MSI RS480M2 Notes

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

A few notes that may be of interest on this ATI Chipset board. Just
built a system with this board,an A64 3000+ Venice processor, 512 meg
DDR 400 (256x2 dual channel), and 2) 80 gig SATA drives in a mirrored
RAID config.

1. RAID issues: This board uses the ATI SB400 southbridge, which
contains SATA controllers from Silicon Image. In the XP device
manager, they show up as an ATI 4379 SATA Controller & an ATI 437A
SATA Controller (In the bios I have SATA 3&4 configured for RAID).
The ATI RAID is based on the Silicon Image 3112 chipset, and uses SI
drivers customized for ATI. The Mobo I installed had the latest bios
at this writing (v3.3), but all the drivers were several months old.
This is normally not a problem, but in this case it was. The included
RAID driver install floppy installed o.k. at WinXP load time (pressing
F6), but after Windows XP Pro SP2 was loaded there were ?? on both
SATA RAID controllers. Installing the drivers off the CD did not
help. Windows update had newer drivers which I installed. Upon
rebooting, I could no longer load the OS even into safe mode -- the
machine would just lock up. So I downloaded the latest drivers from
MSI, made a new RAID floppy driver disk, and reinstalled XP with a
reformat/reload. This time all was well, no ?? in device manager.
All drivers are WHQL and stable.

Another issue with the RAID is most chipset makers have a RAID
monitoring & configuration utility for Windows which was not included.
I downloaded the latest Java based monitoring utility from Silicon
Image which works well. Of course Java must be installed 1st:
http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/3124-SATA%20RAID%20Management%20Utility.zip
The filename indicates it is for the SI3124 but it is also for the
3112 & 3114 Chipsets.
It would be nice if MSI included this on their disk or website, though
they are not the only OEM not to do so these days.


2. System monitoring Utilities: This board comes with NO monitoring
utilities except what is in the system bios. None of the utilities on
MSI's website work as of 5-17-05. MSI Corecenter gives an error
message that the mobo is not supported. MSI PC Alert 4 shows CPU &
system temps, though I don't think they are correct, and fans speeds
which are definetely not correct, and no voltages at all. MSI
Digicell merely links to Corecenter if installed, which of course does
not work. This is a disappointment; I hope MSI corrects this soon.


Others on the forums here have noted possible issues with sound
quality when gaming; I have not tested the sound for games but it is
fine for general use. Overall it is a very nice board once the newer
& stable drivers are installed.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

I would like to note that my computer was slow as molases until I
downloaded the noncritical ATI driver from Windows Update. Overall,
I'm happy with the board.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

"stimpy1" <robertsmith53@hotmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> schreef in bericht
news:428aa958$1_1@alt.athenanews.com...
>I would like to note that my computer was slow as molases until I
> downloaded the noncritical ATI driver from Windows Update. Overall,
> I'm happy with the board.
>

Which one is that?

Jan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

A few more notes:

Power Requirements:
The MSI manual recommends a 350 watt or greater supply. While that is
expected these days, they also note that the ATX 12V should be greater
than 18A. The majority of 350+ watt power supplies I have looked at
do not have that many amps on the 12V rail. I'm using a 380 watt
supply with 11A on the 12V rail without stability issues, but plan on
swapping it out to be safe. Of course I'm only using a 3000+ Venice
and only the onboard graphics for now so my current power requirements
are low.

Cool & Quiet Problems:
I can't get Cool & Quiet to work. I have it turned on in the bios,
have Minimal Power Management set in the Power options in the Control
Panel, and have installed the latest processor driver from AMD. Then
to test, I downloaded AMD's Cool-n-Quiet monitoring utility (PowerNow!
Dashboard). It will not even run, returning an error of "Could not
find a valid PSS or PST, bailing". I also downloaded the latest
CPU-Z, and it reports no reduction in speed. I have read that some
have trouble getting Venice processors to work with Cool-n-Quiet . . .

If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, I'm all eyes.

Thanks.

