Msi 780i First Run～

[Dan_c]

.... good God, I need one!
after reading all over the waves are "pro" MSI, as it is the first to really bring a stable Nvidia 7xx to the table...
I'm'a gonna get wan as soon as it hits my shores...

[Tatty_One]

Has anyone else got one of these boards yet, I would be very interested in a 2nd opinion on the board as I am considering it but still there is little out there by way of reviews.

[shawn1998]

I just got one to replace an EVGA 780i that didn't work properly with my new QX9650, but did with a Q6600. The MSI is one sweet board. Stable, runs cooler than the EVGA and overclocks my new QX9650 quite well, although I haven't pushed it too much as I just installed it last night.

[OBR]

high unstable FSB are useless ... only for stupid screen posting ... WE ALL NEED stability! Post some screen with Prime95/4 cores under load ... will see on FSB!

[loonym]

My q6600 G0 L737A won't really go past benchable fsb 480 on this and perhaps 435 stable but with my cooling I would prefer to stay at 400. With better cooling, chipset and cpu, I am quite certain higher stable clocks would be there. I had to get a bios from msi techs to use lower multis with my quad. Was really frustrating the first week I had this board to be locked at 9.

[Yellowbeard]

Ivanq, any news?

[op1e]

I will stay MSI and nVidia chipset if this board will do 500 on dual core stable. I almost jumped ship, but I'd rather buy another GTS than change platforms and sell my card off for Ati stuff.

[malik22]

im thinking on this board but I heard the thermalright ultra extreme 120 doesnt fit.

[Seer]

I'm thinking of getting one of these 780i or 750i boards. Between the 780i's, which one OCs better? EVGA or MSI? Should I wait for some other boards?

[WRC]

i would really like to know how a q9300 or q9450's oc on this board

[Etihtsarom]

im thinking on this board but I heard the thermalright ultra extreme 120 doesnt fit.

The TRUE won't fit unless you mount it vertically.

[shawn1998]

I have an update on this board. I have a QX9650 running and I got a beta (P05) from MSI to help out. It seems it didn't like to cold boot all the time if I overclocked it at all and the beta was supposed to help. Well, no it didn't. The cold boot issue got much, much worse. It wouldn't only boot up 1 out of 10 times, even at stock. Plus, I couldn't seem to disable EIST, it was always working even when disabled in the bios. It also didn't like my Logitech G15 keyboard very much, as it flaked during bootup (didn't work). I flashed back to the shipping bios and can at least cold boot at stock.

I hope they get this sorted out soon, as I really want to push this cpu!

[dinos22]

Ivan

what the heck dude
give us some more info on STABLE FSB

dinos22

[Yellowbeard]

Ivan seems like he went with Elvis and "left the building".

[Dan_c]

what's the deal with these boards? I mean no one uses them?

would really like to see some opinions on q6600's and such...

[shawn1998]

As soon as I get my EVGA 780i back from RMA, this sucker is going back to newegg. I cannot increase the multiplier on my QX9650 at all. If I do, I can warm boot it and it is stable in Vista64, but I cannot cold boot it at ALL. I have to clear the cmos and redo all the bios settings every time. MSI informed me that if it worked at the stock multiplier setting, then there was no issue with the board at all and they would not be addressing the issue. This really pisses me off, I tell you.

[Dan_c]

no ch!t!? so that's MSI's techs thoughts?





not cool... maybe they're up to something and that just takes all there resources?




that is my hope, for the love of God! they are worcking hard on the 790i chip, and the 780i is just a small step...

[theYipster]

Curiosity has gotten the better of me.

My first 680i lasted 10 very nice months with an E6600 OC'd to 3.6ghz. It was a great setup with no issues to speak of. However, when I bought a Q6600 in December, the board's personality changed drastically. I tried to push the chip (an L734A currently in my sig) to 3.6ghz and it wouldn't even boot under 1.5v. At 1.55v, I could run Prime without it crashing in 2 minutes, but temps were out of control. Three days later, the board died with a "--" code.

The replacement 680i has been better, but the damage was already done. I've studied the reference 680i issues extensively and I've seen how many people have problems with them. While this new 680i seems to perform, I've lost all confidence that it will last with a demanding quad core OC. Throughout this entire ordeal, I had my sights on any 780i info I could get. After the first impressions of improved Kentsfield OCs, I signed up for the evga reference board upgrade. However, after seeing that the reference board carried over the same cheap PWM system and electrolytic capacitors, I began to wonder. News of the 780i FTW had me wondering more.

