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

[BababooeyHTJ]

That wasnt it. I dont know what it is. When I restarted my pc recently it wouldnt boot into windows and I am getting a error with my stripe. It is only showing three disks. Normally I would be sure it is a bad drive but when I restart my pc it hangs on the Msi image when it posts. I just disabled quick booting in bios and it booted right into windows. Should I flash bios? My floppy drive is broken and I ordered a usb flash drive. How do I flash from a bootable cd? I just looked in event viewer and I am geting a raid disk error on drive 1.1. Does this sound like just a bad disk? The fact that I am freezing up at post is worrying me.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Yeah, I lost a disk. That sucks but I guess thats what I get for having a 4 disk stripe. I am using the three disks that I have now in raid5 now. I hope I get good results with that at least Ill have some fault tolerance this time. I also got my floppy drive working and flashed to the offical 1.2 so Ill try that out.

[Fiskbit]

I've been continuing to fiddle with my settings, but have a lot of trouble booting my computer. I currently have vCore at 1.225v, NB at 1.25v, CPU GTL Ref at 0.822v, and FSB Term at 1.225v. I don't want to go higher on the FSB Term because loonym was saying earlier not to raise it above vCore. Adjusting other settings seems to have no effect at all. Sometimes my computer won't POST, or I'll get an exception when trying to boot Windows, but that's it. I've only had one reboot since using 1333 FSB, so I think that's helping a bit, but all of these problems when booting up are getting pretty bothersome. Earlier, my computer wouldn't POST right away, and then I powered down and back up and it POSTed and booted Windows without a problem. I also don't believe my problems are related to poorly mounted cooling hardware on the board (which I'll be remounting at some point, anyway), since frequency of problems seems totally unrelated to temperature. It's been very hot lately and I've certainly not had more problems than usual, despite everything running at least 10 C hotter than usual. I'm still running BIOS 1.2B1. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to try?

[loonym]

This has been an ongoing theme with you. You run this ultra conservative vcore and then can't understand why the thing doesn't want to work right. If I'm setting vcore 1.225v in bios I automatically know that by the time I get to windows vdrop is shaving a couple hundredths off that at least. I also automatically know that as soon as I start to load the cpu and vdroop kicks in, there goes another 3 hundredths or so (maybe more). At that point I'm pretty sure I'm not scratching my head wondering why things aren't how they should be. Because they are exactly how they should be because I haven't used my voltage adjustments properly! I've seen dozens of people complain 'the board should work with stock this or that'. Well guess what, with this board 99% of the time it's not going to, period. If someone doesn't like that well too bad, it's fact. Take it up with msi taiwan, buy another board, suffer with it, it's not going to change the fact that this board will not give you any satisfaction unless you are willing to use some voltage. Maybe someone else will give you an opinion that you want to hear but my simple answer to you is that your issues with this board are all solved by voltage. 'Oh but gee I added a whole 2 hundredths of a volt'... continue adjusting (read increasing) until the issue goes away or until you decide to blame it on the board and dump it.

[AaronYuri]

Fiskbit,

Use one VGA card, one memory stick and one HDD. If that doesn't work:

Try a different power supply; if neither of those work, you either need to tune voltages like loonym said, or you have a faulty board.

[Fiskbit]

loonym, maybe I missed it, but to my knowledge no one's been telling me that my vCore is ultra conservative or out of whack. Mind you, I'm still learning, but the idea I'd been getting is that when Intel sets the vID for a chip, they're taking vDroop into account, since it's a standard phenomenon when dealing with computers. Maybe I'm totally wrong about that and this board just has totally ridiculous vDroop, but from what I've read, vDroop is reduced on other boards with mods not available on this board, not from inherently having significantly lower vDroop.

After spending a few hundred dollars on this board, I'm not looking to buying another, which is why I'm still here trying to figure out how to get it stable. I'm certainly not happy with all the problems I've been having and probably won't get an MSI board in the future because it's been such a pain, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try to make the most of the money I spent on this one. I appreciate the fact that you say it's probably vCore, since now I have something else to look at as a possible solution. I appreciate it! I'd certainly be lying if I said this board hasn't been frustrating me quite a lot, but I've really been thrilled with the help offered by you and others.

