The OFFICIAL MSI K8N Neo2-939 tips and tricks guide thread

Im looking in the bios code now. Extra memory settings just are not in there. They will have to be added after in the lan rom or on windows boot.

I did find the 183 divider though and i enabled that still looking and seeing what else is turned off.

Think ill turn off the 216 233 and 250 settings as they dont work anyway.

Also found +13 and +18 percent cpu voltage settings. Now i dont quite get why they are in there because if msi wanted them gone why add them to a new bios. Going to enable them and see what happens.

edit - im talking about 1.A4 bios here
edit - maybe max async can be added can see the code for it im not sure if its in 1.A4 bios or not by default someone let me know.

n00b OCer back again

so 2 days i had lots of tyme...went thru quite alot of this thread

finally today managed to boot at 250htt 1:1 2.5-3-3-8 tho i had to lower the multi to 9 tho it wudnt prime more then like 10 mins but thts cuz of the low volts which is cuz of crappy coolin n psu

and i also managed to get 2420 prime stable on default heatsink, nuthin to be proud of but atleast its a move in the right dir

for some reason 240 stil wnt boot even tho 250 wud, a bad figure maybe?

and btw im on 1.8 and in my bios ram divider options r quite limited, i have 100, 133 (i think not sure), 166, and 200
how do i enable othe options? or do i need a diff bios?

also from wht i can gather sideeffect, my ram is 505

Lastly hnx to lestat and sideeffect for all the info...will post screenies if i hit anything to be proud off tho i have take 250 htt screenie, and am savin up for psu n cooling, a hyper 6 maybe so hopefully ill get 2.6 prime stable, thnx `1nce again

ali

Thanks for taking a look at it.

aguila -

that ram thats 2-3-2 is only good for 2-3-2 up to about 210mhz(correct me if im wrong but thats only tccd ram) plus your using 2 1 gig sticks which is harder to overclock on this board or any board really. it takes more power to run a gig stick.
so anything above 230mhz you will have to run 2.5-3-3-10. and since its one gigi sticks your probably gunna have to run 3-4-4-10. just play around. But you also have ram and cpu voltages to think about also.

you also have a 3800 X2 now no one said they are good overclockers. as you read around you'll probably start seeing that many of the X2's arent very good oc'ers. but that could be cuz of the bios or the mobo.

I've said it before and i'll say it again. The NEO2 is old,, too old to be running an X2 on, i dont care what MSI thinks or does with this board or bios isnt designed for a dual core processor.
Go get yourself a DFI or ASUS pci-e board.

now i would say yank 1 stick of ram out and see how far you can get. dont forget 2.5-3-3-10 or looser.


sideeffect if your comfortable with what you've done to that bios let me have it. i'd like to see what she does with this venice.

I am sitting at 10x260 right now with a 166 divider at 2.5-3-3-9 at 1T. My experience with this cpu so far has been pretty good. I use my system primarily for video/audio encoding/conversion so the x2 and extra gig of ram made a heck of a difference. As far as the board, I had a dfi and I will not own another dfi nf3 ultra board. It has some major problems. I ended up sending it back for this neo2. I will stick with the neo2 until I get ready to get rid of my 6800gt agp card and go pci. Then I will go with dfi again for their nf4 lan party board. I had one of the dfi lp nf3 250 boards and it was great but as I said the nf3 ultra by dfi was a big snafu.

Well so far

enabled 183 divider (dunno what it will do)
enabled +13 +15 +18 (same dunno if it works)

enabled Acpi function in power management
enabled power manage
enabled video off
enabled hdd power down
enabled WOR wake up event
enabled cpu internal external cache on or off
enabled Hdd block mode
enabled all available memory settings

disabled temps in bios
disabled full screen logo
disabled-12 volt
disabled ATI/nvidia speedup
disabled 213 233 and 250 dividers
disabled small logo

Basically all those things i enabled are to keep things from being hidden you still get to choose what to select. The things i disabled wont show for various reason either they dont work or are annoying.

