MSI K8N Neo Platinum: what to expect?

Message

StefSybo · Post by **StefSybo** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 9:00 am

SATA works fine, though my SATA hard disk is recognized as hda, which is strange, only networking doesn't work, so it's possible to do a networkless installation on an SATA drive with this motherboard.
Kernel 2.6.8-rc2 does have an nForce driver with support for networking, so everything will work fine if you get it working with kernel 2.6.8-rc2.

burger · Post by **burger** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 10:54 am

Gelfling wrote:I have a MSI K8T Neo with a 3200+, my biggest annoyance is that the HD led doesn't light during disk activity on my SATA Raid 0 Raptors connected to the VIA SATA chipset. Could anybody tell me if the MSI K8N Neo/Neo2 suffers from this same defect?

I have the same effect with my MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R(MS-6702) =(

n3x · Post by **n3x** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:45 pm

Note to self -

Pay more attention when reading technotes in the future.

Hopefully it'll work this time.

Thanks,
james

StefSybo · Post by **StefSybo** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 4:55 pm

Gelfling wrote:I have a MSI K8T Neo with a 3200+, my biggest annoyance is that the HD led doesn't light during disk activity on my SATA Raid 0 Raptors connected to the VIA SATA chipset. Could anybody tell me if the MSI K8N Neo/Neo2 suffers from this same defect?

I have an MSI K8N Neo Platinum and I only have an SATA-harddisk, and the hdd-led lights when there is disk activity. I don't have RAID, but if it works with a single disk it should work with RAID too.

The only problem is that networking doesn't work yet, but that will be solved with kernel 2.6.8 (it's already in 2.6.8-rc2).

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:41 pm

Gelfling wrote:I have a MSI K8T Neo with a 3200+, my biggest annoyance is that the HD led doesn't light during disk activity on my SATA Raid 0 Raptors connected to the VIA SATA chipset. Could anybody tell me if the MSI K8N Neo/Neo2 suffers from this same defect?

a little fairy told me that the problem lies with the raptors. Its a known (well, inside WD) problem

so its the hard disks, not your mobo.

scoughlin · Post by **scoughlin** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:00 pm

I have this board and am trying to get the onboard ethernet to work but it isn't detected.. is there anything out now that fixes it, or could someone give me an example of a PCI ethernet card that works since my old Intel one doesn't seem to.

StefSybo · Post by **StefSybo** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 4:58 pm

kernel 2.6.8-rc2 supports the onboard ethernet card, but as far as I know there is no distro yet with that kernel.

tfh · Post by **tfh** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:46 pm

Hello I'm thinking about buying a MSI Neo Platinum (nForce3 250Gb) and an athlon64 3200+ but I would like to know more about integrated sound . Is it usable ? ALSA Module? Is the sound terrible, any chance of hardware mixing ? spdif output ?

Any insight on integrated sound on nforce3 chipsets? What about the MSI ?

TYIA

Edit: Now that i think of it my main reason for choosing msi over epox is for the firewire port, should i expect some problems or is it working flawlessly ?

leha · Post by **leha** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 2:29 am

it is pretty crapy.
I did not test it under linux, but the quality in win is pretty bad.
Apart from quality there is another problem: if you move mouse or
access hdd you can here some noise from speakers ( of course if you have good speakers). So I end up using my Turtle beach card ( it is way beter). But I dont think that you will find any disent onboard sound, it is better to buy sound card.

The motherboard itself is good, I like it. It does not show correct temperature for newcastle processors though.

Andysan · Post by **Andysan** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:08 am

ALSA module: snd-intel8x0
In my oppinion the sound quality is OK, but hardware mixing and spdif output is afaik far from working. I use a SB-Live, it is really the best solution for the most onbord soundchips.

The temperature issues on newcastle processors are fixed with following bios upgrade:
http://tydyt.borec.cz/pct/1.43.rar

I have no experience with firewire (and no such devices), so I can't tell you if it work.

n3x · Post by **n3x** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 4:17 pm

Andysan: Does that mean I'm not going to get 5.1 surround sound? Will my speakers still work - just not in surround sound? Sorry, I'm a total noob when it comes to sound.

Cheers,
james

edit::
Okay, I get sound out of two speakers and the subwoofer. It doesn't make a difference if I play with the alsamixer levels. Still sounds pretty awesome, though, after nothing but two channel with crappy speakers.

Alpha_Beta · Post by **Alpha_Beta** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 1:06 am

I too am also thinking of getting this board and was wondering what everyone recommends for memory? I'm going to have to buy completely new memory (seeing as I'm using dimms on the one I've got now) so anything really works. Oh, and does having 1 gig vs. 512 Mb really make much of a difference on this board?

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 4:48 pm

Alpha_Beta wrote:I too am also thinking of getting this board and was wondering what everyone recommends for memory? I'm going to have to buy completely new memory (seeing as I'm using dimms on the one I've got now) so anything really works. Oh, and does having 1 gig vs. 512 Mb really make much of a difference on this board?

I wouldn't bother making a new PC without 1GB RAM. Unless you ALWAYS kill an application when you're done with it, you'll be using more than 512MB, in which case you'll need to swap, and then you're screwed.

