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

[panheimer]

It tooks me almost two weeks of trying but finally i've come to an accetable oc setting - at least for the summer, maybe in autumn when there's no longer 32°C room temp i'll try something higher.
But i've a question for you: i've got to a stable config at 345x10 wich leads me to a discrete 3.45 Ghz, first of all i've come to this setting keeping my ram at 1:1 and loosening its timings, then i've tried different memory clock and timings and the previous settings resulted completely wrong. I'll give you some numbers:
FSB Clock 1380
RAM 690 at 5-5-5-15 2T 1.9v
CPU Volt +0.2
NB Volt 1.325
CPU GTL 25
NB GTL 20
FSB term 30
wich were completely stable (+8 hr blend prime95 and many hours playing GRID and Assasin's Creed) but once i start ocing ram any sort of problems came out (freeze, rebot, no win boot...at least no BSOD!). So, after some days of tweaking and trying, i've come to:
FSB 1380
RAM 863 at 4-4-4-12 1t and 2.2v
CPU 0.2125v
NB 1.425v
CPU GTL 25
NB GTL 20
FSB Term 63
so the question is: why so much different settings? i've expected to have to rise CPU Vcore, and even the NB volt and FSB term, but never tought to have to raise them so much! Do you think it's normal?
BTW, this last settings lets me to run my RAM at 690 3-3-3-9 1t and 1104 5-5-5-15 2t, but found that keeping at 863 4-4-4-12 1t gives me a little advantage over the other settings.
I've always been told to search the max stable CPU oc and then the max RAM oc, and i've always succeded to get ram stable with little tweaking. But from this experience i'm starting to think that it's better and time saving searching both max CPU and RAM oc togheter.
How do you proceed?

[crucial33]

I can't find your topic, or your username. Could you direct me to it?

Please look for title to thread "P7N2 diamond does not boot with q9450", you will find all the responses there. Its in the section marked "intel core duo and core 2 duo based boards".

[AaronYuri]

Please look for title to thread "P7N2 diamond does not boot with q9450", you will find all the responses there. Its in the section marked "intel core duo and core 2 duo based boards".

I'll add some suggestions to the thread. I think your 2GB sticks are the real problem here.

[tetrahc]

I'm a total noob to this world. I come from always using AMDs and i don't know much about overclocking.

I have Q9300 and MSI P7N

OZ DDR2 6400

i want to figure out how to overclock it properly to its best speed on stock fan but I cannot find any good guides or help I can understand. Can anyone help refer me to some noob guides for the mobo and chip i have?

Thanks

[Fiskbit]

I don't know all that much about overclocking yet (I, too, was an AMD guy up until this build), but it's gonna up your temperatures quite a bit. The stock Intel cooling is decent for stock settings, but it's not good enough to handle much in the way of overclocking. Is there a reason you want to do it on stock cooling rather than using a better cooling solution, such as a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (TRUE)?

I'm using a Q6600 and was able to overclock by 250 MHz by increasing the FSB and keeping the RAM at 1:1 (information about this is available in the first post). I'm using stock Intel cooling temporarily until I finally get around to putting together a water cooling setup. As is, I don't feel comfortable raising the speed any more than this because of temperatures. If you want a good overclock, seriously consider getting better cooling.

At the moment, though, you should be able to raise your clock a bit by going into the BIOS and upping your FSB and RAM clock. I'd imagine you can get some increase without raising your voltage, and to my understanding, lower voltages yield less heat.

[XavierMaxx]

so the question is: why so much different settings? i've expected to have to rise CPU Vcore, and even the NB volt and FSB term, but never tought to have to raise them so much! Do you think it's normal?

I can only speak for myself, but I need 2.2v RAM, 1.425v NB, and full FSB Term to hit 9x350. I had some memory and video issues at lower settings, but needed all that voltage to get it truly stable.

[XavierMaxx]

i want to figure out how to overclock it properly to its best speed on stock fan but I cannot find any good guides or help I can understand. Can anyone help refer me to some noob guides for the mobo and chip i have?

Thanks

I came from AMD, as well, and started by reading everything I could find. Search for 780i overclocking guide in Google and look for the guide at EVGA's forums.

[Cal]

Has anyone had any luck with the vdroop yet just had a google but didnt fine anything
I see evga has come out with another 780i and lists the vdroop settings

[andrew2004gto]

no vdrop, but i been problem getting my system stable,

right now i got my Q6600@3502, with 437fsb, i found out it was my ram causeing my stable problem, right now its at 505mhz but i dont get it, they used to be stable at 533mhz without overclock fsb,

Anyway my real question is if i go buy some 1200mhz ddr2 ram chips will i have this same problem and have to go underclock 600mhz? these are rated at 400mhz the ones i have

[crucial33]

Just to clarify things, the board was actually faulty on my P7N2 diamond, and that is the sole reason it would not post, just for those of you who have been following my quest to get it to post. The new board is great, seems to run very stable using the Q9450, and the bios options look good too. This is my first MSI nvidia board, and it seems to be fine. From the first time it booted, there has been zero problemss, it even seens to run a lot cooler than some of the other 790i boards, and heat does not appear to be a problem on this one, im hoping the current problems affecting the 790i boards are absent on this MSI version, and so far it looks good. I understand supplys may be starting to enter the chain in the USA, so it will great to see how this one goes as far as overclocking goes, but it does seems very stable at stock settings, with none of the problems of some other boards. I will keep you informed.

