M3A78-EMH HDMI Video Chop

[pnwbandit1200]

I have purchased (2) of these boards, both experience video framing/stuttering during any 3D game.
AMD 64 X2 6400 (125 watt)
4gb DDR2 Ram
Tried (3) different video cards (all from different Companies, Nvidia,ATI ect..) including the onboard video, same results.
Tried different ram/os (Vista/XP)/power supply, same results.
10 second stutter, 5 seconds good, repeats until exiting any of the games.

Seems to be something on the board causing this issue, has anyone had this problem with this board?
Have trouble ticket open with Asus, but they send the generic check list of items to check. They have not admitted that there may be an issue.

I suspect that this may be a MB circuit overheat issue with the AMD X2 6400 (125 watt cpu).

[KarmaKiller]

I haven't ever played with one of these boards, but can I offer some suggestions?
1. Have you checked you PCI-E slot to make sure it's running at full bandwidth?
2. Have you installed the latest chipset drivers?
3. Have you checked you BIOS to make sure it's setup to run the PCI-E slot as your primary graphics output? (some boards you still have to do this on)
4. Have you checked your temps of the CPU and GPU while trying to run a game?
5. Are you for sure that it's not your RAM? Have you ran Memtest on the RAM?

Just some suggestions. Some are obvious I know, but some are overlooked also.

[pnwbandit1200]

Running (3) games on (1) core (suggested by another user) did not correct stutter, in fact, it caused the games to freeze instead of stutter during 5-10 second cycle.

Installed AMD Power Utility, noticed both cores running at 100% during stutter, and 50% when running smooth.

All voltages and temps are well within specs, but I have noticed that upon cold boot, before MB gets warmed up, that I can play games stutter free for about 1.5 to 2 minutes before stutter cycle begins. Once at operating temp, stutter starts as soon as game starts.

Tried all available bios updates, as well as updated OS drivers, no change.
Tweaked bios and tried resetting to bios defaults, no change.

Test MB (ABIT AN-M2HD LE nvidia Geforce 7050pv) arrived, installed cpu/ram/video from ASUS board into same case used for ASUS board.
Reinstalled XP Pro SP2.
Installed games for testing.
Works great. No stuttering at all.
Only part changed out was the MB.
Looks like ASUS has some questions to answer. I would not recommend this board to anyone. May be just a bad batch, or may not support this cpu. ASUS should at least admit that this is a problem as I have (2) of these boards with the same issue.

[electric]

check your dimm sockets if getting hot [ finger will do ]

if so, up voltage on ram

[pnwbandit1200]

Tested Ram, not getting hot, tried upping the voltage by .2volts, no change.

tried an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core 5000+ (ADO5000DSWOF) 2.6ghz black edition w/1mb x 2 cache 65nm 65w (brisbane) in an attempt to prove my theory that this ASUS board does not support this cpu.
Works great with 65 watt cpu, Case closed.

[The_Flash]

I have the same exact problem with the same mobo. Did you resolve it yet?

If not then I am going to call Asus also. Can you please give me your problem ticket number so I can refer them to someone with the same issue and also the Tech Support phone number?

Thanks,
Flash

[Mobius411]

found common processor thermal throttling feature not available in older or default bios, causes processor to drop all framerate of video to compensate for cool and quiet function in bios.

attemting to update bios version would correct problem, however, there isn't a bios updater available that works with the new bios versions, or any that I can find.

EZFlash utility is sopposed to be the bios updater that comes with the default bios, unfortunately, this updater is useless for the new bios versions.

figures, another motherboard that was too good to be true, suggest selling on E-bay and buying a m2a-hdmi version board from asus, much more reliable, and this board works with no problems out of the box, no updating required.

goodluck
Mobius