The *Official* MSI K8NGM2-FID GeForce 6150 Motherboard Thread

[Medicalmess]

WARNINGS, ADVICE, AND REQUEST FOR HELP


1. There appears to be a bug in the latest NVIDIA 91.31 Forceware drivers causing DirectX 3D animation to fail. I am using a 3800 Athlon 64 single core at standard settings without any overclocking, good tested memory on Bios v3.50. When I ran the TEST 3D ANIMATION in the DIRECTX DIAGNOSTIC program I got lines all over the TV and LCD screens while running the second bouncing square test. Running this test also caused the mouse cursor to dissappear after the test is complete. It can cause system lockup. If I Disable 3D acceleration in the DiagX program the problem stops. When I changed to Forceware driver v82.05 the problem goes away. The problem first became apparent while viewing the BATTERY visualization in FULL SCREEN MODE with Windows Media Player on MCE 2005 SP2 with all updates (54 of them) applied. It is not apparent in any display less then full screen. You will not see it if Media Player is not in FULL SCREEN MODE.

Has anyone else seen this?

2. Has anybody tried to overclock a Athlon 64 3800+ single core? If so, what settings worked for your particular chip?

3. Has anyone noticed that the sound coming off the motherboard JAUD1 pins is different than that coming from the back panel Line-out? The JAUD1 signal appears to have no depth (pre-amp) while the J1 Audio Header Line-out has full depth. Anyone heard this on headphones while listening to a CD?

4. I'm testing out the Intervideo generic codecs for DVD playback. I tossed the Cyberlink codecs because they were too sluggish. What codecs work best for HD playback? Do you need PureVideo codecs by NVIDIA or are there other alternatives?

5. Like everyone else my 6150 GPU runs at 57C to 63C at room temp 75-77F depending on load. What is the maximum temperature this chip can handle before it flakes? At what room temperature does this board in a well ventilated system flake? I have other computers that will flake at a room temperature of 80F and an in-case temp of 84F (Abit KT7A-RAID). What extremes can this K8NGM2-FID motherboard take? There is no point asking MSI because they are in the business to sell product so what experiences has anyone had here? What is the flake point of 6100/6150 and 410/430 NVIDIA chips?

 

[renethx]

smorzando,

Larger frame buffer size increases video performance. (manual p.3-12)

 

[BernardP]

Originally posted by: Medicalmess
Like everyone else my 6150 GPU runs at 57C to 63C at room temp 75-77F depending on load.

Do you see those temps in the NVidia Control Panel? I have looked everywhere, I think, but can't find any temperature display, although I have enabled Coolbits to see clock frequency. I am still using the 81.86 video driver that came with the board, thus the "Classic" NVidia Control Panel.

 

[Medicalmess]

Do you see those temps in the NVidia Control Panel? I have looked everywhere, I think, but can't find any temperature display, although I have enabled Coolbits to see clock frequency. I am still using the 81.86 video driver that came with the board, thus the "Classic" NVidia Control Panel.

Actually I am directly measuring the temperature of the 6150 chip by placing a small temperature probe at the base of, and centered in between, the cooling fins of the stock heatsink. The CPU also has a temperature probe at the side of the CPU heatsink but because of placement location it does not give as accurate a reading as the first probe. The CPU probe tends to read 5 - 6C degrees cooler because of the cooling fan and the fact that it is on the side of the heatsink. The 6150 probe is pressed down in between the fins in the center of the heatsink and is held in place by tacking the probe line to one of the capacitors on the right side of the heatsink with kids kindergarden construction paper rubber cement. The rubber cement can be pulled off easily if you need to do so without leaving a trace that it was ever used, and, it does not conduct electricity. It is a great way to tack things in place perminently or temporarily. Rubber cement also holds in heat so be careful where you use it.

Now if you're wondering where the temperature probes come from go to www.newegg.com. Search on Item #: N82E16811997601 and here is what you get...

HIYATEK MF-ATN-710BK Black Multi-Functional Panel with 20-in-1 card reader - Retail

Compatibility: 5.25" Drive bay
Features: DC Input: +5V/+12V, USB bus power DC Output: 4V-12V DC LCD display: 28 x 11 mm Sensor temp range: 0~90C/0~194F Range of fan RPM: 1000~9900RPM 3 pin fan connector: 2 Memory card type: CF type I/II, Micro drive, MS, MS PRO, MS, DUAL PRO, MS DUAL, SD, MMC, SM Interface of reader: USB2.0 OS: Win 98se/me/2000/XP, Mac OS Model #: MF-ATN-710BK

This front panel is cool looking. The temperature and fan speed displays a pleasant blue like the indigo wristwatch lights. All the cables you need to reroute outputs from the back panel to the front panel for USB and Firewire 1394 are provided. This also includes 2 SATA cables, two temperature probes and the card reader USB cable to the motherboard. For $30.50 including memory card software and shipping it is a steal.