 

[jk]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

On Tue, 17 May 2005 20:08:07 -0500, "RichH" <richh-nospam-@wonu.fm>
wrote:

>A few notes that may be of interest on this ATI Chipset board. Just
>built a system with this board,an A64 3000+ Venice processor, 512 meg
>DDR 400 (256x2 dual channel), and 2) 80 gig SATA drives in a mirrored
>RAID config.
>
>1. RAID issues: This board uses the ATI SB400 southbridge, which
>contains SATA controllers from Silicon Image. In the XP device
>manager, they show up as an ATI 4379 SATA Controller & an ATI 437A
>SATA Controller (In the bios I have SATA 3&4 configured for RAID).
>The ATI RAID is based on the Silicon Image 3112 chipset, and uses SI
>drivers customized for ATI. The Mobo I installed had the latest bios
>at this writing (v3.3), but all the drivers were several months old.
>This is normally not a problem, but in this case it was. The included
>RAID driver install floppy installed o.k. at WinXP load time (pressing
>F6), but after Windows XP Pro SP2 was loaded there were ?? on both
>SATA RAID controllers. Installing the drivers off the CD did not
>help. Windows update had newer drivers which I installed. Upon
>rebooting, I could no longer load the OS even into safe mode -- the
>machine would just lock up. So I downloaded the latest drivers from
>MSI, made a new RAID floppy driver disk, and reinstalled XP with a
>reformat/reload. This time all was well, no ?? in device manager.
>All drivers are WHQL and stable.
>

It's part of the home work always to download newest drivers from
manufacturer, IMO.
Use the CD as a frisbe

>Another issue with the RAID is most chipset makers have a RAID
>monitoring & configuration utility for Windows which was not included.
>I downloaded the latest Java based monitoring utility from Silicon
>Image which works well. Of course Java must be installed 1st:
>http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/3124-SATA%20RAID%20Management%20Utility.zip
>The filename indicates it is for the SI3124 but it is also for the
>3112 & 3114 Chipsets.
>It would be nice if MSI included this on their disk or website, though
>they are not the only OEM not to do so these days.
>
>
>2. System monitoring Utilities: This board comes with NO monitoring
>utilities except what is in the system bios. None of the utilities on
>MSI's website work as of 5-17-05. MSI Corecenter gives an error
>message that the mobo is not supported. MSI PC Alert 4 shows CPU &
>system temps, though I don't think they are correct, and fans speeds
>which are definetely not correct, and no voltages at all. MSI
>Digicell merely links to Corecenter if installed, which of course does
>not work. This is a disappointment; I hope MSI corrects this soon.
>
Yes, I have the same MB. No monitoring, but since it cannot overclock,
I can accept that.

But the latest bios makes C&Q working well. If one load defaults, the
3 fan voltage levels will adjust (in hex) and you can adjust 3
temperatures in Celcius. That works nicely. My bios measures too low
cpu temperature, so I adjust all 3 temperatures very low: 30, 35, 40.


>
>Others on the forums here have noted possible issues with sound
>quality when gaming; I have not tested the sound for games but it is
>fine for general use. Overall it is a very nice board once the newer
>& stable drivers are installed.
>

I have installed X64 also.
I have found some X64 realtek sound drivers for the card:

ftp://202.65.194.18/pc/ac97/alc650/wdm64_a372.exe some 11 Mbyte.

Further www.atitech.com has some rather new 64 bits catalyst graphics
drivers that became official (not beta) in late April.

Oc'ing isn't really demanded from my opinion. If you buy a venice or
winchester 3500+ you will be well off. Remember to set HTT to 1 Gig in
bios.

Many has mentioned sound problems. I don't use sound very much. I am
very satisfied with the board. I don't use raid, but one IDE.

best regards

John

 

[jk]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

On Wed, 18 May 2005 08:48:16 -0500, "RichH" <richh-nospam-@wonu.fm>
wrote:

>A few more notes:
>
>Power Requirements:
>The MSI manual recommends a 350 watt or greater supply. While that is
>expected these days, they also note that the ATX 12V should be greater
>than 18A. The majority of 350+ watt power supplies I have looked at
>do not have that many amps on the 12V rail. I'm using a 380 watt
>supply with 11A on the 12V rail without stability issues, but plan on
>swapping it out to be safe. Of course I'm only using a 3000+ Venice
>and only the onboard graphics for now so my current power requirements
>are low.
>
I use a 220 Watt Antec (Minuet Soho Black slim cabinet). No problems.
Winchester 3500+ and 2x512 Mbyte ram. X300 graphics card.
;-/

Well, the cpu uses just 13watt/65watt idle/load, but you are right
that there are some current demands.

