MSI K8N Neo4 nForce4 Ultra Socket 939

[madogvt]

Thanks all. I finally bit on this one. It's at $38.99 right now. I picked up two for 75.99 plus shipping ($9 ground for me).

 

[kenton]

I'm done with this board.

I can't get it stable with any high speed PCI-E card. I've tried the 7950GT and the X1950XT, neither want to play nice. I've reinstalled Windows, unoverclocked, even underclocked, bumped the voltage to the chipset. I've done EVERYTHING.

Edit: I know someone else here has a 7950GT and others are running mid-range high-end cards. Maybe it's just my board. 3.2GHz Core2 seems tempting though and I don't even have to overclock the RAM!


I just picked up a sweet Antec 900 at CompUSSR and I signed my tax forms last week so I'm building a Core2 in a couple of weeks. Tired of not playing games.

 

[GeezerMan]

Originally posted by: kenton
I'm done with this board.

I can't get it stable with any high speed PCI-E card. I've tried the 7950GT and the X1950XT, neither want to play nice. I've reinstalled Windows, unoverclocked, even underclocked, bumped the voltage to the chipset. I've done EVERYTHING.

Edit: I know someone else here has a 7950GT and others are running mid-range high-end cards. Maybe it's just my board. 3.2GHz Core2 seems tempting though and I don't even have to overclock the RAM!


I just picked up a sweet Antec 900 at CompUSSR and I signed my tax forms last week so I'm building a Core2 in a couple of weeks. Tired of not playing games.

What? You can't do this. You are my overclocking inspiration.
When you say it's not stable, what is it doing?
Try removing the Nvidia IDE driver and use the default windows IDE driver.

 

[craftech]

Hi,

I am looking for some advice from those who have experimented with this board.

First off I am not a gamer. I do video editing. With video editing and encoding the video card isn't all that important, but processing and above all STABILITY are.
If I were to buy this board, which components and settings would you recommend to meet the needs I expressed above?

I have read through all the posts in this thread, but it still seems unclear what would meet my needs as most here are gamers yet you HAVE experimented with the parts and settings so I thought maybe some of you would have some parts and settings recommendations to share.

Or would you recommend for me NOT to buy this board and to buy something else for stable yet fast video editing and encoding?

I would really appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance.

John

 

[kenton]

Originally posted by: GeezerMan

What? You can't do this. You are my overclocking inspiration.
When you say it's not stable, what is it doing?
Try removing the Nvidia IDE driver and use the default windows IDE driver.

ROFL thanks.

I've never used the nVidia IDE driver since it borked my nVidia nForce2 machine way back in the day.

I used the latest 7.1 cats on the ATi card and whatever the latest nVidia GFX driver is. Of course I didn't try to swap the cards and install drivers over old drivers. I did a fresh Windows install with both cards.

What happens is it won't pass a 24-hour sitting of 3DMark06, even with the factory clocks. This board will 3DMark06 ALL DAY (I've done it up to 36 hours before) with a ****** X600-SE.

I don't know if games are stable because I assume not if 3DMark06 won't pass. All my temps are in-line, the X1950 gets warm but it never went over 75C once I took manual control of the fan speeds.

Also, with the X1950 my desktop would start to go crazy, icons would misplace themselves and when I click Start some of the icons are gone (I use Windows classic theme and start menu so it looks like Windows 9x/2k) and I'll click start and all the icons beside like "Programs" and "Settings" and "Run" are just missing.

It's totally crazy.

Specs again:
This board
Opteron 165
2GB Ultra DDR (2x1GB)
TruePower Trio 650
1 Optical, 1 IDE HDD
3 120mm fans

 

[cardiac]

Originally posted by: craftech
Hi,

I am looking for some advice from those who have experimented with this board.

First off I am not a gamer. I do video editing. With video editing and encoding the video card isn't all that important, but processing and above all STABILITY are.
If I were to buy this board, which components and settings would you recommend to meet the needs I expressed above?