AaronYui: I've tried with only one video card and still got reboots (also tried without my sound card), but not only one stick of RAM (I tried with one stick while I was still diagnosing my SATA/RAID driver problems), so I might give that a shot. I'm running RAID0 with two drives and have a third as a storage drive, so trying with two drives is doable. Trying with just one is something I might try down the road if I run out of other options. As for the power supply, I'm pretty sure it's not at fault and don't currently have another PSU capable of powering this system, but that's another thing I'll keep in mind. I'll try these after upping vCore as loonym suggested.

Thanks for the ideas, guys.

[loonym]

Look, that was a little over the top, sorry. Thing is though for the past few weeks since you started posting I've done everything but hit you over the head with the fact that you need to try some of the things that are in this thread, going back several months, beginning with voltage increases. I can only look at the situation as I would view it were it me having problem after problem. I would be doing the stuff quick be it bios flash, volts, cooling, or whatever. Real quick, the sooner the better to determine without delay if in fact I did have a bum board. I don't take the long way around the barn.

edit: and I think it would be easier to be patient with problems and such if the person posting for help can actually say geeez I've tried everything, even bumping my voltages to xyz amount and trying bios's this that and the other one.

[bluspikez]

I have to agree with loonym...looks like you need some more voltage. As long as all of your components aren't duff, the stuff should work, and having crashes like you are mentioning are probably related to voltages being too low. Try upping the NB to about 1.35 or so and maybe give another few tenths of a volt to vcore and see what happens.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I was reading through this forum and I saw a post on what all of the beep codes at post mean. I have thiss beep code every time I start my pc. 1 long, 2 short Failure in video system An error was encountered in the video BIOS ROM, or a horizontal retrace failure has been encountered. This has happened with two different video cards so I dont think that is the problem. I never really thought anything of it. It also says no devices detected at post sometimes. This has happenes with bios 1.1, 1.2b1, and 1.2 offical. Should I just ignore this? My rig seems stable. I never get any video errors.

[FedericoUY]

Hi all. I've tried the Pax drivers (v5.1 and 5.25) for the included X-Fi but when the installation starts, an error comes out saying that there's no compatible product on the system. Anybody can help me please?

[Fiskbit]

Bababooey: do you have any USB devices connected? You'll get one short beep for every USB device connected at startup, so I'd be willing to guess you have two. I went through that same concern at one point when I got one long and one short, especially after seeing that table earlier in the thread.

bluspikez: I'll try upping vCore first, but will keep NB in mind. When I was running at stock, upping NB even a little caused my computer to crash often with blue screens. With my current overclock, I've certainly tried upping NB, but it never had an effect that I could notice, so I put it back to 1.25, which was the minimum I needed for pretty clear stability. I continued having booting problems despite having higher NB volts.

loonym: I know what it's like to be irritated by newbies on message boards. Really sorry about being such a pain. Regarding doing the stuff quickly, I typically try something new every time my computer displays a problem that indicates current settings aren't working. Since this overclock, that's been far less often, so there are only so many tests I can run, and I'm still really new to this, so exactly what tests to run isn't obvious to me. If you ever need help with math, algorithms, arcade hardware, or hacking assembly in classic games, that's definitely more up my alley.

[dogg]

Got this board since february and it's since I 'm trying to overclock.. I moved from MACs to PC /still got myMAC G4dualprocessor just because I love it../..
This thread /people in it, of course/ helped me much, and I learned a bit by myself /goooooogle/, but old "try and fail" way is good as well, so I tried lots of settings and some of them really high.. This board just passed through with some bsod or freezing and I didn't fry anything.. There was some nasty moments, but always caused by other hardware or drivers /some of them are really crappy/..
Now I got my Vcore at 1.41V /at these, read from bios, asus780i with the exactly the same CPU and cooling is 10C more hot.. strange..my temp 68C at load/ NB at 1.65V, SB 1.6V.. I didn't touch FSB term and CPU GTL before, but now I set them as BLUESPIKEZ posted /1.313 / .875/.. It solved ocassional TDU freezing..thx..

[loonym]

arcade hardware...lol I used to be missile command master. I had to let them blow me up or else I would still be standing there now 30 years later

[bluspikez]

bluspikez: I'll try upping vCore first, but will keep NB in mind. When I was running at stock, upping NB even a little caused my computer to crash often with blue screens. With my current overclock, I've certainly tried upping NB, but it never had an effect that I could notice, so I put it back to 1.25, which was the minimum I needed for pretty clear stability. I continued having booting problems despite having higher NB volts.

