Disappointing: no memory overclockability in MSI K9N Platinum?

[Lord Evermore]

I'm not exactly looking to crank out extreme overclocks on my system, but I thought a slight overclock would be nice. I've discovered that my X2 4200+ doesn't want to run on anything higher than a 212MHz bus (eventually I'll try higher voltages). I had to bump it up by 0.05V even to get it to boot into Windows at 210, but even 0.1V wouldn't let it POST at 215.

Anyway, I went to change the memory clock, and discover that in fact there's no way to change the memory clock to anything but standard speeds. 400, 533, 667 and 800 selections are the only options, there's no manual setting, no "increase clock by X", nothing. I'd have liked to see how slightly lowering the frequency affected timings and performance.

I got my Corsair TWIN2X1024A-6400 modules running at 4-5-4-4-11 though, at 1.9V. The system seemed noticeably snappier after that. 2 full passes of Memtest86+ were clean.

Under Prime95 MSI CoreCenter shows 51C for CPU temp. I still need to play with the fan placement some more, got one that's blowing cool air out so it doesn't seem to really be affecting anything. I may also put some Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU, though the stock stuff is working fine as far as I'm concerned and the heatsink is a bitch to remove (I thought we left behind with SocketA the need to put things in a vise and use power tools to snap on a clip).

All in all, for the moment, my overclocking is successful and I'd be happy with this, but of course if a few extra minutes can make it better, I'll do it.

 

[imported_Husky55]

The standard speeds 400, 533, 667 referred to, are the memory multipliers (some call them dividers) that you need to take into account when OC.

Since it's DDR2, 400X2=800.

You need to increase your FSB or HTT to achieve your OC.

You are running 1:1 now, so your 210 is your memory limit with your voltage and MB.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Heck now I'm confused, the POST screen shows it's 800MHz, but CPU-Z says it's only running at 388x2.

I don't get it. No matter what I set, the memory speed stays at CPU/6 as long as it's set to 800MHz or Auto. The BIOS says it's running at 800MHz at all times, but right now CPU-Z claims 733MHz since I set the CPU back to default speed. Why should the memory speed have any relationship to the actual CPU clock frequency other than a simple calculation if you really wanted to see the ratio? The speed of the memory shouldn't be a divider of the CPU frequency, it should only be related to the CPU bus speed if anything. And if the BIOS says it's running at its rated speed, why isn't it?

Man all this need to figure out what speeds are based on what multipliers or dividers of what bus speeds, just give me one freaking number that I can base everything else off of, if I HAVE to set speeds based on multipliers or dividers, and then give me those multipliers or dividers as an option, not something like 200/183 so then I have to calculate what that ratio is in order to go figure out what actual speeds I'll end up with.

 

[imported_Husky55]

I do not have this MSI MB, although I used MSI before. So take what I say with a grain of salt. And I am sorry if I confused you.

For your Athlon x2 64, the FSB determines your CPU speed. However your memory cannot keep up with it so the use of the dividers.

You set your memory at Auto or SPD that's why it will show 800 because your memory is 800 which is set at the factory.

What you would want to do is to set it at manual, and set it at 533. Then go to a different page of the BIOS (this is true on my MBs) and set the FSB to say 215 and up.

Every BIOS and MB use the dividers and multipliers differently and the definitions are not always clear. For example on Conroe, the dividers are called multipliers.

Hope this help!!!

 

[Lord Evermore]

If I set the memory to 667, I end up with the divider being CPU/7, so it gets even slower. I don't want to have to have a huge overclock on my CPU just to make my memory run at stock speeds. I want it to just not boot or crash if the memory can't handle 800MHz, which it ought to with the higher-than-standard 1.9V the SPD is programmed for, and the high latencies. If I set everything to stock, then memory speed should be 800MHz, regardless of whether my CPU is running at 2.4GHz, which it's not, it's constantly coming up with a CPU/6 divider which makes no sense because that isn't even a standard speed. I don't want it to magically and uncontrollably change the memory multiplier, while still telling me it's running at 800MHz. I simply can't imagine that MSI actually thinks we want the mainboard to lie to us.