Now take this front panel display and stick it in the following case...

Rosewill TU-155 Black 0.8mm SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W(20+4 pin) Power Supply - Retail

120mm Fans: No
80mm Fans: 1 x color 80mm Rear Fan
Expansion Slots: 7
External 3.5" Drive Bays: 2
External 5.25" Drive Bays: 4
Front Ports: 2 x USB 2.0 Ports 2 x Audio Ports 1 x 1394 Port
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays: 3
Motherboard Compatibility: Micro ATX, ATX size up to 12.5" x 10.5"
With Power Supply: Yes
With Side Panel Window: Yes
Price: $49.99
Model #: TU-155
Item #: N82E16811147001
In Stock
$5.00 Instant Savings
$16.34 Three Day Shipping

The case and fan LEDs glow the identical blue color as the front Hiyatek panel. Combined with an SHW-160P6S04C Lite-on DVD-RW 16x drive and Samsung black floppy drive and you have one really neat, tough-looking, professional quality/grade Home Theater System. This is what is sitting next to me right now. Last night I tested the surround sound with the movie "The Island". I showed it to my 11-year-old daughter this morning and the surround sound just blew here away during the action sequences.

The computer case did need to be drilled to mount the front panel since all the 5.25" bays were designed for screwless quick-release drive access for full length drives such as a DVD Player, or, 3.5" Hard drive with 5.25" mounting rail adapters.

MSI has really got a winner here with the K8NGM2-FID board. The only thing that could make it better is to do the same board in ATX full-size with 3 more PCI slots. If you want to run MCE 2005 SP2 with HDTV then you will need a standard TV Card and an HDTV card and that will take up all the remaining PCI slots. I have a standard TV and a BenQ 19" DVI Monitor attached. I can run the DVD movie, from the computer, full-screen to the TV and in surround sound, While the BenQ monitor displays the computer Windows desktop as if no movie were playing at all. With Intervideo DVD codecs from the K-Lite Codec Pack version 2.72 or WinDVD disk you use about 20% overhead processing power from an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Single-Core CPU while playing a DVD in Windows Media Player.

With a dual DVI-output graphics/game card in the PCI-Express-16x slot you could build a system running four monitors for the multimedia obsessed/possessed.

I get this image of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" rotating her head 360 degrees spitting green pea vomit and yelling, "I've got 4 monitors you prolitariate slob".

 

[BernardP]

Thanks Medicalmess for this more than complete answer. Nice setup you have there!

 

[mshan]

Anyone know how to create a custom resolution of 854 x 480 via DVI (My Infocus SP4805 is hooked up here and that's it's native resolution).

When I try to add that custom resolution, I keep getting an invalid input error.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

??

 

[ascully]

I just purchased this motherboard and am having as very good experience with it apart from one problem

I installed MCE2005 on the fresh system bios 3.20, beforehand setting the bios to S3 power managment, set everything else up as usual. Now yesterday s3 was working great I set it to go to sleep after an hour in power settings and it worked fine even waking itself up to record shows then going back to sleep an hour later. I flashed the bios to 3.50 today and s3 standby has stopped working now, I can put it into s3 manually but the timer does not let the machine sleep anymore. Anyone any ideas or should I flash back to 3.20 to fix it?

 

[seb2010]

Hello!

This is realy THE best thread! But i have a question for which i haven't found an answer yet (tried searching, reading every post is surely overkill ):

I want to build a system based on this board and made a selection for the cooler. But now i'm facing the question: does the heatsink reach over the edge of the mobo? Because my HTPC-case leaves no room on the side of the mainboard where the CPU is located. I recently saw a picture where the 7700 seems to need more space than the mobo has to offer. Perhaps you can include this criteria to the overview. Perhaps someone can post the space between mobo-edge and cpu/socket-middle, so i can guess how it would look like by the Cooler-measurements..... To be specific, i was planning to use the Zalman 7700. After i saw the picture i was wondering if the XP-90 or SI-120 are small enough, but i fear that the SI-120 and all other 120mm Coolers have this size problem.

Thx
SEB

 

[mshan]

I've got a Zalman 7000B AlCu mounted on my MSI K8NGM2-FID and there is about 0.5 inch of clearance to the top edge of the mobo.

