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

[Fiskbit]

malik22: I'm currently using using the 1.2B1 beta, although I think they're up to 1.2B2, unless they've put up a new BIOS and no one mentioned it. I'd recommend going for either of those, as they fix various issues with multipliers, stability, and settings (voltage settings are now displayed in voltage rather than cryptic numbers). Chances are the newer the BIOS the better off you'll be. I think there's also a video corruption fix that's implemented on 1.2B1 and onward which sounds kind of important.

panheimer: I haven't changed any RAM timings yet and wasn't planning on it until I've overclocked stuff and got things running stable, so everything's running at stock settings (save RAM speed, which is at 588 for 1:1 with FSB). I've been looking in Everest for information on RAM settings, but can't find it (I find Everest to be a really confusing program, and as I'm using a trial version, parts of it are locked. The memory benchmark also appears to be locked or broken for me, as its colors are messed up in such a way that it's unreadable). Would a timing issue like this present itself as an error in MemTest86+?

Thanks for the help.

[AaronYuri]

loonym,

Fingers crossed for 510FSB! Pchas01 was benching at 558FSB on water.

That's a target for you.

[XavierMaxx]

Uh, before leaving this thread i would like to thank loonym for his help and many suggestions, xaviermaxx for his excel file and deep analyze of this board and all other users who posted here as it was very useful for me.

Thanks, man...sorry I couldn't be of more help to you. I mostly have the board working for me, but it did take me over a month to get it stable, and that was with sleepless nights and a lot of build experience. I don't know of anybody who has as much patience as I do, either, lol.

As an update, I will be going SLI this weekend, I will be sure to post back my results.

[Fiskbit]

XavierMaxx, I look forward to hearing how SLI goes for you.


I upped my Northbridge voltage earlier from 1.2 to 1.25v and got a blue screen a while afterward. The only technical information it had is this:

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005,0x80551AE4,0xB185D83C,0x00000000)

It says it made a RAM dump, though I don't know what I'd do with it. I assume this is an indication that the voltage was too high, though if it's not, I'd appreciate if someone can correct me. I've lowered the voltage to 1.225 in hope that maybe that will work; if I get another BSOD, I'm going back to auto and assuming that the problem isn't NB voltage. In the mean time, I'm looking for info on the error online.

[panheimer]

In everest you can find your memory settings in the motherboard section, an then in "chipset" there are the complete memory settings, while in "SPD" you can find SPD table and EPP's one. Or you may download and install memset wich also list all timings and lets you change them in windows.
But how much voltages do you feed your ram for 588 (at 5-5-5-15 2t i suppose?)? For this so low speed i suppose that default 1.8v are enough.
More than NB volt, i would play with FSB term and CPU GTL, for quads they are the key for stability - even if at stock it isn't supposed to be changed.

[Fiskbit]

I had checked the chipset section earlier and didn't find anything, so I thought I was just looking in the wrong spot. Turns out there's simply nothing about memory settings in that section for me. It has stuff about supported memory types, and that's it. The SPD section is entirely blank (solid gray, like it's disabled or something). I'm using Everest Ultimate 4.50.1330 Trial Version.

As for MemTest, assuming you're talking about this one, it has nothing about my RAM settings (it just strictly tests RAM).

I've not changed any RAM settings aside from speed, so the voltage is whatever it sets as default. I'll toy around with FSB term and CPU GTL, and I also plan to run the computer with a single video card to see if that makes a difference. Since the reboots are so sporadic and can be days apart, testing individual changes can take a long time.

I appreciate you sticking around to offer me some suggestions.

[panheimer]

Here is the memset i was talking about: http://www.tweakers.fr/download/MemSet.exe but it will be useless if you don't know what settings your ram are intended to be setted. I think it's your everst trial version that hides the parameters i was talking about.
I would play on ram first, trying manually set the voltage and upping some mhz. I've never heard that a underclocked ram can give errors, but it's always worth a try!
From my past experience random and sporadic reboots are most due to ram problems so i would focus on them before messing things up with fsb term and cpu gtl.
Good luck!

[Fiskbit]

Ah, misread MemSet as MemTest. Apologies.

I'll mess with RAM voltage and speed shortly. If it's of any use or interest, my RAM timings in MemSet from top to bottom are 5, 3, 3, 9, 2T. My RAM is advertised as 5-5-5-15 2.0-2.1v.

[loonym]

Okies I'm back. Really only quick testing with the e8400. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't boot to windows (XP64) at much over 525fsb. The same cpu is around 565fsb max on 790i. I think it's directly related to fsb term voltage limit but still 525 is not bad for only a couple hours testing on air. I didn't try to find max oc yet but I can see this cpu has potential with vid 1.10v Here are some 3d benches...
01

03

05

06

Aquamark

and some pi...
1m

32m


I'm certain I can improve these scores if I drop fsb a bit and use a higher multi but this reinforces for me what this board is capable of.

[Fiskbit]

Impressive results! It's stuff like that that's kept me sticking with this board.

Regarding the low FSB term limit, is this a hardware restriction or a BIOS one? Just curious if it's something that could be changed in a BIOS update. Also, I'm a bit curious about your GPUs; are you using stock cooling for them? What kind of idle and load temperatures do they run at?

[RCG_Bex]

I wish I did too..

Well. I'm kinda back with an update. I've been running Windows XP 64bit for a while now. I've still had random reboots. All drivers are the latest.. So I can't comprehend how on earth I get the reboots. I mean, come on! I don't get obnoxious resets during memtest. How can this be?

