*** Official MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra chipset) Thread ***

[BrokenVisage]

Definately sounds like a NF4 chipset exclusive problem, I have the same memory and board as you and have been running flawlessly so far. I say reinstall windows and if it remains then reformat and install every new driver out there.

 

[instant]

Has anyone noticed that the TEST RESULTS for the SLI ROUNDUP of the PLATINUM card specs it as a 6 SATA2 DUAL GB LAN motherboard.

Well, the SLI Platinum card I have sitting here right now only has 4 SATA slots and a single LAN card.. Wonder what other parts are missing from it.. performance perhaps?

The 6 SATA2 2xGBLAN card from MSI is the DIAMOND, not the PLATINUM.

Damn it... finally get the order, and its f*ed up.. I knew this would happen the minute I ordered MSI... 'the sky is falling!!!'..

Anyone from AT want to clear this mess up? .. And while you're at it, how about a in depth testing considering all the problems people here report, USB, memory, etc...

Thanks.

 

[md1865]

The K8N Neo 4 Ultra Platinum has 8 SATA onboard and can run SATA or SATA II.

Only bug I have had is the Nvidia Firewall and CoreCenter



Not overclocked yet!

---------------------------------------------------
AMD 64 3500
Coolermaster Hyper 6 Heatpipe
K8n Neo4 Ultra Platinum
Geil Ultra X 1GB DDR400 (512x2) 2-2-2-5
Hitachi SATA II 80 GB x 2 (RAID 1)
Maxtor 300Gb SATA
MSI NX6600GT 128MB
Audigy 2 Zs
NEC 16x DVD_RW ND-3520A
Mitsumi 4x DVDRW DW-7802TE
Thermaltake Hardcano 13 Fan Controller/6-1
Aspire Chemeleon 550w
---------------------------------------------------

 

[md1865]

Update Bios, if connect to the Nvidia, you have to set the Bios up to let windows see it. The default settings disable the SATA for RAID, also I had to config my maxtor 300 to raid 0/striped for it see it. The Silicon Image RAID no need to do it. I use my 2 80 GB SATA II drive on nvidia RAID ina RAID 1 array and the 300gb to the SI SATA/RAID contoller. It took some playing with to see what the board does. I didn't try turnign RAID option off in the BIOS for the 300GB HHD then seeing if XP showed it in the Disk Mgr

 

[Puffnstuff]

My impression of msi so far is not good. Since this replacement board has turned flaky I'm not sure if I really want to trust another msi board even if it is another new one. Hell this board was a new replacement for a new mb and it only lasted one week before it turned stupid after a normal shutdown. On the other hand my abit fatal1ty an8 has been rock solid since I first hit the power button which is exactly what I expect of any mb reguardless of brand. I'm going to rma the k8n neo4 directly to msi this time instead of zzf and I ordered a dfi lanparty nf4 ut ultra-d to replace it with so I can get that machine running again. If anyone from msi is reading this you don't have to worry about me buying anything else with your name on it.

 

[Jacklty]

I experienced the same problem with my canon F60 printer or IBM webcam connected. (Either stuck during posting or halt before the winXP logo)
Someone suggested (from overclocker.com) that we should not mix usb1.1 and 2.0 devices.

As long as I don't restart that often, it will not cause me headaches at all.
I have already reported this to MSI technical support, but they still haven't replied me yet.

PS:
USB devices that cause lockup:
Canon F60 Printer & IBM wbcam

USB devices that work fine:
IBM keyboard & Logitech optical mouse

 

[Hammer0id]

My K8N NEO4 Platinum runs stable at:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @2550Mhz @1,50v cooled by TR XP90 C&Q enabled
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Bios 1.2
2*512MB TwinMos Twister Pro DC Kit @2,5-3-3-5 @255Mhz @2,7v
Club3D X800XL with ATI Silencer5 Rev.2
2*WD740GD 74GB SATA Raptor @ Raid 0
1*Hitachi 250GB SATA
1*Hitachi 160GB SATA
1*Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB SATAII
Enermax Coolergiant EG485AX-VHB(G) ATX 2.0 480W

Everything over 255fsb x4 fails in superpi but prime is stable:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/sledge12345/3200+%20@2600Mhz.jpg


If I have more time i'll investigate the bottleneck - MemContr./HTT/RAM etc.
No Problems booting up at 275 x10 Htx4 but instable.

 

[instant]

It could seem like they have done some design changes on the K8N Platinum SLI card.. as the BIOS on the card had settings for 2 GB LAN and also more SATA connectors than there were on the card.

After 'upgrading' the BIOS the extra GB LAN and SATA connectors were removed.

argh... bastards.

