Re: M2A-VM

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:51:20 -0400, Sandman <sandmanwv@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Can anyone tell me anything about this MB? I just bought a barebones
kit with this MB in it with an AMD ATHLON 64 X2 6000+ - WINDSOR and
MWAVE 2GB DDR2 667

I picked up this board in mid June -- the price was right for board,
cpu (dual 64/4400+) and ram (4GB OCZ-ddr800) + P/S. I wish I'd held
out for a little more cpu! I do some processor intensive photo editing
using a program that hogs cpu+ram, still a bit slow.

The board is pretty good, fairly limited options -- only one IDE
controller, so I have a pile of legacy drives and need to get a card.
The onboard video works ok, but has some driver issues in Vista --
bands, white screen, digital dropout etc. The DVI output is digital
only, or analog over digital when analog is called for so my monitor
is black or corrupt when looking at pure dos screens such as BIOS!,
boot screens, etc. I have to unhook the digital cable and hook up the
VGA to see / work in such modes.... :*(

There are a few over-clocking options, but I'd rather just slightly
bump performance and hold out for stability and error free ops -- I
really can't have anything corrupt, don't want to reload OS, etc.

I bet there's a cure for this, but I haven't seen it yet: any disk on
the IDE controller is automatically considered C:\, or the primary
disk, when installing a windows OS, so when I put one on the first
SATA drive, it's always listed as D:\. Don't know if this is true
with Linux yet. When I added a second IDE drive, my SATA windows
install, on primary + active partition 1 suddenly was considered to be
on disk 2 (of disks: 0, 1, 2), so it wouldn't boot till I rewrote the
boot.ini That reduces flexibility a lot. I did set the boot order in
BIOS, but that seems only to affect where the boot-loader is look for.

Overall, I'd say there are a few compromises, and I wish there was a
little more flexibility and capability built into this board, but not
bad for about $54.00US.

/..
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: M2A-VM
    ... fairly limited options -- only one IDE ... so I have a pile of legacy drives and need to get a card. ... is black or corrupt when looking at pure dos screens such as BIOS!, ... boot.ini That reduces flexibility a lot. ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
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