I have read through all the posts in this thread, but it still seems unclear what would meet my needs as most here are gamers yet you HAVE experimented with the parts and settings so I thought maybe some of you would have some parts and settings recommendations to share.

Or would you recommend for me NOT to buy this board and to buy something else for stable yet fast video editing and encoding?

I would really appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance.

John

John, I do some video editing with my system and it works great. A good combo would be the MSI board and the AMD 4000 that Newegg has now for $79.99.

I have 2 hard drives, a 160gig and 200 gig, and keep the 200 seperate for video. I have 1 gig of ram in it right now, but going to 2 gigs as soon as the price drops a little more. I use the AMD 3400 with the MSI board, and a Radeon x700 Pci-E video card, and it seems plenty fast, and is very stable. Not a hiccup at all.....

Bob

 

[craftech]

Originally posted by: cardiac

Originally posted by: craftech
Hi,

I am looking for some advice from those who have experimented with this board.

First off I am not a gamer. I do video editing. With video editing and encoding the video card isn't all that important, but processing and above all STABILITY are.
If I were to buy this board, which components and settings would you recommend to meet the needs I expressed above?

I have read through all the posts in this thread, but it still seems unclear what would meet my needs as most here are gamers yet you HAVE experimented with the parts and settings so I thought maybe some of you would have some parts and settings recommendations to share.

Or would you recommend for me NOT to buy this board and to buy something else for stable yet fast video editing and encoding?

I would really appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance.

John

John, I do some video editing with my system and it works great. A good combo would be the MSI board and the AMD 4000 that Newegg has now for $79.99.

I have 2 hard drives, a 160gig and 200 gig, and keep the 200 seperate for video. I have 1 gig of ram in it right now, but going to 2 gigs as soon as the price drops a little more. I use the AMD 3400 with the MSI board, and a Radeon x700 Pci-E video card, and it seems plenty fast, and is very stable. Not a hiccup at all.....

Bob

Thanks for the quick reply Bob.

Right now I am using three 120 GB WD1200JB IDE drives for editing. I also have a 160GB WD1600JB drive I haven't used yet. Again IDE. I am not sure if this board can use three or four of those. The other components you recommended sound good (nice user reviews)and are reasonably priced.

What are your settings for ram, etc.?

Thanks again,

John

 

[Lurker1]

craftech: To be perfectly honest, if you're going to go solely for video editing today, the Core 2 systems at Fry's have come way way down, and are a faster CPU. If you're reusing memory et al, then this might be a better solution for you however. (I don't think the Fry's combos MBs overclock very well, and the P965 MBs run about $200 for a decent one that does OC well.)

 

[craftech]

Originally posted by: Lurker1
craftech: To be perfectly honest, if you're going to go solely for video editing today, the Core 2 systems at Fry's have come way way down, and are a faster CPU. If you're reusing memory et al, then this might be a better solution for you however. (I don't think the Fry's combos MBs overclock very well, and the P965 MBs run about $200 for a decent one that does OC well.)

Actually I will have to buy the memory from scratch, but I read the AnandTech review on the e4300 processor which seemed like it would be very well suited to my purposes. Prices are at gouging levels for now after the reviews, but will drop by 2nd Q as I read.
Which 965 MB do you recommend for stability?
As a side note I need a full size MB and a larger case for other components. The mATX boards are too small.

I live in New York so no Fry's for now (unfortunately).

Thanks,

John

 

[WOODPECKER101]

I got this board afew weeks ago and every thing went really well . Put in an opt 175 with 2 512 sticks of kens value ram ddr 400 3-3-3-8. When I added 2 more of the same ram the board drops it down to ddr333 2.5-3-3-7which the manual says it will do that with double sided ram in all 4 slots. This really seems to slow every thing down considerably and impairs OCing. Is it better to have 1meg running @ 400mhz or is it better to have 2 megs @333. and should I manually change any settings in bios. Thanks for any input in advance,

 

[Zap]

Kenton, try manually setting the PCI-E bus to something like 103MHz or 105MHz and see if it makes a difference. Also, try using your RAM in the slots farthest from the CPU, just in case.