I'm not sure if it will help in your case, but it definitely helped me. Also, going too high on the nb caused instability for me, so keep that in mind. 1.35-1.4v seems to be the magic range for me. Removing the circupipe and reseating it also helped with stability a lot for me as well; seeing as you mentioned it you might want to strongly consider doing that.

@dogg - Glad that I could help!

[Fiskbit]

I'll be reseating the pipe soon; just need to have a good block of time to take my computer apart and do that. I'll also be taking the opportunity to resolder some wires in my computer case for the temperature monitor. As good of a job as this case does with cooling, its quality control is shoddy at best. That's a word of warning for you, loonym; be careful messing with this case, since wires and pins will break if you look at them.

I'd love to get a Missile Command at some point, but they're not exactly cheap. I have a ton of circuit boards and a generic cabinet for the bulk of them, as well as another more specialized one. I'd love to get some older games with unique controls or vector monitors, but my biggest interest is the deluxe sit-down games. They're a pain to move, but a blast to play. Great stuff.

[Bobo888]

Quick question, if one of the cpu cores fails prime pretty much instantly, does that mean the cpu has reached its limit or can it be made stable with voltage adjustments etc.?

[AaronYuri]

It can be made stable. It depends which test you were using, however.

[Bobo888]

That's good to hear. I was using the blend test by the way. The only voltages I'v changed so far are Vcore at 1.36(VID 1.325) and NB at 1.375. I tried increasing these slightly for higher frequencies and I still had errors. Can anyone offer advice on how I go about making it stable at higher frequencies? I was advised to set FSB term to max and cpu gtl to 66% of that but was unable to find the cpu gtl equivalences. I would really like to reach 3ghz(430x7) just as a personal goal.

[Overspeed]

Ok, time for something a little off topic. I've been reading up on the benefits of running RAM & FSB 1:1. First off, my RAM is 2x2GB Mushkin PC28000. So a FSB of 1000 or 500 depending on how you look at it. My E8400 is a 1333FSB CPU ... 9x multiplied 333FSB quad pumped to achieve 3.0Ghz. For me to get a 1:1 ratio, I need to severly underclock the RAM to 333FSB. Of course I bought faster RAM to get faster speeds but doesn't look like its a good match for the CPU. So then I thought why not change to 8x multiplier @ 375FSB (not a huge increase, but better). PC will not boot period at those settings and voltages are not overclocked, everything auto. 7x430FSB will not work either. Then I came to think ... while technically i'm not overclocking the GHz, I am overclocking the CPUs overall FSB. The E8400 is set to run at 1333FSB and by setting to 8x375FSB its now running at 1500FSB. So i'm not sure what I need to do here. This is an aspect of overclocking I am uncertain about. While in all scenarios i'm only getting 3.0Ghz, the overall FSB is being pushed and I'm curious if what i'm trying to do is even possible. I can't overclock beyond 3.0Ghz at this time until I take care of the NB & circu-pipe issue. I want to get my RAM working as fast as it can ... and still maintain a 1:1 ratio. Am I missing something? Perhaps my understanding of overclocking was wrong in that it's not about pushing the overall GHz, its about pushing the FSB of the CPU ... or maybe its both. In the end, for now I just want to get my RAM operating as fast as possible, and keep 1:1. How might I achieve this? Is my understanding of overclocking flawed?

[dogg]

I see you give those a try ... 1:1 ratio works best for me, but some othe ratios worked stable as well (default setting with ratio 6:5 performing very good even on T2...) I wanted just to find freq they like with T1... Now running as in sig..
Some pics about it.. maybe it will help..

[AaronYuri]

Good news! The next beta will most likely give you more CPU voltage - the CPU voltage limit is being raised from +0.37850v to +0.73850v. If any of you are LN2 benchers, you'll be able to push around 2.20v into your CPU if you really want.

It's already implemented on the X48 boards, so I assume the P45 and 780i/790i are next.

I believe this was done for cherry-picked benchers (ones with VIDs of 1.0375v etc). It would only allow them around 1.4v CPU vCore.

[x-built-Stan]

All, I updated the original post for clarity. There seems to be some confusion around the beep codes. It is really pretty simple and straight forward.

I'm editing this post to clarify the beep codes. When you boot there are two series of beep codes with a slight delay between them. The first is the POST beep code - see table below. The second is the number of USB devices plugged into the motherboard directly. So if you get 1 long <pause> 2 short you have an OK POST with 2 USB devices plugged into the motherboard. Note that plugging multiple devices into a monitor or USB hub and then plugging the monitor or hub into the motherboard only counts as one device - 1 short beep. If you are concerned or confused, unplug all USB devices and boot to get the 'true' sequence.

