After a gruesome 6 hour install (disassembling, cleaning, evicting dust bunnies, reassembling, plugging, and lastly POST), I finally got the machine up and running minimalistically. Well, not absolutely minimalistic but basic nonetheless. Here's my setup thus far:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Crucial PC3200 512MB x 2 (early generation, uses Samsun chips, rated at 8-4-4-3)
Zalman CPNS-7000B-Cu (DAMN this sucker's heavy)
Zalman VF700-Cu (to replace the ZM80-HP; installed on ATi R9800 Pro)
I ran into a minor problem of trying to boot via SATA. I do not have a pair and I was hoping I'd get it to boot in the same style/way that I had on my A7N8X Deluxe. It seems Windows XP didn't like it... a lot... tried the latest from nVIDIA's but I was getting frustrated. So I fell back to using PATA on my boot/system drive.
I ran Memtest86 v3.2 for about 6-7 hours straight after I got the system finally running. I had to reset the RAM speed to run at DDR-400 even though I told it to run via SPD. The test was running at stock CPU speed (2GHz). No errors, all passed.
The Windows install was probably the most frustrating part. The drivers from MSI was outdated and too old that it cannot be used to set up Windows. Then Windows would complain of not seeing any HDs when I had the drivers (from NV) loaded from floppy. It seems no matter how hard I tried, something would not go right when it should.
After getting the darn thing to install and finally into desktop, I started setting up the basics: Services, preferences, the annoying "Low disk space" warning, as well as getting the network to work. Again, I ran into another snag. NV's own NIC wouldn't cooperate. After I loaded the Realtek Gigabit drivers from CD, I plugged the cable in and I was on my way. No hassle. No frills. No problem.
Installed Firefox and my extensions. Installed Ghost, backup, and let the testing begin.
I used "Stress Prime 2004" since I was taken by the "ooh, lookie, a nice GUI for Prime95!" screenshot and ran two instances. At stock speed, it reported no problem. But I didn't run the "standard" test time. After I believe was an hour, I shut the system down, claim/call it stable (at stock speed), and went back into BIOS. There I started remembering some of the things in the A64 O/C'ing guide thread. But oddly enough, there's nothing in regards to HT speed sans for the multiplier. I do remember the 1GHz magic number so I bumped the FSB to a modest 220 (an even 2.2GHz for a nice free $100 upgrade), set the HT multi to 4x (= 880MHz HT), and rebooted. That's where I am now.
At 3h 15mins, I'm at this paragraph. I installed SpeedFan since it's a small util that also tells me temps and found that it's running at 49-51C. If this is correct, then I'm a very happy customer.
Comments and further details about what I've gone through are appreciated. I'll be hoping to try out 240FSB tomorrow. I'm very reluctant to try out 3DMarks and any other Marks kind of benchmarks. Something useful (ie F@H) would be great to test the CPU (and optionally memory) further. I'll post follow-ups as I make progress on this baby monster.
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Crucial PC3200 512MB x 2 (early generation, uses Samsun chips, rated at 8-4-4-3)
Zalman CPNS-7000B-Cu (DAMN this sucker's heavy)
Zalman VF700-Cu (to replace the ZM80-HP; installed on ATi R9800 Pro)
I ran into a minor problem of trying to boot via SATA. I do not have a pair and I was hoping I'd get it to boot in the same style/way that I had on my A7N8X Deluxe. It seems Windows XP didn't like it... a lot... tried the latest from nVIDIA's but I was getting frustrated. So I fell back to using PATA on my boot/system drive.
I ran Memtest86 v3.2 for about 6-7 hours straight after I got the system finally running. I had to reset the RAM speed to run at DDR-400 even though I told it to run via SPD. The test was running at stock CPU speed (2GHz). No errors, all passed.
The Windows install was probably the most frustrating part. The drivers from MSI was outdated and too old that it cannot be used to set up Windows. Then Windows would complain of not seeing any HDs when I had the drivers (from NV) loaded from floppy. It seems no matter how hard I tried, something would not go right when it should.
After getting the darn thing to install and finally into desktop, I started setting up the basics: Services, preferences, the annoying "Low disk space" warning, as well as getting the network to work. Again, I ran into another snag. NV's own NIC wouldn't cooperate. After I loaded the Realtek Gigabit drivers from CD, I plugged the cable in and I was on my way. No hassle. No frills. No problem.
Installed Firefox and my extensions. Installed Ghost, backup, and let the testing begin.
I used "Stress Prime 2004" since I was taken by the "ooh, lookie, a nice GUI for Prime95!" screenshot and ran two instances. At stock speed, it reported no problem. But I didn't run the "standard" test time. After I believe was an hour, I shut the system down, claim/call it stable (at stock speed), and went back into BIOS. There I started remembering some of the things in the A64 O/C'ing guide thread. But oddly enough, there's nothing in regards to HT speed sans for the multiplier. I do remember the 1GHz magic number so I bumped the FSB to a modest 220 (an even 2.2GHz for a nice free $100 upgrade), set the HT multi to 4x (= 880MHz HT), and rebooted. That's where I am now.
At 3h 15mins, I'm at this paragraph. I installed SpeedFan since it's a small util that also tells me temps and found that it's running at 49-51C. If this is correct, then I'm a very happy customer.
Comments and further details about what I've gone through are appreciated. I'll be hoping to try out 240FSB tomorrow. I'm very reluctant to try out 3DMarks and any other Marks kind of benchmarks. Something useful (ie F@H) would be great to test the CPU (and optionally memory) further. I'll post follow-ups as I make progress on this baby monster.
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