Got my computer up and runnin just fine, works great! Went to OC it and put it to 210 FSB, and I went to restart and it gives me my vid card info, then goes to the next screen where it displays my CPU info and memory info just fine, then it sits there for a while till it detects my IDE drives, then freezes when detecting my SATA drives. This is all before I can get into BIOS also, because it won't let me do that until it is done detecting my drives... gr When I restart again, I get the same thing. Then I power down and let it cool and then restart and it will work and detect my drives like its no big deal and let me into bios, but then when I restart from that boot, I get the same thing... Any ideas???
Try just clearing your CMOS, and then resetting everything back where you want it. Could be just a funny BIOS read.
Welcome to the world of the MSI NEo2 Platinum. Disconnect your SATA drives, that should let you boot into BIOS. The disable the RAID functions on the SAT controller (whichever one the drives are attached to) then power off. Reattach the SATA drives and boot. I had to do this several times with mine. If this is the only problem you get with the board count yourself very lucky indeed.
Neo2's (or any nforce3 ultras for that matter) dont lock SATA ports 1&2. Use 3&4 nearest the CPU. Usually, using 1&2 caps the overclock at around 230 though, so 210 is a little low. What slots are you running the RAM in? (Should be 1&2 nearest the CPU) Believe me, this makes a big difference. What RAM are you using and what settings? What PSU? Disable Spread Spectrum in the bios too, aswell as the "Aggressive Timing" option. Also drop the HT Multiplyer to 4x instead of the standard 5x. (Dont worry about it, it doesnt make the slightest bit of difference to performance.) Edit - Depending on what Bios version you have, it may lock up in the bios when you try and change the HT multiplyer by pressing enter, so use pgup/pgdn to change it instead.
Ram is 1GB (2x 512) OCZ EL Platinum Rev.2 Dual Channel running at CAS 2... I am running them in slots 3 and 4, and I will try changing them to 1 and 2, and also I have my SATA drives on 1 and 2 and will also try swapping them to 3 and 4 closest to the CPU. I will also make sure my raid is disabled... I am running an Ultra X-Connect 500W PSU, so I dont believe that is the problem... Hopefully those other things will help... I will try those and let everyone know what happens... hopefully that will help, I will report back, but leave any other suggestions if you have them...
Have you tried the above yet? If you have, then try and slacken the ram timings to 2.5,3,3,10 - 1T and see how far you get. If you dont get any joy, then drop the multi to 10x, and set the max RAM speed to 166mhz. (This is the divider, with 200 being 1:1 with fsb/htt) Then see how high you can push the fsb/htt. This will then just overclock the board and cpu not the RAM, so you can rule them out. (You can also use a low CPU multi, say 6x for example, then push the fsb/htt to remove the CPU from the loop, so you can test just the board) If it goes nice and high, then you know the board and CPU are good, so its time to concentrate on the ram. Set a low CPU multi, and set the max RAM speed back to 200mhz. Use 2.5,3,3,10 - 1T and push up the fsb/htt. Use memtest to see what the max your RAM is capable of. A bit of work, but you can isolate exactly what the problem is, either the board, CPU or RAM, and also determine all the maximium speeds of each of the parts. If your board still duffs out at 220-230 regardless of CPU speed or RAM, then there is a problem, and more info will be needed. All Bios settings your using etc etc. What bios version........ you get the idea.
I have OCZ EL Platinum Rev.2 Ram... and I think thats where my bottleneck is... I tried killing it down to 166 and then setting timings to 2.5,3,3,10 and it will OC... But when it is at almost anything above 200 with 2,2,2,5 (which it is supposed to run at) it will not work properly... I am not sure why this would be a problem... This ram is supposed to OC, that is the reason I bought such nice memory... i will be running a few tests and I will report back once I am done, but any ideas of why it may be doing this? They are set up as dual channel in slots 1 and 2...
The 2,2,2 timings are for 200mhz only. It should oc a little maybe @ 2,2,2, but for a decent oc, you have to relax the timings abit. (Thats just the way it is) What voltage are you using with them? Should be around 2.8v IIRC. Run Sandra Memory benchmark to see what kind of bandwidth your getting with different timings. You might get abit further with 2,3,3 but you will find using 2.5,3,3 @ around 250+mhz will give you much better bandwidth than using 2,2,2 @ 200. You will get even further using 2T command rate, but it kills your bandwidth, so for the best overclock you want the highest stable speed at 2.5,3,3,10 1T imho. OCZ have just released their Gold VX memory, that will run around 250mhz @ 2,2,2, but you need loads of voltage though them, which means you will need a DDR booster to get up around 3.4v. (There is also a slight risk of damaging the on chip memory contoller with all the voltage, although a link hasnt been proven as yet.) The rev2s you have are very good though, and overclock really nicely, probably the best TCCD (along with Gskill) you can get.
i relaxed the timings to 2.5,3,3,10 and I am currently at 250fsb x 10 = 2500MHz and still upping that... Thanks for your help everyone!! Sisoft Mem: Int - 6823 Mb/s Float - 6738 Mb/s