I still haven't found any vital information in the event log, nor had any blue screens. Temperatures are still not all that high. The highest temp on the north bridge was 50C. All four cores are also at max 53C, GPU on the other hand has been as high as 62C. But that's changed now that I've got a small fan hanging under it. :p

I was thinking that it might be the Creative X-Fi-card that came with the motherboard. 'Cause I didn't install it in the 'small' pci-e port. It can't fit there with my enormous GFX card. But that turned out to be wrong. I still got the reboots after I removed it completely.

So. Thoughts? Should I give up for real this time?

Same setup but with a GX2 and we've tried everything we can think of. About to do another BIOS update but this is gettign silly. Things got better after removing the X-fi for a Barracuda, but we get random GFX cut outs, random restarts on cold boots, and when everything settles out it randomly restarts for no apparant reason when it's doing absolutely nothing.

Really running out of ideas. I know the original issue was the fan for the RAM shorting the baord and causing a reboot (noticed this after switching the RAM aroudn and trying different slots until 1 time we left the fans off and hey presto - it didn't reboot on re-install!) But now we're out of ideas...

~Bex

[loonym]

Impressive results! It's stuff like that that's kept me sticking with this board.

Regarding the low FSB term limit, is this a hardware restriction or a BIOS one? Just curious if it's something that could be changed in a BIOS update. Also, I'm a bit curious about your GPUs; are you using stock cooling for them? What kind of idle and load temperatures do they run at?

Those 8800gt's are vmodded (those tests were stock volts though) and have TT duo-orbs on them. Temps are quite good but that rig is one of the ones that's in the small office with the 10,000 btu AC. I think MSI could give the option in bios for more vtt (fsb term) if they wanted. I suppose another option would be hard mods if I ever get around to taking hi-res pics and asking for help in the mod section.

[malik22]

Hi guys I updated to 1.2B2 bios I was using one of the early beta bios before and I need some help I use to set Cpu gtl ref to 65 and fsb termination to 25 but now there in voltages can someone give me the corresponding numbers.

Thx in Advance.

[loonym]

Hi guys I updated to 1.2B2 bios I was using one of the early beta bios before and I need some help I use to set Cpu gtl ref to 65 and fsb termination to 25 but now there in voltages can someone give me the corresponding numbers.

Thx in Advance.

Is the chart XavierMaxx posted useful at all for any of this?

[malik22]

loonym where is this chart I havent been here in a while.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Very impressive results on that wolfdale.Nice.

[panheimer]

malik22 - the xls is on page 37 of this thread
fiskbit - never saw timings like 5-3-3-9, think you should manually set them in bios with something like 4-4-4-12 2t

[Fiskbit]

I set them in the BIOS (CL, tRCD, tRP, and tRAS) to 4-4-4-12, but Memset now shows 4-3-3-9, so it's only detecting a change to CL (and I think 3 and 9 are the lowest settings possible in the BIOS for those three). What might cause this?

RCG_Bex: We're in the same boat regarding instability. I get random crashing when the computer's sitting still for no apparent reason, and I was getting rebooting when the OS started for a while (though not any more). I'm running pretty low on ideas, myself. I take it you have no problems running Prime95 or MemTest86+? I also recommend double checking SATA stuff, since that is one definite cause of reboots for this board.

[RCG_Bex]

A BIOS update seems to have got us stable again *fingers crossed* I'd need to check what version but it seems to stopped the random reboots. Chucked away the X-fi and replaced with a barracuda which also helped prior to that.

~Bex

[EDIT] BIOS 1.2b2 is the 1 that seems to have done the trick for us

[Overspeed]

Does anyone know where to obtain the 1.2b2 bios? thx

[BababooeyHTJ]

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=115073.0 tell me how it is Im using 1.21.

[AaronYuri]

Still no new BIOS releases.

Feedback from loonym here: http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?to...4990#msg894990

[loonym]

I get the impression that the beta 1.22 may have been released to specifically address compatibility with certain cpus. It's a good enough bios but as I said in the msi thread, the beta 1.21 has advantages for me. With 1.22 if I try to increase my overclock too fast I get a no post and the only way I can continue is with a cmos clr. With 1.21 I can set my desired fsb without this happening pretty much no matter how high I go, unless I hit a fsb hole. You may think these fsb holes are a big problem but really they aren't difficult to work around and they are pretty much a fact with any of the nvidia chipset intel boards. I'm not real clear on the specifics but they have something to do with the way the mem dividers/straps are figured. The plus side to this is that there are tons more memory speed options than with intel chipsets. I only ran the 1.22 beta very briefly. All my recent testing has been with 1.21.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Im sticking with 1.21 seems to be working out great for me. My rig has never been so stable.

[Overspeed]

I get the impression that the beta 1.22 may have been released to specifically address compatibility with certain cpus. It's a good enough bios but as I said in the msi thread, the beta 1.21 has advantages for me. With 1.22 if I try to increase my overclock too fast I get a no post and the only way I can continue is with a cmos clr. With 1.21 I can set my desired fsb without this happening pretty much no matter how high I go, unless I hit a fsb hole. You may think these fsb holes are a big problem but really they aren't difficult to work around and they are pretty much a fact with any of the nvidia chipset intel boards. I'm not real clear on the specifics but they have something to do with the way the mem dividers/straps are figured. The plus side to this is that there are tons more memory speed options than with intel chipsets. I only ran the 1.22 beta very briefly. All my recent testing has been with 1.21.

Loonym, thats very interesting. I have been trying to get your results on the e8400 for some time now. Have you a link to the 1.21 bios? many thx.