Don't know about the Zalman 7700, though.

 

[grits]

About the S3/STR thingy, I've gone thru the whole thread and can't find any ref to the "registry tweak if bios not set to S3 during OS install".

I also couldn't find any google/alltheweb solution except for some changes to HKLM/CCS/USB in the win98 registry. BTW, alltheweb was a much better search, surprisingly.

So, does anybody know the registry fix needed for XP and/or MCE05?

Barring that, do you think the following would work: do a minimal clean install with bios at S1.....export and save the registry.......repeat with S3 and compare the files.

 

[renethx]

grits,

Section 9. Installing Windows > Remarks > 6. References concerning resume problems from the S3 power state in Windows XP in the first post might be helpful. There are several threads in The Green Button Forums concerning S3.

 

[jimcpl]

Hi,

I've had a K8NGM2-FID mobo for awhile, running Windows 2000 Server SP4, and I tried to add a 2nd hard drive (a 200GB Samsung IDE) this weekend.

The BIOS sees the drive, and in fact, if I boot to a Win98SE boot disk, I can see the drive and FDISK it, but I can't get it to appear in Windows 2000, even in Computer Management->Disk Management.

The drive is the only IDE drive on the 2nd IDE port, and I've tried jumpering it to cable select and master, and in neither case can Windows see it.

Has anyone seen this problem with this mobo? Any ideas what might be going on?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[jimcpl]

Originally posted by: jimcpl
Hi,

I've had a K8NGM2-FID mobo for awhile, running Windows 2000 Server SP4, and I tried to add a 2nd hard drive (a 200GB Samsung IDE) this weekend.

The BIOS sees the drive, and in fact, if I boot to a Win98SE boot disk, I can see the drive and FDISK it, but I can't get it to appear in Windows 2000, even in Computer Management->Disk Management.

The drive is the only IDE drive on the 2nd IDE port, and I've tried jumpering it to cable select and master, and in neither case can Windows see it.

Has anyone seen this problem with this mobo? Any ideas what might be going on?

Thanks,
Jim

Hi,

Answering my own post...

Ok, I got the new drive working. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but here is what I did that finally worked:

1) With the drive attached, and no partitions on it, I went into Device Manager, and deleted the "Secondary IDE Channel", then

2) I rebooted, and Windows detected the secondary IDE channel and re-installed it, and got a popup saying "new hardware found". After that, it told me to reboot, which I did.

3) After it rebooted, Windows detected the drive, and the "Drive signature wizard" window appeared, and asked me if I wanted to write a signature. I did that, and then rebooted.

4) When it rebooted, I could then see the drive in Disk Management !!

Jim

 

[Mahoney]

Hi all,

I'm contemplating RMAing my MSI-K8NGM2-FID 6150 motherboard. Using VMR9 in Sage, with or without FSE and with both PureVideo and the SageTV decoders, I get terrible screen corruption - in PureVideo it happens within seconds, with the SageTV decoders I get a bit longer but still within 30 seconds. I get a sort of gird affair with one frozen frame filling half the squares and the movie continuing in the other half, and the grid made up of blue or purple lines.

The case has sides and lid off, so there's plenty of air flow - yet the passive heat sink on the 6150 part of the chipset is so hot to the touch it burns me within a couple of seconds of touching it, and that is within minutes of turning the PC on, without trying to play back video.

All suggests to me that the chipset is running far too hot for some reason, and the effort of doing 3D accelerated video playback pushes it over the edge, rather faster with PureVideo where I am asking it to do serious deinterlacing work. I'm only playing back SD PAL, not HD or anything like that.

Specs are:

Athlon XP 3000+
512MB RAM
XP Home
SageTV 5.02
ForceWare 91.31
PureVideo 1.02-223
MSI-K8NGM2-FID outputting 1920x1080@60 via DVI to a 1080p TV

Anyone seen anything like this? Obviously if it's my fault in some way I'd rather not start the RMA process!

 

[Mahoney]

The problem may be with SageTV - see here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19050

I guess it's time to try different ForceWare/PureVideo combinations. Sigh. I hate computers.

 

[Mark9]

Medicalmess:
I have two MSI K8NGM2-FID's and also was worried about the Chip temp. An easy and inexpensive solution is to add a 40mm fan to the heatsink and drop the temps substantially, which should decrease the chance of failure considerably. The fans that I am using on both of these motherboards is:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811999016

Because of the shape of the chip heatsink you can only use one screw to attach the fan - BUT, by adding a small nylon "zip" strap through one of the other fan mounting holes (attached around the CPU heatsink arm), the fan is securel.