I looked at the non reference designs. The ASUS P5N-T clearly had some issues at launch, so my attention turned to the Striker II Formula. While the Striker Extreme was a very temperamental board to work with and never OC'd well for many, it didn't exhibit the NB and RAM burnout issues so often experienced by reference board owners. Perhaps if the Striker II resolved the Striker Extreme's original issues, it would be a better option than either an EVGA 680i or 780i. Unfortunately, reports on that board are very mixed -- and that's putting it mildly.

Now my attention has turned to the P7N. Even now, there is very little information about this board, but aside from one or two exceptions, the first impressions I've seen have been very positive. So I decided to take a gamble. I'm not using a 45nm chip and I don't plan in the future. SLI'd GTX 8800s have served me very well over the last year, but adding a third one wouldn't do me any good. The interest I have in a non-reference 780i is one of stability and reliability at high OCs. If the P7N Diamond delivers, I'll be recommending it to everyone looking for an SLI setup.

So, I just put together a makeshift setup. The P7N Diamond is paired with a Q6600 G0 (L737B266, VID 1.2375,) a single 8800 GTX taken from my main rig, one DIMM of 2 gig PC-6400 OCZ SLI RAM, plus an IDE DVD+-RW drive and a WD 250 gig SATA hd. I've installed Windows XP 32 to look around and do some preliminary testing. So far, everything is looking rather good. I had no problems setting up the system -- everything was plug and play! If I'm satisfied after poking around tonight, I'll do a full replace with my 680i tomorrow and hook the cpu up to my water cooling system. Then it'll be off to the races with 4 gigs of RAM and a Vista x64 install. If OCing proves easy, I'll add a final four gigs of RAM and see what can done from there.

I'm not looking for a max bench. My goal is simply to support a good Q6600 G0 at 4.0ghz stable w/ at least 4 gigs of RAM installed. If the board OCs easily to a 450mhz FSB with this quad, I'll be a happy camper.

Hopefully I'll have my testing well underway tomorrow. I'll probably start a new Official P7N Benchmarking thread and post results there. It's time we found out more about this board and perhaps raised its profile a bit. If it does well, it'll certainly be the SLI board to get.

[Dan_c]

subscribed!...
also read a lot about the old 680 and the no so new 780, and studied a lot of pics... the evga reference designed board is a total turn-off, and the asus "cosmetic improved" boards looc good, but seem to have lots of problems...
the msi caught my eye, beeng the first to actually boot, out of the box with the new quads...
now I'm still wayting for the P7N Platinum to show up around here, and I'll give my G0 a go on that...

[Leeghoofd]

Curiosity has gotten the better of me.

I'm not looking for a max bench. My goal is simply to support a good Q6600 G0 at 4.0ghz stable w/ at least 4 gigs of RAM installed. If the board OCs easily to a 450mhz FSB with this quad, I'll be a happy camper.

And you are gonna pump what voltage through that CPU to be stable ? Better think of 425FSB and 3.825 for 24/7 use... also note if the 780i is anything like the 680i (which I'm pretty sure of it is) ram performance is really sucky at 450FSB level and really not worth the hassle to get properly working... Peeps are blinded by FSB and 4ghz wich doesn't necesarrily reflect in better overal performance of ya PC...

Everybody talks about +450FSB on quads and 4ghz and more, I wished peeps be more realistic about stuff...

[theYipster]

I've yet to see what the straps are on this board, so who knows how RAM will perform at 450mhz. As for vCore, I won't know until I try, but my water loop will give me headroom.

[WeldZilla]

To all of you who are drooling and going nuts. Don't buy a thing till you see some numbers!! Just hold your horses. I remember how great the every MSI board ever made looked going back the 845 chipsets and not a one of them was worth anything but a hammer. Now granted MSI has had some very good success with Nvidia chipsets but that was for a different brand of processor.
Quite frankly when people come in showing high clocks and no numbers I just walk away cuz you know damn well they know where it benches and how it benches cuz they have already tried at least some. Come on how long does it take to run pi? uh under 10 seconds. Aquamark about 20 seconds or less.

Don't get all excited and buy anything!!

Remember when the MSI 775 first hit here. Lord I knew of more than 20 people that bought one and they all hated it!!

Relax. be patient.

WZ

[op1e]

Roger that. Someone once told me that better memory performance and a higher cpu clock with one mid range card would perform as well or better than nF6/7 with mid range SLI, which what we're all looking at, since we dont have $800 to drop on a pair of GTX's. I cant even do half multi's on this board, and cant get 4ghz + high ram speeds. Gotta back down to around 435fsb to get ram stable at stock pc8000 speeds. I think I'd rather have 1 card or 2 3870s and be stable.

[theYipster]

My prelim OC / benchmark results are up at a new thread:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=178286

[teko]

Nice results, and I really prefer that cooling solution over the reference one, but, all those mixed up colors isn't my thing But still, you can't argue with the results