MSI K8N NEO4-F

[Pr0d1gy]

Well I formatted my hard drive & installed my X850XT PE and it has run like a dream today. There are some wierd things going on with the hard drives being swapped positionally (C: is now E: and vice versa), but it is booting off the right drive & everything. If I can get the drive issues ironed out then all should be well.

 

[KOZMOKRMR]

i have an issued with my dvd player.
if i put in a cd or dvd, and read it, then eject it and put in a new cd, it doesn;t appear to read the cd. it thinks the old cd is still in the player. i have flashed the bios to the latest and installed the latest drivers from msi website.
thanks,
koz

 

[Shenkoa]

MSI K8N NEO-F is a good board, the same thing as the K8N Neo2 Plat exept it does not have IEEE1394 or dual GB lan.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

I'm a newbie here but anyway, I've got a problem with my Neo4-F board posting with 3x HT AT ALL.

Okay, so I was sitting pretty happy with my Winnie at 2.5 Ghz (not bad for a winnie on air) but I saw that the Neo4-F was capable of pretty high FSB so I wondered how far I could push my CPU with a 20" fan blowing across my open-vent case.

However, any attempts to post with 3x HT enabled results in my system not posting. I've tried 200FSB to 300FSB and no attempts at any of those speeds would post with 3x HT. I've tried upping the NB voltage to 1.7 V but no luck. The thing is, my system can post at like 285+ FSB with 4x HT but with 3x, it can't at all.

I've tried this with 1.71 & 1.75 BIOS, both considered very good BIOS . . .

I'm out of ideas, so I was wonderin if any of y'all had any suggestions . . . would be much appreciated . . .

 

[the cobbler]

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1
I'm a newbie here but anyway, I've got a problem with my Neo4-F board posting with 3x HT AT ALL.

Okay, so I was sitting pretty happy with my Winnie at 2.5 Ghz (not bad for a winnie on air) but I saw that the Neo4-F was capable of pretty high FSB so I wondered how far I could push my CPU with a 20" fan blowing across my open-vent case.

However, any attempts to post with 3x HT enabled results in my system not posting. I've tried 200FSB to 300FSB and no attempts at any of those speeds would post with 3x HT. I've tried upping the NB voltage to 1.7 V but no luck. The thing is, my system can post at like 285+ FSB with 4x HT but with 3x, it can't at all.

I've tried this with 1.71 & 1.75 BIOS, both considered very good BIOS . . .

I'm out of ideas, so I was wonderin if any of y'all had any suggestions . . . would be much appreciated . . .

Yeah, your Winnie has the the "219 FSB bug" which varies a bit depending on the week it was made. the bug is related to the HTT multi at boot and you'll have to use a ClockGen startup file to set the FSB higher once Windows is loaded, no other way around it than to sell off the Winnie and buy a Venice or Opteron, etc. (which is what I did). This is all caused by the Winnies having basically a faulty memory controller, had the same exact bug on my VNF4Ultra.


It looks like yours is the "250FSB bug" at 3X HTT multi which is not uncommon. try booting >250FSB at 1XHTT mulit and 2xHTT multi and you might be able to, some people have no problem over 300FSB with Winchester cores as long as HTT multi is 1x or 2x.

there is no bios fix, the fix occurred when AMD revised the Winchester core's memory controller with the Venice. no bios, beta/mod/otherwise will fix the bug and increasing voltages will not help.

try using ClockGen in windows after doing all your OC math and setting voltages/dividers/etc. and you should have no problem with 320+FSB

I used a ClockGen startup file with my Winnie which allowed me to run 305x8=2440mhz
Without it, I would have been limited to an overclock of 219x10=2190mhz, no kidding.

best solution is to buy new CPU

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: the cobbler

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1
I'm a newbie here but anyway, I've got a problem with my Neo4-F board posting with 3x HT AT ALL.

Okay, so I was sitting pretty happy with my Winnie at 2.5 Ghz (not bad for a winnie on air) but I saw that the Neo4-F was capable of pretty high FSB so I wondered how far I could push my CPU with a 20" fan blowing across my open-vent case.

