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- Date:
- Tuesday , September 14, 2004
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR
MSI has chosen to lead with the much touted K8T800Pro chipset for their AMD Athlon64 motherboard. We test its stability, speed and enthusiast features.
BIOS
MSI chose to design the K8T Neo2’s BIOS using an AMIBIOS core, with modifications done in order to support their CoreCell overclocking chipset. The BIOS shown is version 3.1b2.
The Advanced BIOS Features screen shows various system boot related options. The Boot Sequence submenu allows for configuration of boot order for a number of system devices. As long as the USB ports are enabled through the BIOS, a USB device will show in the pull down device list when connected and properly detected a system boot time.
The Advance Chipset Features menu contains options for chipset related functions, including the AGP and VLink buses. The VLink 8X Supported option controls the speed of the link between the VIA Northbridge and Southbridge chipsets. Enabling this option is recommended and will give better system performance.
The Integrated Peripherals menu lists numerous submenus and options for controlling the status of various integrated devices. The SATA ports and boot BIOS are enabled through the On-Chip SATA-IDE Controller option. The Onboard PCI Controller submenu contains control options for integrated devices operating on the PCI bus. The P20579 S.ATA Controller option configures the controller for RAID or SATA mode. Note that the Promise boot BIOS will only load on startup with the Operating Mode option set to RAID. The LAN Controller option controls the operating status of the onboard Gigabit NIC.
The PC Health status menu displays real time statistics for all BIOS monitored temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages.
The Cell Menu screen contains all memory, frequency and voltage related options for the board, which is controlled via MSI’s CoreCell chipset technology.
The High Performance Mode option is tied to a number of presets for various other FSB and voltage settings present in the menu, when set to Optimized mode. It also has an effect on the aggressiveness of the internal chipset timings. The HT Frequency option controls the speed of the HyperTransport link between the CPU and the system memory. The available settings are multipliers based on the default 200 MHz CPU FSB, with the maximum 1000 MHz option corresponding to a 5x multiplier. The Dynamic Overclocking option is the core of the CoreCell chipset, allowing for system adjusted overclocking. The highest option available is the Colonel level, which allows for a decent 7% overclock. The Adjust CPU Ratio option controls the CPUs internal multiplier, with a minimum supported setting of 5x and a maximum setting defined by the CPU currently in the board. The Adjust CPU FSB Frequency determines the base speed of for the board, which determines the CPU speed when combined with the CPU Ratio setting, and also determines the HyperTransport and DDR memory bus speeds. Note that this setting does not have a popup window associated with it. Values must be selected via the main screen using the arrow keys. The AGP Frequency option controls the PCI and AGP frequencies, allowing for asynchronous operation relative to the CPU FSB. The maximum setting supported is 75 MHz.
The HT Voltage option specifies how much voltage is supplied to the HyperTransport bus, with a more than adequate 1.38v maximum allowed. The Memory Voltage option controls the power supplied to your SDRAM modules, with a 2.85v maximum allowable. While nothing spectacular, that voltage should be sufficient to keep you memory stable. The CPU Voltage option controls the power supplied to the CPU, with the value specified as a percentage of the CPU default voltage setting. The maximum settable value of 15% should be plenty to get your CPU cooking well. As with the others, the maximum voltage allowable through the AGP Voltage setting is good enough at 1.85v. One thing that you don’t see is chipset voltage control. While it didn’t seem to get in the way in our overclocking tests, it is still a desirable setting to have control over.
The DRAM Configuration submenu contains all memory configuration and timing related options for the board.
With the DRAM Clock Mode option set to Manual, all memory timings become configurable. The Memclock Value option configures the memory FSB through the use of a preconfigured ratio based on the default 200 MHz CPU FSB. The settings available correspond to the following ratios, with ratios listed as DRAM FSB:CPU FSB: DDR200 is 1:2; DDR266 is 2:3; DDR333 is 5:6; and DDR400 is 1:1. In addition to the DRAM FSB, the following other memory timing setting are configurable: CAS latency; Burst Length; Bank Interleaving; RAS to CAS delay (shown as Active to CMD(Trcd)); active to precharge delay; RAS precharge delay (shown as Precharge to Active(Trp)); and 1T command rate. Note that on most memory timings listed, the numerically lower setting forces more aggressive memory operation. The bank interleaving and command rate 1T settings have only enable/disable capability. For the burst length setting, the numerically higher value forces more aggressive memory operation.