WOODPECKER101, you can always sell off your 4x512MB and buy 2x1GB.

 

[GeezerMan]

say, what does moving the ram to the last slots do?

 

[Zap]

I've noticed in a few systems that Memtest seems to fail sporadically on memory that was otherwise tested fine. Changing slots fixed the issue in some cases. Doesn't cost anything to try.

 

[GeezerMan]

Oh, yeah I know about that first hand with an Asus board I had. Would fail memtest in a certain slot order. I was wondering what was the reason
motherboards do this

 

[Skitzer]

Update: Got my K8N yesterday and surprisingly it was very well packaged. Used an old case and a 400W PS with a LiteOn DVD burner I had laying around. Board booted right up with no problems. Installed Windows XP and did a live update to 1.D bios. Everything worked without a hitch.
I'm using 2 512mb sticks of Geil DDR400 I picked up for $75, a 3500+ Newcastle I picked up for $45 and an ATI X800 Pro I picked up for $38. Unfortunately no Sata drive but found an old 80GB Western Digital IDE I had laying around and it runs quite well.
Currently running 250x10 with memory at 200 without an issue (Newcastle will not go beyond 2.5GHz).
Whole project cost me a hair over $200. Very nice second system for cheap.
I highly recommend this board but it requires a little bit of work to get it set up right ....... once it is though, it's pretty sweet.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: GeezerMan
Oh, yeah I know about that first hand with an Asus board I had. Would fail memtest in a certain slot order. I was wondering what was the reason
motherboards do this

*SHRUG*

It may be the motherboard, it may be the CPU - remember the integrated memory controller. If you remember from early on in this thread (I think I mentioned it) I originally purchased 10 of these boards for a mass build. I got used CPUs from other AT members. One of those CPUs was a 3500+ and it had the issue with the first slots. I tried other CPUs in the same board and that CPU in other boards, and the problem followed the CPU. Strangely, I've also seen this problem in at least two of the Newegg combos using the 3400+ OEM CPU and the ECS KN1-Lite board (around $100 combo). These were purchased brand new, and using known good RAM.

 

[kenton]

I never had a problem putting my two sticks in either slot, and my dad's KN1 is also working great with 4x512MB (albiet at 2T)

 

[Dynamyck]

Hey guys, I've got this board (with updated BIOS) paired with a 4000+ and have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a command rate setting (1T, 2T) somewhere or am I missing something? My cheapo Corsair CAS 3 valueram defaults to 2T (3 4 4 8) .. although I have some Kingston HyperX on the way which should help.

2. CPU voltage is limited to 1.4 in the BIOS with this chip. Is there any way around this? The max temps I'm seeing is ~47c so I'd like to raise the VCORE higher if possible.

So far I'm havin' fun OC'ing with this board & I'd appreciate any tips!

 

[GeezerMan]

Originally posted by: Dynamyck
Hey guys, I've got this board (with updated BIOS) paired with a 4000+ and have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a command rate setting (1T, 2T) somewhere or am I missing something? My cheapo Corsair CAS 3 valueram defaults to 2T (3 4 4 8) .. although I have some Kingston HyperX on the way which should help.

2. CPU voltage is limited to 1.4 in the BIOS with this chip. Is there any way around this? The max temps I'm seeing is ~47c so I'd like to raise the VCORE higher if possible.

So far I'm havin' fun OC'ing with this board & I'd appreciate any tips!

Quote from Kenton earlier in this thread: "There's another setting in the DRAM menu to allow you to change to 1T. Not only do you need Manual at the top (that unlocks the memory dividers and timings) but there's another setting to set to manual towards the bottom. It's should be the first or second option you can select ABOVE the blued out 2T setting. "

 

[cubeless]

anybody tried mixing 2 different brands of ram on this board? i have 2x512 kingmax, and was gonna grab a pair of the hyperx3200 that's on sale... can't seem to find the kingmax mem that i got (with a big rebate) anymore...

but i have tried to use 2 different stix of 512 hyperx(one 3500 and one 4000) with no success with the kingmax... i set all the mem parms manually and went to 2t, but no go... i am going to try the 2 hyperx stix by themselves (don't know y i didn't do that when i was playing earlier) to see if i can get them to work at all in the board...