Im not done with this bios yet im going to hax in some better timings for the memory in all the dividers. I also have the acpi tables all the roms etc.

sideeffect when you get a sec. list what memory options MSI was so kind to hide from us ;) id be interested to see whats really hidden inside that bios.

Aquila -

yeah i had the UT 250GB ith my clawhammer system and it honestly was the 2nd bet mobo i ever owned. the 1st was an MSI 865PE NEO2 FIS2R. that motherboard was just impressive to say the least.


but yes what your doing that 2 gigs of ram is necessary i simply wanted to get you to play around with things.
drop 1 stick and see what it does 1:1 then run 166 and see.
frankly right now i'd drop the ram down to 133 and see how much further you can take it.

I dont know im just not ready to fork over more for a cpu that the only thing that uses both those cores is Windows itself and video editing, cuz games really dont use it yet, although i imagine if the game is coded for Intel HT then it should work better with the X2 but i cant confirm that.

well play around let us know.. Also what are your temps at ? your on air ?

I am on air. Right now the idle is 39c and load with both cores priming is 47c. I am going to save up and fork out the dough for one of the new zalman 9500's when they are available. I do some messing around with the memory tomorrow and let you know what I find out. One of the memory settings that it sets too aggressive is the write to read delay time. It sets this to 1. When I change it to 2 I can push my ram a little further.

Well by default msi hides all the settings for memory more or less but the mod bios files already have them showing or u can unhide them yourself like with ati speed. The only new memory timing that i found that isnt in the bios is max async latency and read preamble. It has all the options but its not linked to the bios yet.

Going to try and add that in. The other timings have to be added like nfm did.

Lestat do you have a bios saviour/ Spare chip?

Edit the 150 divider may also be available. wtf is this hmm seems there is a setting under cas 2 that can be enabled also but i doupt cas 1.5 works on nforce3 so why did msi add the setting. Well who knows.

I guess I should read up some on bios editing myself and see what I can do.

if you set CAS 1.5 with A64 tweeker CPU-Z shows a blank entry i did that with the Mushkin and then did Sandra and there was no speed difference so i doubt its enabled.

Now, programming wise, mose the sweet settings are all set as reserved. So setting then as not reserved would, or should be possible by removing the reserved "flag". but i would also assume that they are linked alse where to so that you may have to enable those settings in more than 1 place in order for then to fully be available.

Sideeffect - so your saying that all the memory settings that we have seen so far is all that MSI incudes ? wow thats pretty crappy. i was really hoping that we would see all the DFI settings in the MSI bios but just hidden.

Again speaking from a limited programming point of view, would it be possible to take the DFI bios and set it side by side with the MSI and simply add in the values from the DFI into the MSI ?

All in all in the end im pretty sure it would take someone with the money to call Award and have them create a custom bios for this board. Which its my understanding i THINK they can infact do. but MSI may have a binding contract that they can not do that for anyone but MSI.

I personally think its time we add in some extra stuff and get rid of others.

All the comport and LPT port and IR port stuff,, get rid of it,, delete it.
ATI/NV speed up. Remove it
Auto overclocking, all items related to AUTO overclocking remove it.
i mean frankly look at all the stuff if you dont use it get rid of it. totally delete it out. or hide it.

I want Memtest put in there,, lol.

now this is a total longshot.... BUT... what about integrating some sort of bios level A64tweaker. ?
If A64tweaker can control all of those settings then frankly all of those settings can be manually added into the bios. A64 tweaker doesnt talk to a driver or the regestry or anything it shoots a bullet right into the core, the memory controller itself and possible sections of the bios itself. It's more or less nothing more than adding those address ranges and hex values into the bios. Which brings me back to comparing a DFI award bios and an MSI award bios and stripping the DFI and adding them to the MSI.

just all food for thought andi wish i had the knowledge and programming skills to do it.

Side effect no i dont have a spare flash chip. i frankly am almost done with this board and moving on to a DFI Ultra-D NF4 but while i have it ill try not to fry it lol.
I simply meant when your comfortable that your hacked bios is usable and wont instantly cause a bad flash throw it to me ill test it out.