 

[DockRx]

Well, I e-mailed MSI about my problem (3rd post page 13) and got a response back from them pretty quickly. My e-mail:

Computer runs great at stock settings, but reasonable overclocking is eratic and unstable. I have high quality components that are capable of much more. If I try and manually change the CPU voltage, on pressing F10, the computer simply shuts down and the power LED on my case blinks. It is unresponsive to everything except flipping the power supply off and clearing the CMOS. Using the percent voltage over CPU, could get to 220x10 HTx4, no problem. Once booted at 9x250. However, on reboot, occasionally the board would power up and not post, like the monitor was not getting a signal. There seems to be a ceiling with the Winchester core Athlons that many people are hitting with these K8N Neo4's. Is this a problem with the NForce4 chipset in general, or will a bios revision need to address this? After reading the great reviews, I had really high expectations for this board and my setup. So far, I am really disappointed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well, of course their e-mail response did mention that they did not guarentee oveclocking, etc, you know, the legal stuff, but they did send me bios 1.24. I was probably going to flash it this weekend. Anyone else using this for their non-SLI K8N Neo4?

 

[Momental]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
My impression of msi so far is not good. .......and I ordered a dfi lanparty nf4 ut ultra-d

After reading through many posts in this thread, I think it's safe to assume that this MB is not quite ready for "prime time" and to be honest, I'm not so sure the NF4 chipset is either.

One would expect to be able to hit the 'power' button and be off and running, but everyone seems to be having issues (even with the LanParty Ultra-D) regarding SATA drivers, USB connections, yada yada. I'm a little skittish about going the NF4 route, but what choice do I have if I want PCI-E and AMD64??

All I know is that I'm steering WAAAAY clear of this MSI board!!

 

[PaulUMTS]

I've had this board for a few weeks and did have some lockups
during games. I got the feeling that the problem might be related
to I/O - either the drivers or the SATA interface was causing weird
stuff from time to time. So, I removed the NVIDIA nforce drivers
and then reinstalled but only the SMBus driver - so I don't have
ethernet, IDE, or sound. Of course this may not be the most efficient
use of the hardware given that now the MS driver is controlling
my CDROM and disk but so far the system seems to be much
more stable. So anyone still having problems might try this approach.
With this setup DOOM3 and Halflife2 run the same so I don't see
any slowdown.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well we discovered that we could boot my sons neo4 plat if he unplugged all his usb cables during the post and replug them in windows which is bs. Today his dfi lanparty4 ut ultra-d came in and I installed it without a hitch. I'm going to rma the neo4 to msi for a replacement. This is costing me a lot of money in hardware and shipping. My abit fatal1ty an8 has been rock solid since I first hit the power button so I'm most displeased with msi since their product has been anything but reliable.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Originally posted by: taelee1977
Just got back from a long weekend... turned on my computer... and it kept restarting and blue screening after reaching the Windows XP screen. This thing is really pissing me off. Brand new computer... doesn't work like it's supposed to. I thought everything was finally figured out, but there are problems again. Stability is really a big issue with this MB. The driver set on it needs A LOT of work. I just installed the new nForce 4 standalone drivers and the new nVidia Forceware driver a few days ago. Everything seemed to be working fine, but when I turned on my computer today I found that I need to boot in safemode and for whatever reason it started working again after I reinstalled the drivers a few times. When it finally started, I could access websites, but when I tried scrolling down the screen, my CPU Utilization shot up to 100% and the screen slows to a craw. Anyone else have this problem? I somehow got it to work after much fidddling, but I'm not sure how I got it to work. I'm thinking it was the new graphics card driver, but I can't say for sure since I installed both of the new drivers at once.

Did you figure out your problem yet? If not, try rolling back the drivers or unistalling the updated ones and replace with the xp drivers. I am talking about the IDE drivers only. Not the sound or ethernet.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Originally posted by: PaulUMTS

I've had this board for a few weeks and did have some lockups
during games. I got the feeling that the problem might be related
to I/O - either the drivers or the SATA interface was causing weird
stuff from time to time. So, I removed the NVIDIA nforce drivers
and then reinstalled but only the SMBus driver - so I don't have
ethernet, IDE, or sound. Of course this may not be the most efficient
use of the hardware given that now the MS driver is controlling
my CDROM and disk but so far the system seems to be much
more stable. So anyone still having problems might try this approach.
With this setup DOOM3 and Halflife2 run the same so I don't see
any slowdown.

The nvidia drivers have been known to be bad. You don't need to uninstall the ethernet or sound. The IDE drivers are what seem to be causing most problems.

 

[instant]

Well... installed the motherboard (MSI SLI PLatinum) Installed the video card (Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra GS) installed 1 x SATA drive..

Installed 2 GB (4 x 512MB OCZ DDR 3200 Platinum Rev 2.0). Connected the PSU (OCZ Powerstream 520W)...

Installed Windows XP.. Updated to Service Pack 1 + hotfixes.

Installed NForce4 Drivers... Video Card Drivers...

Installed SOundcard (SB Audigy 2 Plat Pro)
Installed Drivers for said soundcard - upgraded them..

Installed DirectX9.0c.

... And now I have bluescreens ocasionally.. e.g. when I am launching a game!

YAY!

 

[ingeborgdot]

Roll back the nvidia drivers to the xp or uninstall. The nvidia ide drivers cause many problems.