 

[freshspace]

Alright you geezers, thanks to all of you I just spent more money for these boards and the Athlon 64 4000+ from this forum. Now what am I going to do with the ECS nforce3 + Venice 3000 sets (also from this forum) that I purchased before? Geez. But I still love you all.

I do have a serious question. I am running my above set at 2.5gig using the memory as 166mhz. My current memory is hyperx pc3500. If I purchase PC4000 memory, can I run my system at 2.5gig with memory at 200? How fast will this make my computer? Is it worth the money to go out and get PC4000? ZZF has the patriots for $72 shipped for a 512mb stick.

 

[Dynamyck]

Originally posted by: GeezerMan

Originally posted by: Dynamyck
Hey guys, I've got this board (with updated BIOS) paired with a 4000+ and have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a command rate setting (1T, 2T) somewhere or am I missing something? My cheapo Corsair CAS 3 valueram defaults to 2T (3 4 4 8) .. although I have some Kingston HyperX on the way which should help.

2. CPU voltage is limited to 1.4 in the BIOS with this chip. Is there any way around this? The max temps I'm seeing is ~47c so I'd like to raise the VCORE higher if possible.

So far I'm havin' fun OC'ing with this board & I'd appreciate any tips!

Quote from Kenton earlier in this thread: "There's another setting in the DRAM menu to allow you to change to 1T. Not only do you need Manual at the top (that unlocks the memory dividers and timings) but there's another setting to set to manual towards the bottom. It's should be the first or second option you can select ABOVE the blued out 2T setting. "

Very strange because the blued out settings I see under the DRAM tab are

"Bottom of 32-bit [31:24] IO"
"Read Preamble Value"
"Async Latency Value"

I do have manual selected at the top and have entered my spec memory timings ... but no 2T/1T to be found. I have the v1.D BIOS revision (exact: v1.D 052206).

Anyone else have this issue?

 

[cubeless]

Is it worth the money to go out and get PC4000?

can't see it being worth it... i get 10k 3d05's with a x1800xt and a opty 146 @ 2.8 in this board @ mem 200ish... and around 4500 2006's... got a little better with the 4000 @ 3.0... i ran the mem div at 133 300x10 (after going with 166 and 250x12) for the 4000... faster memory gets u a couple % in all the things i've seen, but not worth the xtra bux imho... the reason i bought this rig was bang for buck... i'm running some kingmax (2x512) ddr400 that i paid $50 on sale... it's cl3 4 4 8, but runs 2.5 7 3 3 @ 200 with 2.6v...

 

[Dynamyck]

Believe it or not, it's my 4000+ E6 stepping CPU that makes changes to BIOS settings .. so I'm not going crazy after all. Any other chip will give you different DRAM options.

The solution is the 7125NF1M-110-OEM BIOS.

I read about this madness here: http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=100742.0 and http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=100798.msg735514#msg735514

Apparently I have a Toledo core chip with one core blocked. CoreTemp ID'd it as a Toledo, CPU-Z correctly as a San Diego.

Hope this helps someone else.

 

[rmrfhomeoops]

Originally posted by: Dynamyck
Believe it or not, it's my 4000+ E6 stepping CPU that makes changes to BIOS settings .. so I'm not going crazy after all. Any other chip will give you different DRAM options.

The solution is the 7125NF1M-110-OEM BIOS.

I read about this madness here: http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=100742.0 and http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=100798.msg735514#msg735514

Apparently I have a Toledo core chip with one core blocked. CoreTemp ID'd it as a Toledo, CPU-Z correctly as a San Diego.

Hope this helps someone else.

Did you try the Bio from MSI site instead? Or did you just see it happen with the original Fujitsu bio? The bio from MSI can be found at MSI Bio I got the 4000+ from the newegg at well (but haven't yet install it) so I would be very interested in knowning if you only saw that happen with the Fujitsu bio shipped with the board.