I tried to add lines of code to the bios and it just messes it all up. So i cant add the DFI timings for example. But some things are already in here that just arent linked up which i think i can do something about them.

Yes i was also thinking along your lines of a slimed down version of the bios with all the junk removed like auto overclocking junk ati speedup junk and power savings.

Id also like to reorganise it a bit to make it more user friendly and have default settings that dont plain suck :p:.

The settings from athlon 64 can be kind of added but not the variables. Like i can add a setting not a choice of settings. Adding memtest is possible ill ask around about it i dont know how to do it personally.

As soon as i have a good bios ill test it out and if my pc doesnt implode/explode and things work ok ill release it.

The cas 1.5 setting in athlon 64 tweaker has a star next to it because its deactivated so wont work. But if i activate the setting it might work. But do what? Who knows gonna activate it anyway cause im curious.

I can also activate the tras settings lower than 5 also. I think ive read somewhere that the cas 1.5 is a chipset limitation so i really dont think it will work. Same with trcd 1 and trp 1

yeah as far as i know the NF4 are the only ones that can do 1.5

hhmm odd that it cant have added entries.... only changed values of exsisting entries.
I would say kick out everything that you dont use and unhide everything that should be.
the whole memtest thing i think is only available for 4meg romchips.not sure if ours is but i dont think it is , is it ? im probably wrong on that whole thing but i think there actually has to be room in the rom to add a huge chunck like memtest.
then there is actually getting it to work it didnt even work 90% of the time on the DFI board.

Yes it is 4mb. Yes adding text to the bios throws it all out of alignment. So i enabled 150 and 183 divider only 183 shows in text 150 is blank but selectable. When i added the 150mhz text it messed everything up

Ill keep trying to see if theres anything that can be done. Im getting some more tools also to help me do things.

I enabled 1.5 cas but its still unselectable so i guess its not really there after all. Still trying to get Async and read preamble to show dont know why it isnt and the other memory timings are showing.

Version 1A has gone final

1A has gone final Aug.16 and is availible on MSI USA .
MSI though has again forgotten to enable USB 1.1+2.0 as selectable
and the enhanced memory timings and the usual stuff is hidden .

Modded versions that gives you full control is availible
Follow this thread
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=59711.0

syar did they notify Murdock so he can tell the msi coders ? and have them pull it from the website and fix the stupid bios ?

They told Murdock to create bug reports and submit them but are they listening ?
sounds more like a "we will let them think they are helping but in reality we dont care what problems they have"

Quote:

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2. This BIOS fixes the following problem of the previous version:
- Update CPU ID for AMD E6 CPU.

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wow thanks MSI for listening to us and ACTUALLY FIXING THIS GOD DAMN PIECE OF SH|TE FVCKING BIOS/MOBO YOU GIVE US!!!

How bout fixing the tmep bug
how bout fixing Cold boot issues when OC'd
how bout fixing voltages
how bout fixing -12v readout
how bout fixing the thing so its actually a respectable bios.
every bios you release you do nothing but lose customers to other motherboard makers.


Sideeffect -

just a thought, if your adding text instead of changing whats already there is it messing with the CRC/Signature of the rom ? almost sounds like it is. do you bios tools resign the bios ?

frankly everytime i flash with one of the modded bios's i get a Bios CRC error, Defaults Loaded error when i reboot. this hasnt seemed to cause any issues, but if its programmed to see a certain CRC value and its not seeing it.... well....

What kind of agreement murdok have i'm not sure about.
If it's codename 1A0 it's final , nothing can change that.
Further work must be done with a new 1Bx version.

-I'm not aware of any temp bug , unless you are adressing negative temps .
-Fixing the -12v readout ?
Why , it's not used to anything and thats the reason it's hidden .

As for the crc error it's because your flash method keeps the old cmos checksum
Flash properly with shutdown and sby-power removed .

Other than that I agree that their BIOSes needs more work .

Quote:

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Flash properly with shutdown and sby-power removed .

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i have no idea what your talking about

Quote:

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-Fixing the -12v readout ?