 

[kilovolt3]

Has anyone with the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI mobo had problems with seating two PCI-e video cards like dual 6800GT's? The reason I ask is because the review at HARDOCP said that the chipset cooler is a bit tall and may give you seating issues with the second PCI-e X16 slot. Here is what the review said:

The biggest issue with the board is the height and proximity of the chipset cooler to the secondary PCI-Express x16 slot. Therefore, you may have issues fully seating a card with a large PCB in the secondary slot due to the height of the chipset cooler.

This seems like a huge problem. Have any of you had this problem?

 

[instant]

I'll have a look right now... I have the Gainward GF 6800 Ultra GS with a huge cooler [WHICH THEY HAD SOME "PACKAGING ISSUES" WITH so they forgot to include a Power Cable.. That they knew about.. which they did not inform their distributers about so they could check it before sending the card to customers, so you have to email the company, ask for a replacement, and wait until easter has ended before you can use your video card.. ] I'll take a 'scientific look'..


It would look like its a VERY CLOSE FIT.. or Impossible from the litte check I did...
You could try removing the fan (running at 7000 rpm) and instead use another cooler.

The more I use this card the more unhappy I am with it..

 

[taelee1977]

Did you figure out your problem yet? If not, try rolling back the drivers or unistalling the updated ones and replace with the xp drivers. I am talking about the IDE drivers only. Not the sound or ethernet.

Really?? Hmm.... When I installed the new drivers I just installed everything there. I wasn't using a IDE hard drive so I didn't think it would affect me. Right now, I just live with it. About half the time when I turn on my computer, it blue screeens. It works fine once I restart it. Yea, it sux, but I'm too lazy right now to try to fix it. I'm gonna try to format and start over sometime in the next few days... minus the IDE drivers. Thanks for the tip.

 

[billwinkle]

I have the same board with 2 6600gts. the second card comes very close to the northbridge fan but does not interfere with it. BTW my fans runs around 5800rpm.

 

[atergram]

Well... installed the motherboard (MSI SLI PLatinum) Installed the video card (Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra GS) installed 1 x SATA drive..

Installed 2 GB (4 x 512MB OCZ DDR 3200 Platinum Rev 2.0). Connected the PSU (OCZ Powerstream 520W)...

Installed Windows XP.. Updated to Service Pack 1 + hotfixes.

Installed NForce4 Drivers... Video Card Drivers...

Installed SOundcard (SB Audigy 2 Plat Pro)
Installed Drivers for said soundcard - upgraded them..

Installed DirectX9.0c.

... And now I have bluescreens ocasionally.. e.g. when I am launching a game!

YAY!

I had the same problem with my dual channel 512 RAM, you have to put one of the pair in the first green slot and its match in the first purple slot, then I assume you do the same with the other two slots for any more ram you may have. Blue screen happened when i folowed what the MSI manual said when I filled up only the green slots first Everything seems to work now, so give that a try.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Originally posted by: taelee1977

Did you figure out your problem yet? If not, try rolling back the drivers or unistalling the updated ones and replace with the xp drivers. I am talking about the IDE drivers only. Not the sound or ethernet.

Really?? Hmm.... When I installed the new drivers I just installed everything there. I wasn't using a IDE hard drive so I didn't think it would affect me. Right now, I just live with it. About half the time when I turn on my computer, it blue screeens. It works fine once I restart it. Yea, it sux, but I'm too lazy right now to try to fix it. I'm gonna try to format and start over sometime in the next few days... minus the IDE drivers. Thanks for the tip.

If you roll back the drivers I can almost be certain you won't have any more blue screen. The xp drivers are actually more stable. It will only take a minute and if it doesn't work just reinstall the others.

 

[Aisengard]

Is the onboard sound just as good as an Audigy 2 ZS soundcard? Meaning, do I need to spend an extra 90 dollars to get decent sound out of my computer?

 

[kilovolt3]

Originally posted by: Aisengard
Is the onboard sound just as good as an Audigy 2 ZS soundcard? Meaning, do I need to spend an extra 90 dollars to get decent sound out of my computer?

The sound is not quite as good but it is good enough to wait to buy the Audigy 2 if you don't have the money. The Audigy 2 has 192kHz audio sampling while the onboard audio is 96kHz.

 

[tretneo]

I am sure someone has posted temps before but I just switched from an A8N-SLI Deluxe to the MSI K8N Neo4 Plat and I am experiencing some high temps on the top Ultra even with Zalman VF700-CU coolers.

75f Room, 10 minutes rthdribl load, 71.84 WHQL Drivers

Idle GPU 1 = 68c
Idle GPU 2 = 56c

Load GPU 1 = 99c GPU / 61c Ambient
Load GPU 2 = 75c GPU / 55c Ambient

I like this board much better than the Asus board but the temps on the top card are pretty high, with the asus board I could run rthdribl for an hour and the top card temps barely got into the low 80c range. Is this a typical range for Ultra Cards on this board. I have switched the cards to make sure one doesn't run hotter than the other and I get similar results.

tret