official MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI thread

Well I do not overclock nor do I plan, will I still run into issues with this board on the basis of this?
 
HighTest said:
Yes, I'd recommend it for all processors that are not Winchester. The reason you don't see it is the imminent shipment of their new Deluxe edition that has the SLI X16 technology.

See: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=710

This board has taken an awesome product and made it even better! Notice the additional x1 and x2 PCI-E slots in addition to the two full x16 PEG slots.

The reason I recommend the MSI over the ASUS solution is that the onboard additional SATA and Network adapter are full PCI-E implementations where as the ASUS A8N-SLI uses PCI solutions for the two items. So the SiL 3132 which supports the full 3GB/s SATA-IO standard is available on all ports on the MSI solution, 1.5GB/s are the top speed of the additional SATA ports on the ASUS. The Gigabit NIC (the second one) is also not able to meet a full Gig performance on the ASUS due to it's PCI implementation.

Also the Audio solution of the Creative Labs onboard sound on the MSI negates the need for the Audigy 2 board. The Audigy 4 or the new Xi board would be needed to really perform better than the onboard. ASUS uses the lower end RealTek AC'97 sound setup.

My local vendors have MSI boards in stock, so you should be able to find one of the original products, but the new one may well be worth the wait!
Click to expand...


Any idea on how 'imminent' this shipment really is? I've always been an MSI fan, so if it is relatively soon, I'll probably wait for it. The sound card isnt something I'm going out of my way to get either, I actually already own the card. But if the onboard does do the trick, maybe Ill sell it or something and use the extra cash towards a G15 keyboard or some other gadget lol. Thanks for the help!
 
I have a K8n neo4 platinum SLI and I can't seem to get the SI3132 controller to work with my WD 250GB SATA HDD. The drive works perfectly on the nforce controller. When used with the SI3132, it will load the GRUB menu (I am dual booting Mandriva and Win2k pro) but after I select "windows" it just sits there showing the GRUB options for that selection with a blinking cursor. It will not even attempt to load the OS. If I select linux, it will start to boot but I get kernel panic almost immediately (I believe it's because I never added support for the SI3132).

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
 
trxjw said:
Any idea on how 'imminent' this shipment really is? I've always been an MSI fan, so if it is relatively soon, I'll probably wait for it. The sound card isnt something I'm going out of my way to get either, I actually already own the card. But if the onboard does do the trick, maybe Ill sell it or something and use the extra cash towards a G15 keyboard or some other gadget lol. Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

Been looking and I'm not certain. I'd give it just a little while longer if possible.
 
spiffylube said:
IWhen used with the SI3132, it will load the GRUB menu (I am dual booting Mandriva and Win2k pro) but after I select "windows" it just sits there showing the GRUB options for that selection with a blinking cursor. It will not even attempt to load the OS. If I select linux, it will start to boot but I get kernel panic almost immediately (I believe it's because I never added support for the SI3132).

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Hmm, GRUB.... The only good Grub is one roasting on the end of a stick :D Just kidding as I know that there are many Linux fans.

Personally I believe that it's a matter of Grub being updated to recognize the SiI3132 controller and not a problem with the drive/controller itself. If you nuked Grub and installed fresh Windows XP on the drive, it may be just fine. Boot drives should be on the nForce4 chipset ports anyways and RAID configurations as extra data drives should be on SiI3132.

It's possible to boot off of SiI3132 ports, but tests show that the nForce4 will provide faster performance.
 
i cant seem to find this board instock anywhere, anybody know where i can find a board?? i live in the us i checked all the normal spots
 
standard141 said:
i cant seem to find this board instock anywhere, anybody know where i can find a board?? i live in the us i checked all the normal spots
Click to expand...

As long as you don't mind refurbished, you can find them at Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130487R

Not to bad a price either.

OPPS, I see you were looking for the Diamond Plus, so see my post below, but the Platinum SLI board is still a good board for all (excepting Winchester OC from BIOS POST, but easily worked arround with ClockGen and a startup script. The pictures are missing, but here's a good MSI forum link on how to accomplish this http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=80974.0, remember that the current BIOS is 3.8 and not the 3.3 the link mentions).
 
Also you can purchase the new X16 SLI model, the K8N Diamond Plus at ZipZoomFly.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=249602

Ouch on the pricing though, hope this comes down quickly as ethusiasts ramp up on the purchasing. I'm happy with my existing Platinum/SLI board though, so I'll skip a gen and wait for M2 boards before I purchase another.