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the -12v WAS reading at -7v

Quote:

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-I'm not aware of any temp bug , unless you are adressing negative temps

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the temp bug was bad temp readings. like 5-8 deg too high. but i see now its fixed.


Murdock reports to MSI bios issues. I never said he has an agreement but he talks to them and he has said many times that MSI wants us to be more specific about errors that he reports. Maybe HE is saying that but i might be german but i dont speak german so babelfish may be translating it wrong.

Overall fellas i now think i am chaning my recommended bios.

This bios STILL does not allow me to use my Promise TX2 IDE card if i have power plugged into the hard drive thats hooked to the IDE card the system will not boot to any hd or cdrom or floppy. I need this drive but i dont like using onboard ide as its slower and uses more resources and CPU cycles.

Anyways, i am now at 285mhz 2.5-4-4-10 1T with the OCZ PC4800 Plat. no other bios lets me go this high. I was stuck at 2.5-4-3-10 @ 270mhz before so this is a nice increase, but just like the other guy said im pretty sure its cuz NFM and murdock forced memory settings on us that were to tight. but i cant verify that so its only a guess.

It also totally rearranged my IRQ's which i am NOT happy about. My 6800 Ultra now shares the same IRQ as the SMBus which for those of you who dont know what that is, thats the PCI bus controller which having a 6800 Ultra and the SMBus on the same IRQ, well lets say thats a bad thing. But ill have to run some benches to find out.

so.. inshort, if this bios stays this good then i am definately liking it. But i wont use it for very long because i cant use my IDE controller card... if they can get that fixed then i would start recommending this bios.

Bios modders open the -12v to be visible .
To open it is useless as the -12v isn't used in modern systems to anything.
-5v and -12v is only provided on PSUs for backwards compablity to atx boards.
And i'm aware that it shows -7v , but i don't believe this is an issue
worth adressing over the other important ones.

To have a clean cmos after flash turn the system off + remove power
to the PSU instead of letting it restart .
This followed by a bootup to bios and load optimized defaults and
letting it boot again to build dmi pool is proved to be the best method.

I also have a pci sata SIL addon card to be able to use four disks without using sata1/2 .
For me it's impossible to boot from any drives connected to it with nvraid enabled .
If i disable nvraid the disks will show in hd boot order , if not
only nvraid is listed .


I've not tried any high overclocks with it yet .

well mines an IDE card not SATA. but yes the issue seems to be that the add-on card might be interfering with the onboard ide or for you SATA.

i do not use the nvraid only sata. its always disabled.

ill disable the SATA in the bios and only use my promise TX2 card and see if it boots.

ill report back.

You gotta love those changelogs that msi provides. Apparantly the only thing they did was

- Update CPU ID for AMD E6 CPU

Now this took them about 6 weeks and 4 betas to accomplish :rolleyes:

no fair i already said that lol.
yeah real nice to know what was supposedly fixed cuz i dont think they've ever really fixed anything have they ? they've only made other things broken or they remove an import feature like PRESS INSERT TO GO INTO SAFE MODE WHEN YOUR OVERCLOCK FAILS!!! AARRGG I HATE YOU MSI FOR REMOVING THAT YOU BLOOMING IDIOTS!!!!!!

1/2 CPU Multipliers,, again my hatred runs deep towards you MSI


hows your testing going SE ?

i also disabled the primary IDE and the SATA 1 2 3 4 and it still wont let me use my Promise U133 TX2 IDE card,, that pisses me off ya know....

Havnt tested it yet. Im going to mod it first then test it. Im a little scared to though i havnt had very good luck with any bios since 1.8. But seeing as how it improved your overclock i can only guess that the updated cpuid helps newer cpus.

The memory timings wernt that tight in nfm modded bios so i dont think that explains your performance increase.

If you can get stable at 285 are you still going to go to DFI Lestat because imo thats not a bad overclock.

I was told that the half multi's didn't work with a64's. SideEffect let me know when you get your mod bios ready for testing. That 150 divider would be great for my system.