However, any attempts to post with 3x HT enabled results in my system not posting. I've tried 200FSB to 300FSB and no attempts at any of those speeds would post with 3x HT. I've tried upping the NB voltage to 1.7 V but no luck. The thing is, my system can post at like 285+ FSB with 4x HT but with 3x, it can't at all.

I've tried this with 1.71 & 1.75 BIOS, both considered very good BIOS . . .

I'm out of ideas, so I was wonderin if any of y'all had any suggestions . . . would be much appreciated . . .

Yeah, your Winnie has the the "219 FSB bug" which varies a bit depending on the week it was made. the bug is related to the HTT multi at boot and you'll have to use a ClockGen startup file to set the FSB higher once Windows is loaded, no other way around it than to sell off the Winnie and buy a Venice or Opteron, etc. (which is what I did). This is all caused by the Winnies having basically a faulty memory controller, had the same exact bug on my VNF4Ultra.


It looks like yours is the "250FSB bug" at 3X HTT multi which is not uncommon. try booting >250FSB at 1XHTT mulit and 2xHTT multi and you might be able to, some people have no problem over 300FSB with Winchester cores as long as HTT multi is 1x or 2x.

there is no bios fix, the fix occurred when AMD revised the Winchester core's memory controller with the Venice. no bios, beta/mod/otherwise will fix the bug and increasing voltages will not help.

try using ClockGen in windows after doing all your OC math and setting voltages/dividers/etc. and you should have no problem with 320+FSB

I used a ClockGen startup file with my Winnie which allowed me to run 305x8=2440mhz
Without it, I would have been limited to an overclock of 219x10=2190mhz, no kidding.

best solution is to buy new CPU

Thanks a lot man. Yeah now I can post with 310 FSB and 2.5x HT . . . gonna test for stability @ 2.635 GHz (310x8.5) and 1.64v . . .

Interestingly though my ram seems to run at the speeds asychronous to my my FSB. i.e. at 300x8.5, my ram doesn't run at 300 mhz but rather at 283 mhz (with 1:1 ratio) . . . I assume this is the case with all Winchesters?

Also, how did you sell you Winchester? Cause I definitely want to sell mine and get a 3000+ Venice instead . . .

 

[the cobbler]

sold my Winnie on the cheap along with VNF4Ultra and a few other parts to a friend for his budget gaming rig

try selling it on the ForSale/Trade Forum or eBay for ~$130-150 or so I would guess

screw the Venice, newer ones do not overclock well

get an Opteron 144 for ~$150, they are crazy chips so far

 

[Shenkoa]

MSI's F models are usually the same as the platinum models with a few things missing, such as dual GB lan and firewire.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Okay so my Winnie ISN'T stable at 2.635 GHz . . . at least not on air . . . oh well, at least now that I can post at 310 FSB I can run the my RAM @ 310 Mhz and 2.5-4-3-7 2T!! That's what I'm talkin' about . . .

I still love this mobo . . .

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

What's the highest FSB that y'all have gotten with this board? Just wondering . . .

 

[the cobbler]

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1
Okay so my Winnie ISN'T stable at 2.635 GHz . . . at least not on air . . . oh well, at least now that I can post at 310 FSB I can run the my RAM @ 310 Mhz and 2.5-4-3-7 2T!! That's what I'm talkin' about . . .

I still love this mobo . . .

that is a damn fine OC my friend, good job
you might as well just keep that Winnie until you can get an X2, looks like a good one

I've been able to hit 350FSB with an 8x multi no problems, my VNF4Ultra could do the same or better, looks like the good NF4 boards are all able to do that

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: the cobbler
that is a damn fine OC my friend, good job
you might as well just keep that Winnie until you can get an X2, looks like a good one

I've been able to hit 350FSB with an 8x multi no problems, my VNF4Ultra could do the same or better, looks like the good NF4 boards are all able to do that

The highest I can go with it being stable is just shy of 2.6GHz (at above 2.6Ghz Prime fails pretty quickly) but it required an unhealthy amount of vcore and my fans on high settings so I'm just sticking with ~2.5 GHz @ 1.6v . . .