All current gen PCI-E boards show little performance difference between x8 channel SLI and x16 channel SLI at this time. So by the time M2 comes arround, perhaps video cards will finally come to the plate that will need such bandwidth (although I am not certain about that either, plenty of bandwidth to spare as shown by even the 7800 GTX 512 or XT1800XT PE in SLI or CrossFire not saturating even the x8 channel busses).
 
HighTest said:
Also you can purchase the new X16 SLI model, the K8N Diamond Plus at ZipZoomFly.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=249602

Ouch on the pricing though, hope this comes down quickly as ethusiasts ramp up on the purchasing. I'm happy with my existing Platinum/SLI board though, so I'll skip a gen and wait for M2 boards before I purchase another.

All current gen PCI-E boards show little performance difference between x8 channel SLI and x16 channel SLI at this time. So by the time M2 comes arround, perhaps video cards will finally come to the plate that will need such bandwidth (although I am not certain about that either, plenty of bandwidth to spare as shown by even the 7800 GTX 512 or XT1800XT PE in SLI or CrossFire not saturating even the x8 channel busses).
Click to expand...

im starting to think about upgrading my system and that mobo looks like a nice replacement! :D
 
Has anyone got a pair of 512 GTX's SLi'd with this board with stock heatsinks?

If so are they getting enough cooling? I ask as I was gonna put a pair of nv silencers on my 256 GTX's but the PCI-E slots are too close together to do this, I am tempted with a pair of 512 GTX's but am a bit worried about the same thing happening.
 
My NB fan died, and was wondering if anyone has found a suitable replacement that won't block the second PCIE slot? I can't seem to find anything that will work and not block it, which kills the SLI benefit of the board. I emailed MSI and they said they would ship one out but it never showed and my emails are just ignored now.

I will never get another MSI board again if this is their support.

AARGH!
 
Still running Bios version 3.0 on my MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum Sli but now I am in the process of upgrading my computer to Intel Core 2 Duo. Still AMD Fan waiting for their answer to Intel Conroe.
 
i just unloaded mine with an opty 165, but my board had a compatibility issue with ati video cards... seemed any time i tried to use DVI output to my 2405fpw monitor (using proper cable), the monitor would go into sleep mode.

i have a conroe, 2gb ram and p5w dh going in tomorrow, hopefully it won't do the same thing again *praying*
 
Hello guys this is my first post - sorry if this motherboard /my computer is old but im having two huge problems now im living with and hoping it can fix them...

first my specs im running is

Msi k8n neo4sli/ platium edition, 1gig of ram (two 512mb sticks) , and AMD x2 4800 processor .. upgraded from a 3800+ amd cpu.
All along i started with one BFG 6600 pci-express 128mb card from futureshop, now i just got one cheap for us40$ off ebay and i hooked up the sli-connector bridge and sli seems to me running okay at 1600x1200 and all options enabled in half-life 2 .. better than before (I can throw in 16x anti-alizing and 8x antrosphy)
But im getting some wierd blinking dots in a patten across the screen ONLY when i enable sli and play the game .. I updated the nvidia drivers just last week and running directx 9.0c

theres like id say 14 dots about 1mm by 1mm on the screen about 4 in a row across the screen and there like flashing white then pink ...etc colours but arnt too annoying for now. So hopefully i can fix them somehow ,.. I noticed also in I Tunes when i watch a download MP4 music video Im seeing the dots again so its not halflife or windows but the sli/ video card or fault like that.


The next major thing for me I think is causing it is my pci-express card is running only in 8x mode, and would never run in 16x pci -express mode from the first time I bought it back in April 2005. no with both cards running in SLI im thinking the 8xmode is corrupting the displays on games and movies on the pc. All mother board drivers are updated from msi-computer.com site such as the nvidia raid driver and sata ..etc
On CpuZ my info is for Mainboard screen is: Micro star international MS7100, chipset Nvidia rev. A3, BIOS is phoenix Technologies, LTD version 6.00 PG date 04/10/2006

But here the bad part... Graphic Interface, Version - PCI express, Link Width x8 Max. Supported x16

hmm
so My first question is should the 6600 run in 16x mode or is it a budget card and i guess dosnt run in it? both of my sli cards are also identical totally right down to the numbers on the cards and chipsets .. ive checked them out so im sure it should be compatible and on a game like Callof Duty2 without sli i can run only at 1280x1024 with NO anti aliasing nothing. Now with sli its better and can run fine 1600x1200 with no anti , or 4x and 4x on 1280x1024 resolution.

