Official MSI P7N Diamond (780i) Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread

[BababooeyHTJ]

Thanks Ill try out kapersky. I have 2 more hard drives coming from newegg I am going to try out a 4 drive stripe so ill wait untill then. http://s308.photobucket.com/albums/k...t=cachemem.png
One more question What do you think of this memory bench from everest? Is it where it should be? Thanks for all the help loonym. I have been reading this forum alot before I started posting and learned alot about this mobo.

[loonym]

http://s308.photobucket.com/albums/k...t=cachemem.png
One more question What do you think of this memory bench from everest? Is it where it should be?

Looks fine to me Here's a compare shot.

[nugzo]

nugzo, I can't compare any of my scores to yours because, 1) I am running strictly quads 2) I can't tri sli
I will point out that the major difference in those scores is SM3 and I'm not sure why you have such a huge difference in that one section of the test but the only explanation that makes sense is different driver level tweaks or other variables in each run.

I dont do any driver tweaks what so ever. I install the driver, Up Digital vibrance, enable SLI and up the video cards from 771/1150 to 800/1200 with EVGA tool and max fans to 100 and i'm done. I tried 175.16, 175.19, 175.80 and 177.41 Drivers on the Diamond. As well as Vista chipset, 15.15. and 15.17's. I also removed and re-installed cards into different slots. I am currently using 15.15's and the 177.41s because of the physx support. The only things running in background normally are the sidebar, everest, evga tool, real temp and the G15. Same for both boards. I did remove everything from start up with the diamond but that didnt change a thing. Every other benchmark ive ran on the boards are close to identical. Everest Read, write, copy , latency super pi and XS bench.

I havent tried comparing 1 or 2 cards. only Tri-SLI. I'll record single card and SLI scores with the GT280's and compare them on both boards.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Cool thanks loonym. nugzo what driver has given you your best results?

[nugzo]

Cool thanks loonym. nugzo what driver has given you your best results?

175.80 has the best IQ in my opinion. The 177's give a huuge jump in 3dmark vantage and some physX games.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Can you send me a link to the 175.80. Yeah my cpu score was rediculous with the 177 driver but I have no use for physx at the moment.

[nugzo]

Can you send me a link to the 175.80. Yeah my cpu score was rediculous with the 177 driver but I have no use for physx at the moment.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=263054

[Leeroy]

What drivers are you using? for my gf7 and 8 series cards I use either 169.21 or 169.28 in xp64. I think there's really nothing special in any of the 170 series drivers for older cards.

Hey Loonym, I'm using 175.19 for my 8600GT's.
From what i've read in other forums, the 121 BIOS fixes the video corruption on some configurations but causes SLI gaming to be corrupt ?
First time i play UT3 for 3 hours no probs, next day everytime i ran UT3 i'd get severe corruption and have to exit UT3. At least the PC doesn't lock up anymore ! Disable SLI and there's no corruption...

[aelgen]

Alright, alright. I ran memtext86+ for SEVEN HOURS, that ought to be enough. No errors or anything. Booted up Vista and saw a reboot.

So I installed window xp 64 bit and it's been running for quite some time without any problems. I've only installed the graphics drivers so far. I wont install sata nor raid drivers this time. Just chipset drivers.

Oh I hope this works. :P

[BababooeyHTJ]

I am using the 175.19 drivers no more stuttering in Bioshock(I think I had a corrupted driver) What would be the best way to actively cool the north bridge? I am thinking about just using looymn's idea with the 90mm fan. Is it difficult to pull off the factory cirupipe cooling and clean the thermal compound so I could reapply with mx-2?

[nugzo]

I am using the 175.19 drivers no more stuttering in Bioshock(I think I had a corrupted driver) What would be the best way to actively cool the north bridge? I am thinking about just using looymn's idea with the 90mm fan. Is it difficult to pull off the factory cirupipe cooling and clean the thermal compound so I could reapply with mx-2?

It is a good idea to remove the stock TIM from the heatpipes. You'll have to remove the board to do so though. I added a fan that came with my old EVGA 680i for the NB. It's attached with a cable tie.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Should I replace the TIM with mx-2? What is the best way to get the stock TIM off?