Overspeed,

Here are thge AMI beep codes. Note that the 1 long is a good POST.

AMI BIOS Beep Codes:

1 short DRAM refresh failure The programmable interrupt timer or programmable interrupt controller has probably failed
2 short Memory parity error A memory parity error has occurred in the first 64K of RAM. The RAM IC is probably bad
3 short Base 64K memory failure A memory failure has occurred in the first 64K of RAM. The RAM IC is probably bad
4 short System timer failure The system clock/timer IC has failed or there is a memory error in the first bank of memory
5 short Processor error The system CPU has failed
6 short Gate A20 failure The keyboard controller IC has failed, which is not allowing Gate A20 to switch the processor to protected mode. Replace the keyboard controller
7 short Virtual mode processor exception error The CPU has generated an exception error because of a fault in the CPU or motherboard circuitry
8 short Display memory read/write error The system video adapter is missing or defective
9 short ROM checksum error The contents of the system BIOS ROM does not match the expected checksum value. The BIOS ROM is probably defective and should be replaced
10 short CMOS shutdown register read/write error The shutdown for the CMOS has failed
11 short Cache error The L2 cache is faulty
1 long, 2 short Failure in video system An error was encountered in the video BIOS ROM, or a horizontal retrace failure has been encountered
1 long, 3 short Memory test failure A fault has been detected in memory above 64KB
1 long, 8 short Display test failure The video adapter is either missing or defective
2 short POST Failure One of the hardware testa have failed
1 long POST has passed all tests

[Ziggieke]

I am very curious if there's a few 'standard' settings I can try out to get my system oc'd to say 3.2Ghz (I'm not wanting to push the system):

MSI P7N Diamond mobo
Q9450 Quad-core processor at 2.66Ghz (stock)
4Gb OCZ reaper DDR2-1066
Antec 900 case
Antec Truepower Trio PSU - 650 Watt
MSI NX8800 GTS 512Mb videocard
2 SATA HDD's
2 DVD-rewriters

I've read all of the threads pertaining to settings people have used for which overclocks they've been trying but sadly I found them all lacking specifics for their setup.
Some mention a working setup, but forget to mention what speed those settings give exactly, others only give a few of the settings that seem to trouble them.

Is anyone here able to provide me with what exactly I need to change where, with the above info, and knowing I have the 1.2 BIOS from MSI - AMI, through the MSI LiveUpdate tool.

I am very aware it's not cookie-cutter and what might work for 1 person might not work for the next, but ballpark-values are fine (min-max settings, ...).

Running XP Pro SP3

Many thanks in advance.

[Leeroy]

If you've read through all the thread you will know that everyones settings are different and may not work on your hardware setup, i noticed you didn't specify what type of cooling you have, if you have a stock heatsink it will get hot !

The below settings are what have worked for me, there's no guarantee that they'll work for you, use them at your own risk


Execute Bit Support - Disabled
C1E Support - Disabled
Set Linit CPUID MaxVal to 3 - Disabled
CPU TM Function - Disabled

Current CPU Freq - 3.40GHz (425x8)
Current FSB Freq - 1700 MHz
Current DRAM Freq - 915 MHz

D.O.T Control - Disabled
Intel EIST - Disabled
SLI-Ready Memory - Expert
System Clock Mode - Manual
FSB Clock - 1700 MHz
DRAM Clock - 920 (Adjusted to 915 automatically)
Adjust CPU Ratio - 8

CPU Voltage - 0.16250
DRAM Voltage - 2.20
NB Voltage - 1.450
SB Voltage - 1.550
DIMM Memory Reference Voltage - 1.035
Cpu GTL Reference Voltage - 0.879
NB GTL Reference Voltage - 0.877
FSB Terminator Voltage - 1.313
Spread Spectrum - Disabled

DRAM Timing Mode - Manual
CAS Latency (CL) - 5
tRCD - 5
tRP - 5

All other setting set to AUTO.

[Ziggieke]

I've got it to 3.2 at the moment, which isn't the problem - I just wanted comparisons to my values, to see if maybe I could lower a setting here or there so as not to tax the hardware too heavily with non-standard settings (and as such lengthen the life of the components).

Thanks for your list of settings though, will compare them to mine (as I dunno'em by heart).

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=408802