MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum - Troubling Article

[Sammy5000]

I came across this article through a post in the MSI Forums.

 

[Rhagz]

All it says really to me is that half multipliers don't work well. I thought this was pretty standard with AMD and all motherboards. Is it exclusive to MSI only or something?

 

[Sammy5000]

Hey Rhagz...

The real issue is not whether or not half-multipliers work or not, in general, on AMD64 rigs. The issue is when the bios allows you to select a .5 multiplier, and you, as the user, expect your system to ruan a certain way, MSI is tricking the system my upping the FSB which puts more straingon yuor memory.

Now, whether or not this is an Nforce3 Ultra thing, or just an MSI thing is still open to discussion.

 

[Rhagz]

Yes I agree this could be confusing to a novice overclocker that does no research. Anyone that does a half-assed attempt at overclocking the first few times would spend at least a few hours, if not days researching, reading forums, articles, guides etc. I haven't even built my latest rig, first 64 system for me, and I already knew that AMD didn't like half multis, and this seems to be on every board, not just MSI. While I agree that it i misleading, and MSI should just have no half multi's selectable, it doesn't mean that the board won't overclock like it should, you just have to make sure you set it right (integer multi only).

 

[Wesley Fink]

This is not new news. I published this info at AnandTech over a month ago. If you will check p. 13 on my first AMD memory test article published on September 22nd at http://www.anandtech.com/memor...c.aspx?i=2215&p=13 you will find a table with corrected memory half-multipliers and the following comments in Italics:

"During testing, we discovered that while half-ratios do reflect CPU settings accurately, they are not really linear for memory speed. Memory speeds at full ratios are reported accurately. The asterisk values are the actual memory speeds at half ratios - not the reported memory speeds. Special thanks to Oskar Wu of DFI for his help in determining true half ratio memory speeds."

Oskar had been working on this info for a couple of weeks prior to publishing the article. I also disagree this is any kind of intentional deception on the part of MSI, since DFI encountered the same issue in designing half-multipliers on their 754 Enthusiast board. If you look at how the half multipliers are implemented it is easy enough to understand. The CPU half multipliers are correct, but the memory definitely is not.

 

[PwAg]

Thanks for digging that up and posting Wesley. It's rather unfortunate some members here are posting this Sudian article like wildfire to somehow show a negative light on MSI...yet they do not expand on the actual history behind this global A64 issue, ultimately showing ignorance. To each his own.

 

[EglsFly]

So version 1.3 and later have this problem?
Would it be best to flash down to version 1.2?

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Just don't use half multipliers on an Athlon 64 and you won't have problem.