The POST screen isn't telling me what the SPD is programmed for. The memory SHOULD be at 800MHz. If I manually set it to that, it says 800MHz on POST. If I set it to 667, it says 667. Inside the BIOS it says "current memory speed: 800MHz" along with the current CPU speed and bus speed.

This is really just totally F'd up that you can't just get a single damn number and rely on it, that you have to perform calculations between 3 different components to figure out what frequency you're running at, instead of just being able to set the speed.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I'm struggling to get my mind around this, the idea that the memory speed is in fact based solely off the CPU speed, which is different for each model, and using a divider of that clock speed, rather than on a base speed like the reference clock which is the same with all models. I really don't understand why AMD would design it like that. It means you can't just set memory speed to particular standard speeds, only odd numbers that are dividers of the CPU speed, so you end up with funky numbers like 388MHz instead of a 400MHz, or the next CPU/5 divider for me would be a whopping 440MHz. If I run at stock speed with the supposed 1:1 divider, I get a dinky 367MHz.

I guess now I get to experiment with using lower CPU frequency multipliers so that I can get higher FSB speeds and see what happens.

It'd be a lot easier if I didn't have to reset the BIOS every time an overclock fails and put all the settings back.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well I just determined CPU-Z and Sandra 2007 are utterly useless to me. They both show that my system is currently running at 2.57GHz, which is patently is not. I dropped the multiplier down to 10X and bumped the bus speed up in bits until one wouldn't post, then moved back down to find one that would actually boot into Windows. At 234MHz with a slight voltage increase, I'm into Windows at 2.34GHz. However both tools show the 11X multiplier and that I'm at 2.57GHz because of it. Which means I can't rely on their measurement of my memory speed because they're just doing a calculation of CPU/6.

So I got a bit higher base clock frequency, which doesn't even affect anything because the memory is still just CPU/6 I'm sure, as I doubt it's running at 467MHz right now.

I've seen the explanation of how the memory speed is actually calculated, but I don't understand it at all. It uses a memory divider, but nobody explains where you get this memory divider from. Anytime it's used people just seem to be pulling a number out of their ass which happens to work but not explaining it. And since all it really boils down to is that the CPU chooses a certain whole integer divider to run the memory at, and apparently this stupid-ass mainboard won't actually let me see what my memory is set to run at, it's useless to me.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I give up. I can ramp the clock speed up to 2.48GHz with a 9X multiplier and get into Windows, but it's unstable, but the only way I can do that is to kick the memory down to 400 so that the memory divider is CPU/11, which results in a godawful slot 226MHz, barely faster than PC2-3200 memory. If I back the CPU down a bit and move the memory up to 533 or 667 settings, it's stable but still results in terrible memory speeds that make the small CPU speed increases worthless.

This is absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever encountered as far as technology design. Having the memory set to a multiplier/divider of the FSB is one thing, but I thought we were past those days of limited configurability. The last system I encountered that on was a P4 about 3 years ago.

Ugh. I was perfectly happy with this system until now, because I thought I'd be able to do some simple, easy, tiny bit of overclocking. Now I find out I'm UNDERclocking components just running at stock speed. This makes me wish I'd just waited and gotten a Conroe system.

If this was a cheap board that you could just say "it was cheap, you can't expect a lot of overclocking features", that'd be one thing, but it was $118 bucks (before rebate). I expect at the very least that the f'er won't LIE to me about what speeds things are running at. The manual doesn't say anything about "set your memory speed here to determine what dividers are used which will be dependent on your CPU multiplier setting", it just says you're setting your memory speed manually.

I don't read every damn mainboard review out there, but I read some, and I try to keep up with the basics of the CPUs, and I never ever found out about this multiplier/divider horsehockey being calculated based on the CPU speed and multiplier.