[loonym]

crucial33, thanks for the update and I'm glad you've sorted it out.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Is there anything that I should do in bios to help overclock my gpu? I run stable at stock but when I oc to 800/1200/2000 I get some stuttering. My vcore is +.2000, nb is at 1.4, vtt is 1.300, cpu gtl is at 66%, nb gtl at auto (What should it be at?), I also bumped up my pci frequency to 105. Loonym what size fan did you use for your northbridge heatsink?

[loonym]

Is there anything that I should do in bios to help overclock my gpu? I run stable at stock but when I oc to 800/1200/2000 I get some microstuttering. My vcore is +.2000, nb is at 1.4, vtt is 1.300, cpu gtl is at 66%, nb gtl at auto (What should it be at?), I also bumped up my pci frequency to 105. Loonym what size fan did you use for your northbridge heatsink?

I use 40mm sunon, 1 on mosfet sink and 1 on nb.

[BababooeyHTJ]

How did you attach it to the mosfet sink and in what direction? Will that fit between the nb sink and the top gpu? Did you use a 10mm or 20mm?

[loonym]

I have the thin ones for this board. Zip ties hold them on both sinks and yes it fits between the card and the nb sink. I do use those little fatty sunons on a couple of my open air crunchers though.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Ok, Thanks Ill pick a couple up.

[Fiskbit]

And now I'm back to having system instability. I had a system reboot several days ago and started using a different power strip altogether rather than a different socket. Then I had no troubles until tonight, when it rebooted twice, the second time shortly after the first (within minutes), both times while watching a DivX video. I've returned my CPU clock to 2.4 GHz in hopes that I maybe just had unstable settings, but needless to say I'm getting very frustrated by this. Every time the system seems stable based on running fine for days or weeks, it starts having random reboots, and sometimes very frequently. I have no idea what might be causing it.

My previous settings were ~2.65 GHz (294*9), RAM at 588. Didn't increase voltage or anything of that sort. Temperatures all seem to be fine. Any further ideas what I should be looking for?

[loonym]

Anything significant in event viewer Fiskbit?

[Fiskbit]

Wasn't even aware of that feature. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Unfortunately, there's nothing. All I can get from it is that the two reboots were 9 minutes apart due to the startup events. There's nothing significant happening before those. I'm still confused as to why I'd get two restarts so close together after going days without one.

The system's been stable since, but that's really not saying much considering its history.

[>|S|<blaster]

Hi Guys!!!

Sorry to be a pain but is there anywhere in these forums where i can advertise my graphics cards for sale, i have looked but i dont know if its allowd ????????????

[loonym]

Hi Guys!!!

Sorry to be a pain but is there anywhere in these forums where i can advertise my graphics cards for sale, i have looked but i dont know if its allowd ????????????

You should read this thread in the forum guidelines... http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=60294

[Fiskbit]

My computer's newest habit is rebooting without an error almost every time Windows starts. It gets to the desktop, starts loading all the programs, and lets me do stuff, but reboots before everything is done loading. Windows safe mode is unaffected. I ran MemTest86+, but it found no RAM errors at all. Reboots at times other than booting are very rare, but it happened once yesterday. I don't know if this is software or hardware related; I find it hard to believe it'd be a SATA/RAID problem, considering the frequency of reboots now compared to before (every system boot versus almost never after installing the 790i SATA/RAID drivers). I unplugged my SATA optical drive to ensure it wasn't at fault, but it didn't help at all. I tried changing my CPU clock speed back to stock, but that had no effect, and I've been able to do CPU-intensive things without reboots (hours of Bioshock and a Half Life 2 mod).

I'm baffled and have no idea how to narrow this down. It's to the point where I'm tempted to start RMAing random parts until the reboots stop, but that's something I really don't want to do. Is there any way to force an error rather than automatically restarting? I set Windows to not automatically restart, but it's doing so, anyway. I'm not sure at all what tests to run, settings to mess with, etc. I'd guess this is probably dying hardware, and I'm inclined to think it's the P7N simply because it doesn't seem like it would be anything else now after getting no errors in MemTest86+, but I really don't know.

[loonym]

Why would you automatically blame the hardware? Safe mode = no reboot you say and changing clocks doesn't matter. Then there's the fact that it only does it at windows start. I don't see any of that pointing to hardware.

[Fiskbit]

I've tried system restores and thought that that was helping at first, but after further testing it seems to not make a difference. It's also not exclusively at bootup, but most commonly (it only started the startup reboots yesterday and it continues to do it over and over). I had one that happened that happened a while after reboot yesterday, and had a couple crashes during normal computer use on Tuesday. Further, I'm under the impression that software reboots would cause an error screen to be displayed, whereas I get nothing at all. If there are alternatives, I'd be grateful if you could point me in their direction.

[wolf1974]

Before You Start Rmaing Stuff Go Ahead And Re-install Youre Os Since You Updated To The Fixed Sata Drivers, I Am Note Sure If You Used Driver Cleaner Or Not For The Chipset Driver Update But Windows Is Crazy With Old Reg Entrie's Left Over From Previos Drivers And It Wont Hurt To Do A Clean Install Os Windows, I Agree With Loonym, It Is Not Happening In Safe Mode Correct?? Or How Long Are You Letting It Run In Safe Mode?? Also You Could Do A Clean Start Up In Windows To See If That Stops The Shut Downs But I Think Alot Will Agree,,,,,just Re-install Windows And Let Us Know What Happens,,,good Luck Wolf: