Am close to buying MSI Neo4 Platinum, i have questions.

[SilentSuicide]

Im looking at taking the plunge into Athlon 64 computing and i was looking at this motherboard but im comming form an Nforce 2 and i havent been following REAL close to what the newer motherboards are all about, so that being aid i had a few questions with probably more to follow later on.

1. I just saw this on the MSI Neo4 platinum main page.

Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.

Umm are they having trouble with ram higher then PC3200? What exactely has been the problem and the fix? By the way, i just looked at the specs for my OCZ PC3700 platinum and it says 2.8v, does that mean i would need to up the bios dram voltage to 2.8v just to get the board to boot properly?


2. My other question is, as far as the power supply is concerned, im looking at a 600watt Enermax Noisetaker v2.0. Now when i goto plug this thing into the mobo, what is the configuration to be used? 20 pin power plug only? 24 pin powerplug only? 20 pin power plug along with the 4 pin cpu plug? Or should i use the 24 pin power plug along with the 4 pin cpu plug? Whats the best setup?

Im always REAL nervous going into a new and uncharted motherboard, since ive gotten comfortable with my Nforce 2 lol, and my problem is when i prowl the forums to get an idea of what to expect from the boards performance, all you usually hear about is all the troubles people are having, not that everyone who bought that board is having problems just a select few but from reading you'd think that board had major issues. I guess if you were to go by what you read on all the seperate motherboard forums you'd think there wasent one solid dependable motherboard on the planet. Hehe.

Ive seen alot of reviews of this board, and all the comparisons, and it seems this one takes the top spot on most if not all benchmarks so thats why im interested. If i should be looking at a more rock solid stable motherboard (Nforce 4 series) then feel free to point me in the right direction.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: SilentSuicide
Im looking at taking the plunge into Athlon 64 computing and i was looking at this motherboard but im comming form an Nforce 2 and i havent been following REAL close to what the newer motherboards are all about, so that being aid i had a few questions with probably more to follow later on.

1. I just saw this on the MSI Neo4 platinum main page.

Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.

Umm are they having trouble with ram higher then PC3200? What exactely has been the problem and the fix? By the way, i just looked at the specs for my OCZ PC3700 platinum and it says 2.8v, does that mean i would need to up the bios dram voltage to 2.8v just to get the board to boot properly?

It means that it may have problems operating at stock speeds. It works better at higher, non-standard speeds.

2. My other question is, as far as the power supply is concerned, im looking at a 600watt Enermax Noisetaker v2.0. Now when i goto plug this thing into the mobo, what is the configuration to be used? 20 pin power plug only? 24 pin powerplug only? 20 pin power plug along with the 4 pin cpu plug? Or should i use the 24 pin power plug along with the 4 pin cpu plug? Whats the best setup?

Im always REAL nervous going into a new and uncharted motherboard, since ive gotten comfortable with my Nforce 2 lol, and my problem is when i prowl the forums to get an idea of what to expect from the boards performance, all you usually hear about is all the troubles people are having, not that everyone who bought that board is having problems just a select few but from reading you'd think that board had major issues. I guess if you were to go by what you read on all the seperate motherboard forums you'd think there wasent one solid dependable motherboard on the planet. Hehe.

Ive seen alot of reviews of this board, and all the comparisons, and it seems this one takes the top spot on most if not all benchmarks so thats why im interested. If i should be looking at a more rock solid stable motherboard (Nforce 4 series) then feel free to point me in the right direction.

A 20-pin PSU is fine, from what I've read. Make sure that you orient it correctly, however. No sense in frying your hardware because you plugged in something the wrong way (not fun, BTW).

 

[Elfear]

The best configuration is using a 24-pin ATX connector and the 4-pin 12V connector together. You can use an adaptor if you have a 20-pin connector or some people get away wuith just plugging the 20-pin in and leaving 4 pins open. From what I've read though, the most stable setup is the native 24-pin setup.

 

[SilentSuicide]

Ok thats what i needed to know. So i can use the 24 pin and the 4 pin cpu adapter.

About the memory what shoul i be setting it too? its OCZ PC3700 runs at 2,3,3,8. suggestions?

 

[SilentSuicide]

From the MSI main page......

Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.

Nobody has told me what this means yet. Do i need to boot my ram (OCZ 3700 Platinum @ 2.8v) for that motherboard to work properly?

 

[Elfear]

It's just saying that some memory is picky and the default settings in the bios might not work correctly. I'd say that a large majority of the time the default settings work just fine as far as stability goes. There's only a few cases when you have to fiddle with the settings before the computer will work correctly. I'd think your OCZ will be just fine.

 

[SilentSuicide]

Awsome... thnx.

 

[SilentSuicide]

I have another question.

In section E-3-5 of the manual it talks about the cell menu, now in that cell menu there is an option to turn on/off SSE/SSE2 instructions. My question is who in the hell would be turning OFF this option? Why does this option exist?

Now, what happens when the newer "E" stepping athlon64 cpus come out with SSE3 support, then what? If SSE/SSE2 is enabled on the bios will that be good enough to recognize the newer SSE3 instructions? Or will everybody have to "risk flashing" there bios to a newer version just so they can "ENABLE" the newer SSE3 instructions?

Personally i think they should have left this option off the bios selection.

 

[joshc]

Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.

I was actually concerned about that too especially since I was getting ready for my 1st PC build. I'm glad to tell you though that I didn't have to change any settings for my memory(Corsair value RAM 1 GB). I ran memtest for 30 passes or so and no probs and system has been stable so far(2 weeks).