Also i need to mention i lightly pushed my FSB to 210mhz so the core speed for each core now is 2520.9 mhz and memory is dual channel, and I have already ran memtest86 on them for 4hours with no errors.

hope You guys can help and let me know if I should provide some more info.. I might upgrade the video cards soon but for now im hearing about directx version 10 and x64 bit windows vista and im happy now with the perfermance and i know the cpu can really overclock some more if I need it later on... just mostly want to use SLi and remove those blips of light on the games .. ill try to get a screen shot or borrow my sis's digitial camera if i need to take it that way.

thanks,
486dx
 
What is your SLI switch set to inside? If it was always on SLI mode, you would have always had x8 bandwidth.

You also might want to check to see if your vid card bioses are the same on your two cards since you bought them at different times. On some older SLI cards, the bios needed to be the same or else it would have problems.
 
yeah im looking right now at the cards outside of the computer and the chips do have different numbers on them but both 6600;s are identical like the resistors, capacitors and heatsink ..etc is all the same.

Are these video card bios's upgradable like the bios on the mainboard?

as for the 8x bandwidth my question would be do you think it gives the card a huge performance hit to run in 8x? would it be just better to run one 6600 again alone in 16x mode or both in sli?

and if im using both cards, can i turn the sli board around to non-sli to get 16x sli working?
Or is it not possible with the msi board to have 16x mode sli cards...

thanks for your help. Either way, soon I have the extended warrenty on the one bfg 6600 card so I can tell them its broken and easily for free get a 7600 or faster if I pay the extra difference if thats the case. Everytime ive bought stuff at Futureshop ive gotten the warrenty and then traded it in for a free upgrade later on ... lol

like eg. I bought the first 4x dvd +r and -r recorder for 249.99 cad$ then now i got the free 16x dual layer burner just becuase i had the warrenty, lol but now a dvd 16x burner is only worth 65$ at the most



486dx
 
With that board, if you run the selector card at "normal" or single card, you'll get x16 bandwidth and I believe x4 with the other slot. In SLI mode, you get x8 and x8 in the two slots. x8 bandwidth won't really cripple a 6600 card though. I'd look at selling those and getting two 7600GT's if you really want SLI. You'd see a big performance boost with that setup.

I'm not sure how to upgrade the bios on a video card. Search around the video card forum and you might get the answer over there.
 
thanks kirbyrj for your help ... ill soon upgrade it anyways and ill keep the spare 6600 card in for another machine...

Im not sure how to dump screenshots from the elderscrolls 4-oblivion which I play the most with those pesky dots on the screen all of the time but I ran 3dmark 06 anways and got

3dmark 06 results...
5036 3d marks

sm2.0 score: 1965
HDR/sm 3.0 score: 2151
CPU Score: 1864

Anyways I managed to dump a screenshot and then I uploaded it to the web so you can look and let me know what you think ... these dots also appear in games wether or not anti-alising or anything in enabled .. and the pattern here is the same for all games on screen...
36mark 06 screenshot

Anyways it no big deal as i said because in the Nvidea control panal I can easily uncheck SLI mode and then the games like halflife2/oblivion/call of duty 2 and F.E.A.R run slower but still playable at 1280x1024 res.


thanks,
486dx
 
Hey everyone, I have one quick question about ram on this board, I currently have 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect ram and I want to add another gig, a pal of mine is selling his 1x1GB stick cheap...
So I wanted to ask would there be a problem with me having my 2x512MB stick and a 1x1GB stick in my system at the same time?

Thanks ~phantomgrave
 
phantomgrave said:
Hey everyone, I have one quick question about ram on this board, I currently have 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect ram and I want to add another gig, a pal of mine is selling his 1x1GB stick cheap...
So I wanted to ask would there be a problem with me having my 2x512MB stick and a 1x1GB stick in my system at the same time?

Thanks ~phantomgrave
Click to expand...

