Other WARNING: Asus software sucks badly!

Pretty much what the title says.

I have an Asus P5Q Pro and installed a few apps from the CD that came with it. Here are some examples why you shouldn't do it:

EPU-6 Engine:

• It doesn't work under "overclocking mode" which is basically that if you have put "AI Tuning" in BIOS to Manual.
• If you enable it, it shows "how much you've saved CO2 so far"... That's pretty **** propaganda IMO.
• If you use it, it'll crash your computer. The power saving settings aren't stable at all. I got two bluescreens, the second came when I restarted right after the first one. It basically just doesn't work.
• It can only control some newest Asus graphics cards.

AI Nap

• Doesn't save nearly any power.
• There's a bug in it, which causes the VCore to drop back to stock when leaving AI Nap mode. That causes fatal instability on OC'd systems.

SmartDoctor

• This is needed for the GPU control in EPU-6 to work.
• Only supports Asus graphics cards.
• Shows an unexplanative, stupid error message ("Can not find graphics card information") on startup if a non-supported graphics card is used, or if you have a bad luck (the net is full of stories about this).

Fan Xpert

• Does simply not work! The fan speeds don't change!

AI Booster

• This one works, but nearly all changes need a system restart.
• No voltages except RAM voltage can be adjusted.
• There are bugs in it, such as the current tab closing after applying settings.

On the top of this, there are spelling mistakes and bad translations in all of these programs!

 

When I bought my p5k from asus I installed the programs that came with it. Shortly after I formatted the drive to get rid of them completley. Haven't used them since.

 

ASUS software is pretty bad. I recently moved from an aSUS to DFI board, similar stuff except you don't pay for all the extra stuff on the DFI.

 

Most of the software bundled with motherboards and graphics cards is absolutely terrible. I don't understand why companies make these horribly ugly programs and can't even bother to make them work properly.

I particularly loathe it with wireless network cards - you generally must install the bundled software for those, and it's once again form over function (and the company has a fairly poor concept of good form, too).

 

I know I shouldn't have installed these The thing is that they need to be installed to use any of the features the mobo supports.

Eg. the concept of AI Nap is just great, but the implementation sucks balls.

 

can anybody think of a hardware manufacture that doesn't make godawful software? sound card control panels, mouse or keyboard software, motherboard utilities and the like are always awful, no matter who makes them.

i suppose nvidia's control panel is pretty good, but this problem certainly isn't limited to asus.

 

... nvidia and ati make aright windows drivers atm.

as for linux support...

 

nvidias linux drivers are fine, a bit slow to release perhaps and obviously proprietary.

 

Logitech's setpoint software isn't totally balls. Other then that:

 

I agree. I wish you didn't have to install setpoint to have all the features of the mouse usable though. The one button on my mouse that doesn't automatically work is the one I use the most.

 

for me leftclick works fine without setpoint, i'd check your mouse again

But yeah, there are some niggles, but in all it's a usable piece of software that actually adds something.

 

For some reason I have to run two instances of Setpoint. One for my G9 mouse and one for my Illuminated Keyboard...

The KB version did install a update for the G9, but I still haven't got any settings for it...

Don't get me started on this one!

The software that WNIC manufacturers make always have these fancy signal meters (which is pretty useless) and seems to make the process more complicated than it needs to be. The average user only need the one that come with Windows. It's easy, you choose a network and press "connect". if it needs a key, it will ask.

Some software I have seen make you choose the encryption method, channels and so on. The average user doesn't need this!


Oh, and most WNICs will work without the software, but needs the actual driver.

 

huh? you mean is totally balls, right? setpoint is exactly what i was thinking of when i typed my previous post. truly awful software. with my old keyboard, i had 2 volume sliders. the standard windows control which my MCE remote adjusted, and the setpoint volume slider, which the keyboard volume wheel adjusted. it was a constant hassle to get the volume to a reasonable level. middle click was the same - there was a perfectly good middle click behaviour in windows, but setpoint had to re-implement it only crappier, so it broke the middle-click link functionality in firefox. and my mouse tracking speed changed to a random value every time i restarted the computer. and it kept nagging me for various reasons. and the "zoom" wheel on the side of my keyboard was totally useless because setpoint didn't integrate it with anything. and and and...

 

Asus never rated it to work with overclocking, by its very nature of adjusting FSB and voltages it doesn't work with it. Asus has ****ed up the power saving part though - you need to disable chipset core voltage drop otherwise it bluescreens. It works on P35 and the P5Q Deluxe (I found) but only sometimes on the Maximus II (who buys an RoG to save power??) and not on other EPU2 P45 boards.

AI Nap doesn't work with ocing again, but it works great with my Xeon board. Dunno how much power it's saved, don't care to check tbh.

Never used it, unsurprisingly it only works with Asus hardware but yes, that's a bit ****.

Never used it actually. I'll give it a whirl again to see.

I can't even remember the last time I used this - what board are you using??

That's a given - it's written by the Taiwanese.

FYI: MSI's GreenPower is SOOOOOO much better than Asus', it's just it's dual core centre that's a pile of trash. Gigabyte's EasyTune 6 is also very nicely done - CPU-Z esq, although it does crash fairly often last time I used it.

Even though I like what the EPU2 does in terms of FSB+voltage+power phase downgrade, because power phases alone save next to no power - it's all about the frequency and voltages. I've had better experiences with Asus tbh - the 6-engine software is easy to use, that's for sure - what's your setup?

If you want convoluted try DFI's ABS system :S

 

Automatic Bluescreen System.

 

I was very glad when I setup my Sitecom usb wifi adapter to find that there's a use driver but not software utility option. Nothing wrong with windows wifi config IMO. I also have an MSI PCI wifi card that gets it's driver successfully from windows update and uses the standard windows XP utility - works a dream with no MSI software at all!

As for graphics cards, my new gigabyte 4850 has a utility called 'Gamer HUD' for overclocking and it actually works quite well. I'm not convinced that the VDIMM slider does anything at all but apart from that it's OK. Looks awful of course but that's standard stuff.

I also have an ASUS motherboard and although I flirted with the bundled software at first I quickly got rid of it all. AI Booster seemed OK if you were wanting some mild overclocking.