L1N64-SLI Bios Option: SLI1 & SLI2 Optimization & Others

I have an Asus L1N64-SLI motherboard which is about 6 months old and was working perfectly with respect to achieving a dual memory configuration. Contrary to the motherboard manual, I had OCZ Gold PC6400 DIMM's (2GB Each) installed in slots A1 & B1 (the yellow slots) and it reported 4096MB of RAM and Dual Channel mode enabled upon boot-up (pre-post). The manual says to place them into slots A1 & A2 for dual channel config with 1 or 2 CPU's installed. I found that to be incorrect as it gave me a reading of only 2GB and single channel. It was no big deal to me as Slots A1 and B1 gave me dual channel with all 4GB showing up.

Just the other day, however, I went to start the machine and got nothing....no display, beeps, etc. I then did the usual to try and fix it...re-seating the memory, CPU's, GPU's, BIOS, etc. and found that nothing worked. I tried swapping the memory and even trying different slots. It now seems that slot B1 is just plain defective. The ONLY way I can get 4GB to be recognized is to place the DIMM's into slots A1 & A2 (what the manual said to do). That config gives me the 4GB but shows up in pre-post and in Vista 64 as a SINGLE CHANNEL CONFIG. It seems there is no other way to achieve 4GB and dual channel short of requesting a new board (which I have tried twice with no response from tech support). This may be no big deal to some, but it was working just fine before and currently is not at the moment. The Asus site claims motherboards have a 3 year warranty, so I should have no problem...LOL. On top of that, this new 4GB config gives me all sorts of OS errors....BSOD w/o any specific info, lock-up's, etc.

My question(s) are in regards to the BIOS settings "SLI1 & SLI2 Optimization = Enabled/Disabled" and a few other memory options: "Memory Hole Remapping", "CS Sparing Enable" and "MemCLK Tristate C3/ALTVID".

The SLI settings are found in the Southbridge settings page and the memory options are found in the Chipset-->Memory Controller page.

I have both SLI 1 and SLI 2 options Enabled at this time. I have not found any definitive explanation to what this setting actually does. I have dual 8800 GTX GPU's in SLI via PCI-E slots 1 and 3 per Asus. The memory options above are set to Disabled with exception to the memory hole option in which that is Enabled.

Can anyone explain these settings or point me to a source that will.

The only reason I bought this is because I found the two FX-74 CPU's on eBay for $200...about 8 months ago. According to the retail info I have seen, this was a steal. If I would have known that AMD ...and it seems now Asus...has dropped support for this setup/system, I would have stayed away...despite the deal.


System Specs:

Motherboard: ASUS L1N64-SLI - BIOS Revision: 501 (latest)
CPU's: Dual AMD FX-74's - not O/C
GPU's: Dual XFX 8800 GTX 768MB cards in SLI - not O/C
PSU: PC Power and Cooling 1200Watt PSU
Memory: 4GB of OCZ PC6400 Gold - Two 2GB sticks - Sticker on each says: 5-5-5-15, however BIOS shows 6-6-6-18 for both.
OS's: Vista 64 w/SP1 for Gaming and Linux AMD-64 for everything else
Cooling: Both GPU's and CPU's are liquid cooled w/ CPU's @ 42c and GPU's @ 44c. Mobo temp is: 33c

Memtest 86+ shows no memory errors for all DIMM's when tested one at a time (installed)



Thank You

Tim
ARS N9NU

Firstly I know this is probably a dead thread...

I have this exact same problem.

When I got my system (same as OP basically) I had 4x 1Gb RAM sticks populating the slots.

Then one day it failed to POST. No warning, nothing, just dead. Pulled battery out reset bios etc, nothing. Started removing RAM until I discovered that only slots A2 & B2 on the board worked.

Contacted ASUS. No mean feat considering they passed me around until eventually I was speaking to someone in Taiwan!! Crazy. Official line was along the lines of yes your board is only 6 months old but we no longer support the product so you'll need to get a new computer. Thanks ASUS.

I sucked it up and went out and bought 2 sticks of 2Gb RAM to get myself back to a respectable 4Gb. This worked fine for a while. Then one day my computer starting dropping BSoD's on me at random times. This was eventaully narrowed down to my 2nd GTX video card gone boom. According to XFX the card had received a voltage spike.It also turns out that the2nd PCi port is cactus, fried at the same time. thanks ASUS.

Forward a few more months and the board is still battling on, down to 1 video card and 2 sticks of RAM.

The lesson here is don't EVER be one of the first to jump onto the next 'bee's knees' of technology. After all the hype spouting that the quad/octo was going to be the greatest invention of the 21st century, it never made it further than a single motherboard. Pathetic.