MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum OCing

[2kfire]

I want to get an Opteron 165 because they are awesome overclockers. However, most of the people that OC these chips have DFI nforce4's. Right now, I'm running 270 HTT with my Winnie. Has anyone reached higher? I want to know if I'll be fine OC'ing this chip with my board. Otherwise, I'd have to go for an Opteron 170 with its higher multiplier.

 

[AntiStatic]

i've had mine around 300

 

[aka1nas]

Mine seems to hit it's limit around 290Mhz. I did replace the stock thermal compound with AS5 as the original white paste was applied poorly.

 

[Big Lar]

I had the Neo2-F, same board with less goodies onboard/ anyhow, I had the board to 308 htt, but had not tried higher.

 

[sodcha0s]

I tested this on mine, with the multiplier set to 6 and mem to 100, the board ran at over 320HTT. I did this just to see how high the board would go. I never found out...

Currently running at 280HTT, no problem.

 

[Icepick]

I booted into Windows at 315 with a low HTT setting. I didn't bother testing Prime95 stability at this setting since my CPU has a relatively high multiplier (11). For day to day overclocking I leave it set to 236 x11 for 2.6GHz.

Back in the day (fall of '04) many members on this board reported reaching stability at over 300 HTT. This board is a legendary overclocker in the socket 939 AGP world.

 

[Tweakin]

I used to run my winnie @ 312 on my old NEO 2 Platinum...rock stable. Could not due this with the MSI bios, used a modded bios from sideeffect.

 

[2kfire]

Awesome, thanks for the posts everyone! 300 sounds good to me. Even if the chip can do higher, I would be more than happy if my mobo topped at "only" 290 (290x9=2610 MHz). The price difference between the 165 and 170 is pretty big, and now that I know that others have reached pretty high HTTs with the same mobo, I won't need that higher multiplier at the higher cost!
Thanks again everyone!

 

[n7]

Mine could boot into Windows @ 335 HTT
Duvie ran his @ 350+

/misses old Neo2 Best s939 AGP mobo ever made, & best mobo i've ever owned

 

[2kfire]

n7, did you have to do anything special to get it to run that high (volt mods, watercooled chipset, etc)?

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: n7
Mine could boot into Windows @ 335 HTT
Duvie ran his @ 350+

/misses old Neo2 Best s939 AGP mobo ever made, & best mobo i've ever owned

I agree...I miss my NEO2. I think this was the best board I have had in the last 10 years...It took everything I threw at it...Winnie, Manchester and Opty...and it loved my OCZ Plat Rev 2 TCCD memory.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: 2kfire
n7, did you have to do anything special to get it to run that high (volt mods, watercooled chipset, etc)?

Nope, not a single thing.
Didn't even have to raise any chipset voltage or anything.

 

[2kfire]

thank you all for helping me save around $100! Opteron 165 it is!

 

[aboothman]

for those who had high HTT on this board, what BIOS were you using? Someone mentioned a SideEffect BIOS....which one exactly? Thanks

 

[SpeedZealot369]

where do you find those special bios's?

 

[Big Lar]

First look here;
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsmith/Syars_Bios_Collection/NEO2/

Then Here;
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=59711.0

Seems the site with the Sideeffects bios is down right now. I ran Syar's on my Neo2-F and was very happy with it, he has 2 versions for it, so read the second link carefully first, and flash at your own risk, tho I never had a problem with Winflash.

Larry

 

[SpeedZealot369]

I falshed my bios using msi live update and now when I try to get in my bios before windows starts, all that appears is a little blinking white line in the top left of the screen. What is this?

 

[Big Lar]

I've had boards that do that, they have the white line in the top left corner for about 30 seconds, then bios opens up.
Did you shut down completely, clear cmos, start up, then go into bios? Or.... Wait for the blinking light, go into bios, set optimized defaults, and save, reboot and select your preffered settings in bios.
Larry

 

[Mogadon]

I'm using the official 1.8 BIOS and can boot into windows at 320, haven't tested higher yet but I have great faith it can go higher if I want it to. I've used sideeffects 1.A0 and 1.B0 BIOSs and found no difference in stability or overclockability.

P.S. - I'm too lazy to update my sig, that's why it's not in there too ... .