It would run single channel for starters. I'm not sure it would work. If you had a 2nd 1GB stick to run dual channel it probably would, but I think that's a try and see situation. Probably depends on how good your CPU's memory controller is.
 
phantomgrave said:
Hey everyone, I have one quick question about ram on this board, I currently have 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect ram and I want to add another gig, a pal of mine is selling his 1x1GB stick cheap...
So I wanted to ask would there be a problem with me having my 2x512MB stick and a 1x1GB stick in my system at the same time?

Thanks ~phantomgrave
Click to expand...

I've got the same setup except for 4x512. The problem is I can't overclock my opteron 165 for shit. I took out 2 sticks and upped the FSB to around 225 and my HT to 4. I'm running at close to 2.1 ghz now but I want to get at least 2.4 -2.6 like everyone seems to be getting. Anyone know what I can do? My mem is set at 166 as well.
 
I'd be a litlle suspect about 2 x 512's and a single 1GB.

If you could buy a pair of 1GB I'd expect things to be happier and more stable.

I'm running 2 x 512 and 2 x 1GB both Dual but obviously at 3-4-4-8 2T and things are very stable.

Keep the memory in pairs I'd say.
 
Regular Daddy said:
I've got the same setup except for 4x512. The problem is I can't overclock my opteron 165 for shit. I took out 2 sticks and upped the FSB to around 225 and my HT to 4. I'm running at close to 2.1 ghz now but I want to get at least 2.4 -2.6 like everyone seems to be getting. Anyone know what I can do? My mem is set at 166 as well.
Click to expand...

check your vcore my board undervolts bad
 
Regular Daddy said:
I've got the same setup except for 4x512. The problem is I can't overclock my opteron 165 for shit. I took out 2 sticks and upped the FSB to around 225 and my HT to 4. I'm running at close to 2.1 ghz now but I want to get at least 2.4 -2.6 like everyone seems to be getting. Anyone know what I can do? My mem is set at 166 as well.
Click to expand...

This is what I generally use on my Venice Core 3000 which has similar multiplier etc.

Adjust CPU FSB Frequency - 289
HT Frequency - 3x
HT Width - 16 16
Cool 'n' Quiet - Disabled
Adjust CPU Ration - 9x
Adjust CPU VID - 1.45v
Extra CPU Voltage - 3.3%
Memory Voltage - 2.85v
NF4 Voltage - 1.65v

DRAM Configuration - Manual
Timing Mode - Manual
MEMClock Index Value - 166
TCL - 3
TRCD - 4
TRP - 4
TRAS - 8

User Config Mode - Manual
1T/2T Memory Timing - 2T

HT definately needs to drop to 3

I'd also suggest you try and adjust the Adjust CPU VID and Extra CPU Voltage % to a figure that gives you a resultant core Voltage between 1.4 and 1.45 (Hopefully your cooling is reasonable aswell).

Definately have the HT Frequency @ 3x and then maybe start the Adjust CPU FSB Frequency from somewhere like 240 and work up 245/250/255/260 etc.

Relax your memory timings and depending on how good the MEM overclock ability is I'd suggest maybe trying 3-4-4-8 then 3-3-3-7 or 2.5-3-3-7. If your trying 2-2-2-5 you'll get nowhere.

I can run mine at FSB 305 at get about 2.8Ghz but it's a little sensitive. Before I had the additional 2GB Ram I ran the CPU everyday at 2720MHz but have since dropped it to maintain stability with the extra 1GB sticks I use grabbed free from work.

BTW folks, If you want Vista to run nicely get 2GB of ram. If you run 64 bit get 3GB.
 
I've also noticed that, at least in my case, the board can be finicky with RAM dividers.

I can get a much higher FSB at a 1:2 or 5:6 divider than I can with a 4:6 divider, which is a little counterintuitive and definetely makes overclocking a little tricky. Fortunately, I got myself some decent RAM, so it can take the DDR 500 I'm running it at.

I can get my opty 165 to 2.8 with relatively good stability, I was lucky enough that it doesn't require anything more than stock voltage at that speed, though 2.7 is definetly a lot more stable. Thing is, I think it's the K8N Diamond feeling its limits here, not the opty. I've tried higher voltages, but nothing really helps. Still, an FSB of about 320 max isn't bad.

Like the others have said, drop your HTT to 3x and relax your mem timings some. If that doesn't help, you might try fiddling with the RAM divider. Find the one that allows you the highest FSB possible with your current RAM and you should be good to go.
 
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