350FSB would be nice . . . don't think my RAM can quite handle it though . . . (I think it maxes out at ~315Mhz @ 2.5-4-4-7) I guess it's divider-ville at that point . . .

 

[Schoon]

I'm really hoping someone can help me. About 2 months ago I decided to build my first AMD 939 Computer. I have typically gone with Intel based computers in the past. I read Anandtech and got specifications off the site for a complete system, I bought everything from NewEgg and waited. Since receiving all the parts and putting it all together it has been nothing short of a nightmare! To begin with, on I purchased the following...

MSI K8N Neo4-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
GIGABYTE GV-RX80L256V Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3000BPBOX - Retail
CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS512MB400 - Retail
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value SB0400 8 (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - OEM
ASPIRE X-Infinity ATXB6KLW-BK/420 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ATX 420W power supply for AMD/Intel Power Supply - Retail

After putting everthing together I installed Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and all of the patches that it recommended. The version under MY Computer says Version 2002, Service Pack 2.

To begin with, I've had a LOT of problems with this computer. Mostly random lockups, sometimes during routine windows stuff like surfing or emailing or working in Microsoft MOney. Other times I will come home and it's obvious the machine has rebooted itself. Nothing in the system event logs about that. THe rest of the lockups are usually related to gaming, Dungeon Seige II, Battlefield 2, Doom 3, WOrld of Warcraft. Sometimes it will hard lock and the sound will loop, other times it just shuts down.

Things I have tried. At first I thought it was hardware related. I RMA'd the Motherboard and the Graphics Card. Received replacements for both but still have the same behavior. I have updated the grahpics drivers to ATI's latest on their site (Catalyst Currently Reports this)...

Driver Packaging Version 8.162-050803a2-025203C-ATI
CATALYST? Version 05.8
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 6.14.10.6561
2D Driver File Path System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{34712430-39EE-400E-95EE-FCB408E8F148}\0000
Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0331
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.5279
CATALYST? Control Center Version 1.2.2044.226
AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version 6.14.10.6238
TV WONDER Pro Driver Version 6.14.10.8307
REMOTE WONDER II Driver Version 2.0.0.0

I have flashed my motherboard Bios to the latest and everest reports this...

Motherboard ID 11/04/2005-MS-7125-6A61FM49C-00

All of the settings in the bios are conservative (as far as I know) I have not overclocked anything. The case seems to be exceptionally cooled as well.

THe latest thing I tried was replacing the power supply. A friend offered up that the included case power supply I was using was not very good. I opted for the following (also a newegg purchase) ...

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply 115/230 V - Retail

A very nice power supply but alas, not a fix to my problems. Today things have been just as bad (power supply replaced last night). I've had lockups in DUngeon Seige 2 and also one hard crash where the machine just shut off.

Please, I really can't think of anything else to do. I am at my wit's end and short of just chucking the whole thing and building another Intel box I have no clue. PLease let me know if I can provide any additional information for you and thank you very much for reading my issue.

Schoon

I thought this might be interesting to Add, Everest has temps and other useful information, here is a snapshot of mine...

Field Value
Sensor Properties
Sensor Type Winbond W83627THF (ISA 290h)
GPU Sensor Type National LM63 (ATI-I2C 4Ch)
Motherboard Name MSI MS-7046 / 7100 / 7125

Temperatures
Motherboard 35 °C (95 °F)
CPU 32 °C (90 °F)
Aux 13 °C (55 °F)
GPU 57 °C (135 °F)
GPU Ambient 50 °C (122 °F)
WDC WD740GD-00FLA0 46 °C (115 °F)
Seagate ST3250823AS 48 °C (118 °F)

Cooling Fans
CPU 3590 RPM
North Bridge 7849 RPM

Voltage Values
CPU Core 1.46 V
+3.3 V 3.34 V
+5 V 5.08 V
+12 V 11.98 V
+5 V Standby 5.20 V
VBAT Battery 3.04 V
Debug Info F FF 2F 56
Debug Info T 35 32 13
Debug Info V 5B D1 C5 BD 24 02 C0 (01)


Update:

I'm beginning to think that my problems are heat related on the video card. I have placed a fan directly on top of the head sink on the card and my temperatures went to the following (again from everest)...