It's too bad that MSI doesn't add a cooling fan in this position initially. The cost to them (per fan) would be less than 1/6 of what the fan costs the consumer. I guess it's indicative of MSI's regard for the customer. I note that out of the 13 systems on our network, eight motherboards came with a chipset fan/heatsink combination - NONE of these are MSI motherboards!!

..

 

[Mahoney]

Thanks Mark9 - if I don't manage to find it's a driver issue I'll come back to that. Trying to go for quiet to begin with though.

 

[subcodec]

Originally posted by: Mark9
It's too bad that MSI doesn't add a cooling fan in this position initially. The cost to them (per fan) would be less than 1/6 of what the fan costs the consumer. I guess it's indicative of MSI's regard for the customer. I note that out of the 13 systems on our network, eight motherboards came with a chipset fan/heatsink combination - NONE of these are MSI motherboards!!

..

I don't think that price was much of a concern adding a fan to the SB. This is popular board among the HTPC crowd which, like Mahoney mentioned, wants as silent of a PC as possible. Small fans don't create a lot of noise, but it is noise none the less. I've had my MSI board for about 6 months now and I have yet to have video related problems.

 

[agent2099]

What a find this thread is. I was actually one of the first people to get the MSI 6150 and it's great to see so many people enjoying it.

I have a question of my own.

I have an Opteron 165 in my K8NGM2 and currently it's at stock speeds. I'd like to OC it and since there are no v.core adjustments, the only way I can do it is via FSB.

So according to the OP I can just up the FSB to 250mhz and my Opty will run at 2200mhz? All I would need to do is upgrade to DDR500, is that correct?

Will the Opty do 2200 mhz at stock voltage? If so I'm ordering some Patriot PC4000 from newegg tonight.

 

[subcodec]

Originally posted by: agent2099
Will the Opty do 2200 mhz at stock voltage? If so I'm ordering some Patriot PC4000 from newegg tonight.

I don't see why not. My opteron 170 does 2.4Ghz easily and I only use PC3200. Even with the overclocking, the processor never goes over 45C under load. Gotta luv them optys.

 

[agent2099]

Thanks for the vote of confidence subcode. The opty hit 250fsb without a hitch and the difference in performance is truly impressive.

You mentioned you are using PC3200. Are you overclocking it or running it a stock speeds. Wouldn't running it in Dual channel mode yield much more performance?



I just noticed that the "Auto" settings on the MSI board result in my DDR400 running at 333mhz.

edit: I guess that was not it because I changed "MemClock" from Auto to 200mhz, and the "DRAM timing" still shows 333mhz during the boot process.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: agent2099
Thanks for the vote of confidence subcode. The opty hit 250fsb without a hitch and the difference in performance is truly impressive.

You mentioned you are using PC3200. Are you overclocking it or running it a stock speeds. Wouldn't running it in Dual channel mode yield much more performance?



I just noticed that the "Auto" settings on the MSI board result in my DDR400 running at 333mhz.

edit: I guess that was not it because I changed "MemClock" from Auto to 200mhz, and the "DRAM timing" still shows 333mhz during the boot process.

do you have 4 sticks of ram? cause that will automatically change it to ddr333

 

[agent2099]

I have a matching pair of 512mb sticks.

 

[subcodec]

I am using a matched pair of Patriot 1GB sticks in the Dimm1 & Dimm2 slot. It always defaulted to dual channel mode for me. The memory itself is actually running at stock speeds. I followed the overclocking tips on the front page of this forum and I turned down the Memclock value and then turned up the CPU-LDT frequency. Because the patriot memory is not "performance" memory, if I try to overclock it to the point where the memory runs over 200Mhz, the system won't boot. This is without adjusting the voltage to the memory.

Like you said, this forum is a valuable resource. It has helped me tweak my setup in a number of ways. Even now, I check it daily for new info.

 

[bumbarash]

I'm getting distorted sound and static noise during DVD playback using analog out.
CD, MP3, Mpgs are perfectly fine. Only DVD effected.
Tried to mute different components without any success.

Is is DVD drive itself or driver configuration? Did anyone experience similar issues.

My configurations:
Mobo: K8NGM2-FID with onboard audio
Realtek HD Audio CODEC (the latest from Realtek R1.41)
Realtek ALC880 Codec (I tried 2 versions: from MSI disk and Realtek web site (A3.90), same problem)
nVidia PureVideo decoder ( I tried AC3 decoder, same problem)
Lite-On DVD
MCE2005