[Leeroy]

I used tissues, fingernail, and then Medi-Swabs to do final clean, which is Isopropyl Alcohol, let it evaporate then put my MX-2 on.

It was interesting to see the Alignment of the Stock thermal pads, as one of mine was only half covering the North Bridge, Dodgy

I've mounted an Intel CPU fan on two continuary wires going from the back of the case to the drive cages, seemed to do the trick, dropped the North Bridge temps by about 5-7 degrees.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Ill give it a shot. I dont like the sound of that thermal pad only half covering the north bridge.

[XavierMaxx]

HTJ, I noticed you mentioned "texture pop-up" a page ago, which might be similar to a problem I was having (after my other listed problems, lol). Much of the searching I did for it was centered on a description as "artifacts," but in reality your terminology is much more accurate: I had textures popping up. Luckily I was able to narrow down the games where it was most noticeable, than narrowed the events in those games that made it the most noticeable, so I could discover the main cause. I tried different drivers first, of course, which did actually have varying effects. Ultimately the cause for me was too high of a FSB for the FSB Term. (FSB voltage), and dropping the FSB a few notches (22 in raw terms, 5.5 in quad-pumped terms) solved that problem.

As for my previously mentioned Super PI problem, it seems to be related to how the Mod version interacts with Vista's themes. Using the original version works fine, or running the Mod version without Aero enabled, or running the Mod version and manipulating the windows in a certain way. Was a bit annoying until I figured that out. Still trying to get this system 100% stable at reasonable settings, I am stubborn if nothing else, but thought I'd share those two developments.

[BababooeyHTJ]

That is still bothering me quite a bit I notice it the most in crysis and ms flight simulator x which I know is pretty cpu dependent. I am convinced my ram is runing pretty stable and I can run ati artifact tool for 45 minutes with no errors so I dont think it is my gpu. I formated recently( I wanted to see how every thing ran with no array)and have a couple of more hard drives on the way(I want a 4 drive stripe)so I only have a couple of games instaled at the moment. My settings in the cell menu are Dot(disabled) EIST(disabled) SLI-memory (Disabled) System clock mode (manual) FSB Clock(1700) DRAM Clock(850) CPU Ratio(9)Pci-e Frequency (105) CPU Voltage(0.20000) DRAM Voltage(2.10) Northbridge Voltave (1.350) SB Voltage(1.525) and everything else set to auto What other recomendations do you have. Thanks
Should I bump up my fsb term? If so what is a safe setting for it?

[XavierMaxx]

My quad is particularly crappy, so I needed max FSB term. even to get what I have, and although I could run OCCT and other tests overnight and put my GPU at stock (and could run Furmark for hr+) I still got the texture issues (in Grid, particularly during car crashes). I even considered it was the HDD like you did (btw I did get some HDD errors, but that was related to this problem as well) and changed ports, cables, even reinstalled the games as I have several HDDs in here. I eventually went into BIOS and lowered FSB term. to see what would happen and the issues got more and more common so I figured, since I couldn't raise FSB Term. further, that I'd lower FSB. Seems to have worked thus far - I'm guessing there was video data corruption over the bus somehow, but keep in mind my RAM was relatively stable (10 passes Memtest, 12 hrs OCCT RAM, Super Pi, etc).

So with that information in mind, to answer your question: I don't know. I consider that setting to be FSB voltage, in which case a maximum of 1.3125V shouldn't hurt anything, but I'm not experienced enough with anything beyond my 65nm quad to say that for sure. I imagine any data out there on FSB voltage would apply and I'm pretty sure loonym previously said it was fine for quads...but I am not sure about duals. In the very least you could test it like I did by dropping FSB a bit at a time and going for the games it shows up most in (as for me, again, Grid + Demo Derby did an excellent job).

[BababooeyHTJ]

Thanks this is a problem that has been nagging me for a while as soon as I set up my new stripe and reinstall I will start to play wiith the fsb and fsb term.

[XavierMaxx]

Excellent, can't wait to hear your results. You can imagine my dismay when I finally got 3.2 stable only to have random textures popping up in Grid every now and then when I hit something, lol. 3.15 is pathetic for a Q6600, but at the same time I'm proud to have even gotten it halfway stable at this point; price you pay with new and expensive hardware.

