mini Disk), but times have changed. As soon as I back up my music, I'd get rid of all the Mini Disks & player altogether. It's so convenient to have the collection on a hard drive.
But I have to say that I am actually very happy with the audio quality of Mini Disk, being very demanding. The sound is no difference to the original CD, in my ears.

When I was looking around for mATX boards, only the Asus P5K-VM and the Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H came into question. But as a PC gamer, I need a top graphics accelerator and to get the Gigabyte with PCI-E (x4) wouldn't be a wise choice in this case.
When I thought of the Asus one then, suddenly Asus brought a new model on the market: P5E-VM HDMI ... looks awesome.
Has G35 Chipset instead of G33 ... has GMA X3500 instead of the X3100 ... has HDMI socket (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) , multi display output, HDCP compliant ! (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) , Gigabit LAN ect

I must get this board !!

[BUFF]

new abit that also may suit (also a version with firewire)
Universal abit > Motherboard, Digital Speakers, iDome, AirPace, Multimedia

[j1979]

looks nice!

[soongteck]

having a problem with the board, when i push almost all things to limit (except PCI)

well. i have a e4300 and f-i90hd with v16 BIOS.
i've reported to them and intel that this mobo handle fan poorly.

having 4GB RAM now, but shows only 3327MB in 32bit,
and 256MB less, which is 3840MB in 64bit!

this occur after i installed a graphic card by ASUS. it didn't shows any sharing of memory if i config the motherboard as 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB. and ofcourse not in my other intel motherboards.

well.. less RAM for me to use.

any idea?

[ABIT Sean]

having a problem with the board, when i push almost all things to limit (except PCI)

well. i have a e4300 and f-i90hd with v16 BIOS.
i've reported to them and intel that this mobo handle fan poorly.

having 4GB RAM now, but shows only 3327MB in 32bit,
and 256MB less, which is 3840MB in 64bit!

this occur after i installed a graphic card by ASUS. it didn't shows any sharing of memory if i config the motherboard as 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB. and ofcourse not in my other intel motherboards.

well.. less RAM for me to use.

any idea?

32bit operating systems can not map more than roughly 3.25gb of memory. This a limitation of the operating system and not the motherboard.

3850MB is perfectly acceptable when running 4GB. Some of the memory is always allocated to the graphics card. The bigger the memory on the graphics card the greater the size allocated.

[soongteck]

32bit operating systems can not map more than roughly 3.25gb of memory. This a limitation of the operating system and not the motherboard.

3850MB is perfectly acceptable when running 4GB. Some of the memory is always allocated to the graphics card. The bigger the memory on the graphics card the greater the size allocated.

well.. Not in other boards. And not in less than 4gb memory configuration.

[ABIT Sean]

well.. Not in other boards. And not in less than 4gb memory configuration.

What are you referring to? The ability to use 4GB in a 32bit OS or the overall size the motherboard can see?

[soongteck]

What are you referring to? The ability to use 4GB in a 32bit OS or the overall size the motherboard can see?

i do mean that 4GB in 64bit which is the overall size.. and also in BIOS

[wilyblec]

having a problem with the board, when i push almost all things to limit (except PCI)

well. i have a e4300 and f-i90hd with v16 BIOS.
i've reported to them and intel that this mobo handle fan poorly.

having 4GB RAM now, but shows only 3327MB in 32bit,
and 256MB less, which is 3840MB in 64bit!

this occur after i installed a graphic card by ASUS. it didn't shows any sharing of memory if i config the motherboard as 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB. and ofcourse not in my other intel motherboards.

well.. less RAM for me to use.

any idea?

If you have Vista 32-bit it isn't able to detect any more than 3GB i don't know what the limit is on 64-bit. Try looking for a Asus graphics tweaker. My friends nVidia 8400GS came with a program so you can set how much RAM the card uses, maybe Asus made one aswell!

[davejm]

OK, two dead boards now. I managed to work around my previous issues with the board, but in the end it just died randomly and wouldn't post. I fired off 2 emails to Abit at the time (which were ignored) and in the end my Dad bought a Gigabyte board as a replacement because he needed a working PC.

And now another board my friend ordered at roughly the same time has died in the same way.

Are these covered by a years warranty? (both were bought less than a year ago).

What are my options?

[prehensile]

rma shop ...

[gilgamesh]

If I remember rightly there was an issue with this chipset, that a certain resistor was at the wrong tolerance, and was causing boards to go defective. a RMA replaces that resistor!
Think this was a ATI issue (if i remember rightly this is a ATI board) as a result ATI soon after release stopped supplying the chipsets for this board.

gilgamesh

[BUFF]

Are these covered by a years warranty? (both were bought less than a year ago).

2 years in the UK