Gherald2 · Post by **Gherald2** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 6:19 pm

512 might be enough if you run a light WM and no more than 1 or 2 large applications at once

I would still recommend 1GB though, especially with such a nice mobo

Alpha_Beta · Post by **Alpha_Beta** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 12:08 am

From which manufacturers? I mean is OCZ good? or kinston. I know that mobo manufacturers like to play favorites with memory where some works and others won't even be recognized.

rlemaste · Post by **rlemaste** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:33 am

Just an fyi for all those with this board (or thinking of buying it). Nvidia has released 64bit drivers for the network adapter on this mobo. The sound works great via the i8x0 driver so I now have everything on the board working very well.

I'm running the 2.6.8.1 kernel and using the built in sata-nv driver for my sata driver. I bootstrapped from the 3.4.x compiled binaries and have stuck with this as my compiler of choice.

So far everything is very stable. I'm running with the following hardware:

MSI K8N Neo Platinum + AMD64 3200
2x Kingston 512m 3200 speed ram (cas 3)
1 80 Gyg ATA drive
2 x 160 Gyg Hitachi SATA drives
Nvidia FX5200 video (using the Nvidia 64 bit drivers and running Xorg)

Note also that I have not noticed the noise in the sound system that others have mentioned, but i"m only running 2.1 speakers.

joda · Post by **joda** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 2:43 pm

Alpha_Beta wrote:From which manufacturers? I mean is OCZ good? or kinston. I know that mobo manufacturers like to play favorites with memory where some works and others won't even be recognized.

just dont go twinmos, i have two pc2700 512mb chips, and one of them didnt even work although theire identical. it works in my msi k7t pro though. Still, the system is fairly unstable. guessing it has something to do with the memory.

Btw, this is the test report for "Msi K8N Neo Platinum" :
http://www.msi.com.tw/html/products/mai ... memory.pdf

Alpha_Beta · Post by **Alpha_Beta** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 7:11 pm

Thanks. I noticed that the kingston valueRam pc-3200 512 sticks weren't tested... I'm still going to try them unless anyone's has had some bad experiences. besides, they seem to be the cheapest at newegg.com

usrbinperl · Post by **usrbinperl** » Sun Aug 29, 2004 7:14 am

rlemaste wrote:Nvidia has released 64bit drivers for the network adapter on this mobo.

Thanks for the info. How did you get the drivers installed? Would I actually be able to do a minimal LiveCD + network install with the onboard NIC now?

Gelfling · Post by **Gelfling** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 7:44 am

I found this Gentoo-based distro called Navyn OS that's built with the 2.6.8.1 kernel, and even though it has the forcedeth nic driver, it didn't work. I don't know, I might have selected the wrong eth*, I have a MSI K8N Neo2 and it has 2 nics. I only tried to connect to my DSL via only one of them. I'll have to play around with it a little more.

n3x · Post by **n3x** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:28 pm

Maybe we could help if you post your ifconfig? Did you modprobe forcedeth if you needed to?

Cheers

dkaplowitz · Post by **dkaplowitz** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 8:13 pm

Alpha_Beta wrote:From which manufacturers? I mean is OCZ good? or kinston. I know that mobo manufacturers like to play favorites with memory where some works and others won't even be recognized.

If you go to http://forum.msi.com.tw you'll see a lot of ppl raving about the crucial ballistix on this mobo. I picked up 2x512 for this mobo a week ago and have had good results, but not stressing it too much yet. Previously I used the 2x512 of Mushkin Special Black 2-2-2 which also performed well and gave me good benchmark results (well...using Aida in Windows).

I've still had troubles getting any of my Gentoo LiveCDs to install on this mobo....2004.2 seems to give me a problem formatting reiserfs partitions. I used Knoppix to format / with reiser, but then I was having some other issues. I keep planning to return to it, but my patience for it has been waning. I actually got FreeBSD 5.3-beta7 working fairly well in 64-bit, but I wanted the nVidia driver (at least one that'll work on a 64-bit system), so I am going to force gentoo on there. Was kinda' hoping 2004.3 would help me sort some of these problems I have out, but IDK when the 64-bit ISO will become avail.

hardcampa · Post by **hardcampa** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:35 pm

Lv wrote:i have no faith in MSI whatsoever. i have an msi k8t neo on the floor in a corner. it's a piece of crap, not even worth using. however, if this new board is nforce based, then perhaps it wont be as bad. still, the only reason i dont beat the shit out of this board with a bat is that it was so damn expensive.

At least say why it's crap. Or don't you know?

Drk korrupted · Post by **Drk korrupted** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:53 am

MSI nforce chipset > MSI via chipset

mooseboy · Post by **mooseboy** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:11 am

Drk korrupted wrote:MSI nforce chipset > MSI via chipset

on what basis do you make this claim?

I just got through installing 2004.3/gcc 3.4 on a MSI K8T Neo-FSR. The hardest part was probably figuring out that my SATA was causing a bunch of kernel panics on the stock kernel, so I had to temporarily disable it while I got stage 2 going. The onboard lan, while not being automatically recognized, worked with the r8169 module, and the sound works flawlessly with the via 82xxxx driver. I'm not worried about the quality of the chipset as I use SPDIF to make my receiver do all the decoding and conversion. The Chipset seems to be pretty rock solid with DDR400 ram I got from my roommate (who uses a K8N) that had timing problems. Granted, it is probably his bios revision. Most of the problems I've had so far with getting things going have been fairly minor which I've been able to solve by reading on the forums here. I think that by next major release (2005.1), all the kinks will probably be worked out.

MSI K8N Neo Platinum: what to expect?

integrated sound

RE: integrated sound

MSI K8N Neo Platinum working great!

Re: MSI K8N Neo Platinum working great!