Hey guys,

Ok, I'll start from the beginning. This has probably been the most horrendous and frustrating week of my entire life.

Anyway, here goes...

I put together the sweetest build for my new rig over a couple of months using various forums, such as tomshardware.co.uk, etc.

I make my decision on what components I want, I order them and make the required purchases.

The parts arrive, and I assemle my computer, as follows:

LCD Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP Widescreen LCD

Cabinet: Silverstone TJ09 Black

Power Supply Unit: Silverstone Zeus ST85ZF 850W

Cooling (CPU): Thermalright 120 Ultra Extreme

Cooling Fans (Cabinet): 5 x Scythe S-Flex

Motherboard: Asus P5K Deluxe / Wi-Fi

CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor QX6700

Memory: Crucial Ballistix - 4 x 1 GB (4 GB) / DUAL RAM / DDR II SDRAM / PC2-6400 CL4 / 800 MHz

Optical Drives: Samsung SH-S182D - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM 2 MB / 110 ms (CD) / 130 ms (DVD) / 48x (CD) / 16x (DVD) (R) / 48x (CD) / 18x (DVD±R) / 8x (DVD±R DL) (W) / 32x (CD) / 6x (DVD-RW) / 8x (DVD+RW) / 12x (DVD-RAM) (RW)

Hard Drives (system): 1 x WD Raptor WD1500ADFD 150 GB - 150 GB / 10000 RPM / 16 MB / Serial ATA 150 4.6 ms

Hard Drives (backup): 2 x WD Caviar SE16 WD5000KS - 500 GB / 7200 rpm / 16 MB / Serial ATA-300 / 8.9 ms / 28 dBA / RAID 0

Video Cards: 1 x EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO ACS3

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

Keyboard: Razer Tarantula

Mouse: Razer DeathAdder

OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Everything goes smoothly, and I begin installing my OS and then software and games, etc.

However, stupid as I might be, I dare try to update the BIOS on the Asus motherboard, and unfortunately, it doesn't go well.

The motherboard dies on me.

So, instead of waiting on a new motherboard, I went down to a local computer store and told them to put in a new motherboard, thhe best they got.

So they install this Abit AW9D motherboard, but lo and behold, here comes trouble!

I can't install Vista Ultimate x64 edition on my computer because of the new motherboard.

The computer crashes pretty often, especially when I try to load up Colin McRae's DiRT and Lost Planet Extreme Condition. Actually, Lost Planet was installing when it suddenly crashed, leaving me with a constantly spinning harddrive that couldn't be detected in the BIOS.

Had to manually unplug it and replug it to get it to work again.

So!

Any ideas what's up with this motherboard?

I called Microsoft technical support, and he told me to update my BIOS to ensure that the motherboard would support the latest Quad Core CPU I have.

But anyway, should I replace this Abit motherboard when I get my Asus board exchanged, or is this Abit board pretty good?

What do I need to do to get my brand new kickass baby running smooth as babyoil!?


Cheers,
Bassa

Why can't you install Vista Ult. X64 - licence issues or you plain can't get it to install?
There is an article here on TH about problems with Raptors, nVidia gfx cards & Vista - they've done away with Raptors in their systems.
Vista also has an issue installing with more than 3GB of RAM installed ...

As far as the AW9D, it's 1 of the better 975Xs but 975X isn't really a great chipset for oc quads in terms of fsb so increase multi instead.
You are on BIOS15?
You have your RAM voltage set to whatever the RAM mfr recommends (~2.1V iirc) - with all 4 DIMMs you may also need to increase Vmch slightly.

Go to http://forum.abit-usa.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48

Actually, after posting this thread I found out that it probably has to do with the BIOS on my Abit motherboard. I am running BIOS ID: 12, and that version doesn't seem to cope well with the Quad Core CPU I'm using.

I'll update my BIOS asap, and see what issues it fixes. I reckon it fixes most, if not all, of them.

Okay, so if I want to overclock a bit, I should do it with FSB instead of the CPU Clock. Gotcha!

By the way, I know through reading tedious reviews and so on that my old Asus P5K Deluxe board is topnotch.

How does this new Abit board compare to the Asus? Are they just abou equally good, or is Asus far better in many ways, or something?

No, I'm on BIOS12.

I haven't touched the memory voltages or anything. I have no idea how to do that. But I'll check it out at the manufacturers place.


Cheers,
Bassa

No, do it by increasing the multi (QX6700 should be unlocked up & down) as on 975X chipset all you'll most likely get in fsb with a quad is mid 300s.

With modern mobos being highly integrated & using largely the same components there shouldn't really be big differences in performance between equivalent mobos from different mfrs.
However, your "new" abit is actually an older chipset mobo hence in some ways it's not as good as your P5K or the equivalent abit which is the IP35 Pro.
975X is a faster chipset clock for clock but doesn't hit as high fsb when overclocking particularly with quads.
It's also got an older southbridge (ICH7R instead of ICH9R)
It does have native IDE support though which can save fiddling around with a crappy JMicron addon controller.

in the uGuru utility part of the BIOS there should be something like DRAM voltage - you'll probably have to take it off auto & set it manually.
Someone on the abit forum will walk you through everything if you ask.

Your ASUS should have came with dummy tools to reset the bios to factory. Evey ASUS I have owned does.