[loonym]

As you adjust your fsb termination volts it might also help to keep cpu gtl ref at 62-64% for wolfdale and 66-68% for quads and nb gtl at one notch below that. YMMV

[AaronYuri]

Nominal CPU vGTLref is 2/3 (66&#37 of the VTT terminator voltage. However, as you'll get noise, vdroop etc. You'll have to compensate by +/- 1-2%. So, just mess with the settings a bit.

[Supacon]

I'm a little frustrated because my P7N Diamond/Q6600 Setup is limiting me to a mere 3.1GHz overclock, when it seems that most people can get closer to 3.6 GHz.

I've got some decent Corsair XMS2 6400C4 RAM (2x1GB) rated for 2.1V, and am cooling with a Kingwin Revolution RVT-9225 (92mm Fan). I was formerly using a Freezer 7 and found that it was pretty comparable in performance, although it seemed that things were running a little hotter than they should have been.

I've got 4 120mm case fans installed, and although I used to run them at 7V to keep things quiet, I've ramped them up to 12v after installing a couple of very hot 8800GTS video cards.

Anyways, it seems like no matter what I do with voltages, I can't get much over 1680. That speed runs fine, OCCT runs for a long time no problem, but if I go to 1400, I can't even boot Vista. System posts fine even at 1600, however, but Vista won't completely boot.

I've just recently updated to the V1.10 BIOS available from MSI's Liveupdate, but it doesn't seem to make much difference, other than voltages are set differently.

I've tried the following settings, just to get a boot at 1400:

CPU FSB: 1400 MHz
Memory: 700 MHz

CPU V 0.1750 (or less, makes no difference)
DRAM V 2.1
NB V 1.45V (or less)
CPU GTL (67% FSB Term, at 8.879V or less)
FSB Term 1.313V or less


All the CPU options are disabled, and all the other general recommended settings are made.
I am a little frustrated that I can't even hit 1400 MHz. I'm wondering if perhaps there is something that I'm missing here, or something else that I could try.

I'm currently running very stable at 1380 Mhz (3.1 GHz) at much lower voltages than those above. I could probably run stock voltages (or close to) at this speed... it's almost like the board isn't actually changing them, but that's a bit of a jump to a conclusion as to why my overclocking performance is so lame.

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

[panheimer]

i'm not an expert on this mobo, still searching for a stable config for my rig and this q6700, but i've played a little with an q6600 and found your same difficult to get from 1380 fsb to 1400. The secret for me was to enable NB GTL. I'm not at home, so can't remember the exact settings - btw the settings you've posted seems very high to me. I remember that i used something like 1.25 or 1.275 on NB, then 1.250 on FSB Term and enabling CPU GTL and NB GTL they automatically rise as you rise FSB Term. Uh, I used the 1.2b1 bios wich seems a little more stable than the official 1.1
Now i'm stuck with the P07 as it's the only one that lets me lower CPU multi with Q6700, i've spent a whole afternoon triyng 1.1B4, 1.1B8, official 1.1, 1.2b1 and 1.2b2 but none of these worked with Q6700, only the P07 - btw NONE of these bios let me to boot windows with stock settings and everything in auto. Nor was able to find a stable settings for stock speed...i have to oc my sistem to get it stable!

[XavierMaxx]

There's a FSB hole for me on this board, roughly between 1440 and 1500, but I am sitting pretty happily at 1400 and have been more or less stable up to 1422, except that my Q6600 is really bad and needs the FSB term/voltage too much. If it helps, though, here are my current settings for a Q6600 at 1400:

CPU FSB: 1400
Memory: 1050 (manually 5-5-5-15-2T, rest on auto, but I set tRC to 45, tRFC to 52, and tRRD to 3 with Memset)

vCore: +0.07500v
vDimm: 2.2v
vNB: 1.425v
CPU GTL: 0.882v ("20")
NB GTL: 0.883v ("20")
FSB Term: 1.3125v ("63")

[panheimer]

xaviermaxx
when i had the q6600 on this mobo, i've also found a fsb hole between 1420 and 1520 (where the system can't even post), so i'm startin to think it's a mobo related issue.
i've saw your reported GTLs and FSB term values in volts and even with the old integer number...is it true? Does it exist a conversion table for theese values? Where can i get them?
Thanks