MSI Neo2-FR

I have heard this is a really good board, anyone one care to share their opinions?

I'm going to be getting the E8400 and i need a board that will support it without a bios update. I'm seeing alot of the P35 boards will not post without the latest bios and i won't be able to get another 775 chip to flash it.

Are their any other options that will support, or atleast post without having the latest bios. And will overclock very well in the ~$120 range?

Thanks.

might want to read over these 2 threads
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=545145
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=5448893

Thanks, i didn't see those.

yep np! but i need a few more

I hope it's a good board. The men in brown are bringing me one with an E8400 on tuesday!

gibletzor said:

I hope it's a good board. The men in brown are bringing me one with an E8400 on tuesday!

Click to expand...

I'm still considering it, from what i have read. It seems to be a great board. Even though im no MSI fan

My other choice is the DS3R, but i hope something happens and im able to get a X38

It seems most of the negative stuff in those threads came from overclocking with quads. I won't buy a quad core for quite some time, and I really don't plan on going "balls to the wall" with the e8400 either. 4GHz or so would be fine with me. Would beat the snot out of my 2.6GHz Opty 170.

In the "Unofficial Wolfdale OC Reports" thread, Jhatfie says he's got his E8400 clocked to 4.23 on the Neo2-FR.

My Neo2-FR got 501fsb out of the box and runs my E6550 2.3G stock at 3.5G w/o problems. I believe you'll need at least bios 1.3 for E8xxx support though.

gibletzor said:

In the "Unofficial Wolfdale OC Reports" thread, Jhatfie says he's got his E8400 clocked to 4.23 on the Neo2-FR.

Click to expand...

Like my MSI Neo2-FR quite a bit, a bit better than the Gigabyte P35-DS3L I had. It is much better with both my Mushkin and Gskill compared the the Gigabyte. My 100% stable everyday clock on my E8400 is actually 4.05Ghz, which is at 1.33v bios (1.29v under load), but 4.2Ghz is stable (and can be done with a 525FSB) if I was willing to sustain higher voltage, which I am not for 24/7 use.

How does this board OC with 4 sticks of ram, bios update easy?

I would probably want to do 450FSB for 24/7 with a e8400

Im wanting the x38, but.. i just can't say im willing to spend $200 on one.

ok. got everything put together, but i cannot get this thing to post. i got the "double boot" that everyone on newegg is griping about. that's fine. but after that it just sits and does nothing for minutes... the diagnostic leds on the board are hard to decipher. anyone else had problems like this?

unfortunately this is my first s775/ddr2 build, so i don't have any extra ram or cpus i could switch out.

I did have just one problem with mine which I did not notice until later becuase I could not get XP to install corretly, with my FSB jumper set to 1333 and when using my DDR-800 Gskill in place, my default memory speed at stock settings was something like 1067mhz, which is fine, but the bios defaulted my DDR voltage to 1.8v and it needs to be 2.1v to run that speed.

So my question is can you get into the bios settings to make sure everything is set up correctly? Have you manually set the FSB jumper?

No, I can't get into the BIOS, but I didn't even think about playing with the FSB jumpers. I saw it in the motherboard manual but kind of skipped over it. None of my other boards ever needed messing with. I guess I should have thought twice since I'm in unfamiliar territory with this Intel build. 6 years of building AMD machines has me lazy.

And I think from what I can decipher of the LED diagnostics that it's a memory error...

edit: well no dice playing with the jumpers. tried switching video card to 2nd PCI-E slot as well. that got rid of the "double boot" but still no POSTing.

oh well. going to bed. if i stay up any longer and mess with this thing i'm going to break it over my knee...

I just finished reading, some people were having problems because they are getting boards with old bios that doesn't support DDR2-800. And had to get 667 ram to flash the bios.

Using PC8500 with a MSI Neo2-FR

I’m new so I’m sorry if I am posting this in the wrong thread. I received following components from NewEgg yesterday:

Intel Q6600 G0
MSI P35 Neo2-FR
2 kits of Mushkin HP2-1066 (PC8500 2x1gb)#996578 (4Gigs total)
RAIDMAX 630W PSU
…and of course the graphics, drives, etc…

My question is does anyone else have this mobo/ram (or a different manufacturers DDR2-1066) setup and if so were you able to get the ram to run at the rated speed? According to MSI the memory specs are as follows:

Supports four unbuffered DIMM of 1.8 Volt DDR2 SDRAM
Supports up to 8GB memory size.
Supports dual channel DDR2 memory architecture.
Supports DDR2 667/800/1066 (OC) memory interface.

I have my proc running at 3.0GHz with the help of a nifty little FSB jumper that set my FSB to 333. I can get it to post and boot into windows if I leave the memory settings on auto, which according to CPU-Z sets my ram at 400Mhz(DDR2-800) at 5-5-5-15. If I change the bios settings to a FSB/Memory Ratio of 1:1.6 the system will not boot. I have tried to up my memory voltage to 2.1, and tried lower ratios (it will boot successfully into 1:1.25 at M.V. 2.0). I have also upped my NB/SB voltage, but I need to do a better job of documenting the various combos I tried).

Anyone have any ideas on what else I can try? I've built a handful of PCs before but this is my first attempt to overclock (a little). Much appreciated…

Coreyhm1 said:

I just finished reading, some people were having problems because they are getting boards with old bios that doesn't support DDR2-800. And had to get 667 ram to flash the bios.

Click to expand...

That sounds like it may be the issue here. i bought a gig of cheap PNY DDR2-667 when i left work tonight, and it booted fine.

edit: It looks like my board shipped with BIOS v1.3.

I like my Neo2. Got my e6600 to 3.6 easy. 4GB DDR1000 RAM. Just went to 400 FSB, I didn't care to go any higher ATM, I'm getting a quad the end of next year...

Woohoo!! Thanks guys. Updated to BIOS v1.7 and now it boots perfectly with my 2 gigs of Mushkin DDR2-800.

I have the day off work today. Will update you with OC'ing results as soon as I can.

Hey Jhatfie, what kind of voltages did you have to throw at it to get past 400x9?? I've set it to 1.3 vcore, and it just sits on a black screen after post. I've upped the NB voltage some, but I'm not sure what's safe with these Intel boards.

So right now I'm stuck at 3.6GHz. Help!

edit: Nevermind, I got a little panicked. I upped the NB voltage to 1.45 and it's working ok at 400x9 now. <sigh>

gibletzor said:

Hey Jhatfie, what kind of voltages did you have to throw at it to get past 400x9?? I've set it to 1.3 vcore, and it just sits on a black screen after post. I've upped the NB voltage some, but I'm not sure what's safe with these Intel boards.

So right now I'm stuck at 3.6GHz. Help!

Click to expand...

I'll run down some of my settings for you to see if anythign helps:

First, if you have not done so already, make sure the 333 FSB jumper is set on the board.

In Bios:
EIST: Disabled
FSB: 450
CPU Ratio: 9

Advanced DRAM Config:
Disabled by SPD: 4-4-4-10-35 timings
FSB/Mem ratio: 1:1
PCIEx4 - Auto
PCI Freq - 102 (Habit from old days of PCI not locking on OC)
Auto Disable DIMM/PCI Freq: Enabled
Cpu volt: 1.33
Mem volt: 2.1
VTT FSB volt: 1.275
NB Volt: 1.4
SB I/O Power: 1.6
SB Core: 1.05

Hope some of those help.