GPU 42 °C (108 °F)
GPU Ambient 39 °C (102 °F)

These numbers are substantially lower than what I posted above. I will keep playing around and see if I can make additional improvements. I played Quake 4 last night on 1024x768 with 4x AA and it did not lock up on me after 30 minutes as usual. I will play a few other high stress games today and see what happens. I am wondering if it is safe to keep the fan sitting atop the card though as it is plastic and isn't there a possbilityof it melting to the card because of the high temps?

Thanks again for keeping up wtih this thread.

Update:

Well, I played World of Warcraft for about an hour and it crashed on me once. ATI Caught it and reset the card so it put me right back into the game but it still crashed. The temps were up to around where the first set of temps was which tells me that the card is still running quite hot under load. I'm not sure what to do at this point. More case cooling maybe? Or should I just try and unload this card and get something else?

Thanks again for keeping up.

 

[weirdedout]

I too was experiencing similar problems with this board when I first built My AMD Box. Like you I restrained my self from overclock it yet every so often and also during boot up did my PC crash. I went to my local computer store with the problem and they responded that MSI boards in particular can be fussy when it comes to RAM.

You mentioned that you put changed all your BIOS options to conservative settings which is a good thing to do when troubleshooting problems such as crashing. If you would like to test whether your problem could be RAM related, set the "Agressive Timings" option to disabled. This option can be found in the "dynamic overclocking section" of your BIOS settings. Also for this test make sure that the dynamic overclocking is disabled. If you are still having issues then change the RAM Case Latency setting to 3.

Once of reduced these settings you can do a "Memtest". Download this Linux diagnostic distribution http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robo...ooplinux/rip/RIP-14.8.isolinux.iso.bin

This is an excellent diagnostic tool which boots from your CD or DVD ROM drive. Don't worry it will not install itself on your HDD. A boot loader menu will appear giving you a number of kernel option to boot into. Select the option labelled "Memtest". This will kick off a memory test of your system and will alert you if there are any problems with your system accessing memory registers (they will appear in red on the list). I recommend that you at least allow the memtest program to run overnight or even for 24hours if you don't urgently need your machine.

You may want to first try to do a memtest prior to changing any settings in your bios first as a benchmark.

If the memtest does register errors with your RAM after changing the bios settings as I have suggested then there is definately an incompatability between the motherboard and your RAM. It does not necessarily mean that your RAM is faulty. However if this the case then you may wish to try using Kingston ValueRAM which I have found to run fault free with my rig.

 

[Tom]

I'm looking at the MSI K8N Neo3-F at Newegg. Is this board similar to the Neo-4f ?

I thought it might be the close to the same thing in a micro atx board ? I can't keep Nforce versions straight, is the Nforce4 4x a good chipset, or is some other Nforce chipset better ?

Anyway, I'm looking for opinions about it. I currently have an A64 3200+ in a Compaq computer. I'm thinking about the MSI mostly for the PCI-E slot and being able to overclock a bit. The Compaq motherboard, made by Asus, has an AGP slot and no overclocking.

How useful is the AGR slot ? I also have a Radeon 9700 AGP card, which sometime may end up in the Neo3-F, if it would work in there.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: Tom
I'm looking at the MSI K8N Neo3-F at Newegg. Is this board similar to the Neo-4f ?

I thought it might be the close to the same thing in a micro atx board ? I can't keep Nforce versions straight, is the Nforce4 4x a good chipset, or is some other Nforce chipset better ?

Anyway, I'm looking for opinions about it. I currently have an A64 3200+ in a Compaq computer. I'm thinking about the MSI mostly for the PCI-E slot and being able to overclock a bit. The Compaq motherboard, made by Asus, has an AGP slot and no overclocking.

How useful is the AGR slot ? I also have a Radeon 9700 AGP card, which sometime may end up in the Neo3-F, if it would work in there.

Well both utilize the nforce4 chipset and have similar features but as for stability or overclockeability I would say probably not.