A8N-SLI Premium BIOS on the Deluxe/regular

[ChaosEnsues]

Anyone still rocking the A8N-SLI Deluxe (or the regular one) can upgrade their BIOS to the Premium's BIOS. It's not officially supported ("voided warranty"), but it works. It lets you adjust chipset and HT voltage among other improvements, which means better overclocking.

I just did it to mine and although I haven't tried adjusting those voltages, I can say that it boots and it's stable in XP. Those using the regular edition boards will have to disable some features in the new BIOS (because your board doesn't physically have those things) but it's pretty damn simple for both cases. Those things for you regular people are: Onboard Marvell LAN, Silicon Image SATA Controller, and Speech IC Reporter.

The link went down (might be back up when you read this): NGOHQ

They have the files you need to download, although all they are is the latest AWDFLASH.exe and Premium BIOS. Put those on a floppy, make another floppy into a MS-DOS boot disk, boot onto that disk, switch out the floppies so the bios and awdflash are in there, then type "awdflash /QI 1302.bin" into the prompt (assuming 1302 is the filename of the BIOS). Ignore the thing about the wrong part, just press y to continue. Make sure to let it finish or you'll have a fried bios.

I take no responsibility for anyone doing this and screwing up their boards, but I thought I would explain it to those who are willing to try and can't access that link - I'm just copying information from a printed copy of that page. Don't forget you will need to install the latest chipset drivers for YOUR board (not the Premium board) before doing this. Also, it can't hurt to make a backup of your current bios in case something goes wrong.

If you screw up, you might be saved by the Crashfree feature, but don't count on it. Know what you're doing if you want to try it.

[ChaosEnsues]

No takers huh?

[Mike00]

No takers huh?

Can you link me to the A8N-SLI Premium board?

[ChaosEnsues]

The board itself? Sure. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131540

But like I was saying, you can buy a Deluxe and run it as a Premium...sort of like overclocking for a motherboard.

[RaiD_357]

Is this possible with the A8N-E or just with the SLI boards? I need more voltages

Or maybe there's a higher end version of the A8N-E that's like the premium? I know there's one with a heatpipe.

[ChaosEnsues]

I'm not sure about the E boards. Try searching Google.

[capt.sekaran]

ASUS A8N-E (nForce 4 Ultra) is the top end version - no other premium version. The models with heatpipes are both SLI versions. IMHO the controllers for PCIe will work differently in the Ultra and SLI's - unlike the SLI Deluxe/non Deluxe and SLI Premium. I do not recommend you use SLI premium BIOS for your mobo.

[ChaosEnsues]

Yeah, the Premium bios will definitely NOT work with the A8N-E board