>Cool & Quiet Problems:
>I can't get Cool & Quiet to work. I have it turned on in the bios,
>have Minimal Power Management set in the Power options in the Control
>Panel, and have installed the latest processor driver from AMD. Then
>to test, I downloaded AMD's Cool-n-Quiet monitoring utility (PowerNow!
>Dashboard). It will not even run, returning an error of "Could not
>find a valid PSS or PST, bailing". I also downloaded the latest
>CPU-Z, and it reports no reduction in speed. I have read that some
>have trouble getting Venice processors to work with Cool-n-Quiet . . .
>
>If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, I'm all eyes.
>

My C&Q works fine. Have you loaded defaults ? This set voltages in the
setup under Hardware monitoring in bios. Further there are more
enabling to do elsewhere in bios. I believe there are 2 enables
totally.

I use no program. Just Windows XP and the bios (3.3)

best regards

John

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

|>Cool & Quiet Problems:
|>I can't get Cool & Quiet to work. I have it turned on in the bios,
|>have Minimal Power Management set in the Power options in the
Control
|>Panel, and have installed the latest processor driver from AMD.
Then
|>to test, I downloaded AMD's Cool-n-Quiet monitoring utility
(PowerNow!
|>Dashboard). It will not even run, returning an error of "Could not
|>find a valid PSS or PST, bailing". I also downloaded the latest
|>CPU-Z, and it reports no reduction in speed. I have read that some
|>have trouble getting Venice processors to work with Cool-n-Quiet . .
..
|>
|>If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, I'm all eyes.
|>
|
|My C&Q works fine. Have you loaded defaults ? This set voltages in
the
|setup under Hardware monitoring in bios. Further there are more
|enabling to do elsewhere in bios. I believe there are 2 enables
|totally.
|
|I use no program. Just Windows XP and the bios (3.3)
|
|best regards
|
|John

Sounds good, but how do you know your Cool & Quiet is working without
monitoring software? The only way I know to test it is to measure
using one of the utilities I mentioned above or something similar. On
previous systems I have built, when C&Q is working the processor speed
will drop way down as measured by the aforementioned utilities. Of
course this is not something you can "see" without a
monitoring/measuring utility, as the speed dynamically changes to
load. Also, are you using a Venice core chip (Rev E)? I'm trying to
determine if the problem is with the chip or the board or ?. I am
using the same v3.3 bios, and have tried system defaults, etc.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

PCAlert give me correct temperatures and fan speeds, but no voltages.

C&Q works for me in XP Pro SR2 .requires the CPU driver from AMD, and
you have to Select "Minimal power management" in the windows power
settings

For power supplies, the newer spec ones have strong 12V rails. My
Antec Aria is 300W, but has 18A on 12V, where the CPU regulators draw
from.

RichH, have you run your Minute cased system at full load? Put on
climateprediction.org or something and let us know if it's still
stable.

Need to start collecting 64 drivers and get on 64-bit, how many of you
are running windows 64? Think I found Network, Sound, and Video; are
there other system drivers for stuff on-board?

gwfung

 

[jk]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

On Wed, 18 May 2005 13:26:54 -0500, "RichH" <richh-nospam-@wonu.fm>
wrote:


>
>Sounds good, but how do you know your Cool & Quiet is working without
>monitoring software? The only way I know to test it is to measure
>using one of the utilities I mentioned above or something similar. On
>previous systems I have built, when C&Q is working the processor speed
>will drop way down as measured by the aforementioned utilities. Of
>course this is not something you can "see" without a
>monitoring/measuring utility, as the speed dynamically changes to
>load. Also, are you using a Venice core chip (Rev E)? I'm trying to
>determine if the problem is with the chip or the board or ?. I am
>using the same v3.3 bios, and have tried system defaults, etc.
>
>

I have just seen the cpu fan stop for a while. That is one side of it.
Further I believe CPU-z will show down-stepped, true clock speed.

best regards

John

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

RichH wrote:
>
> A few notes that may be of interest on this ATI Chipset board. Just
> built a system with this board,an A64 3000+ Venice processor, 512 meg
> DDR 400 (256x2 dual channel), and 2) 80 gig SATA drives in a mirrored
> RAID config.
>


Rich,

I'm assuming that the machine booted with the Venice core CPU with no
problem? Which BIOS version are you using?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[jk]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

On 18 May 2005 20:33:42 -0700, "gwfung" <gwfung@gmail.com> wrote:


>
>RichH, have you run your Minute cased system at full load? Put on
>climateprediction.org or something and let us know if it's still
>stable.
>

I have just benchmarked it with 3DMarks2001se. That gives some load
for about 15 minutes, I think.
I found that onboard graphics gave 5300 (1024x768x32) and a low
profile x300 card gave 6000.
I am impressed of the onboard.

best regards

John

 

[jk]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

On Tue, 17 May 2005 20:08:07 -0500, "RichH" <richh-nospam-@wonu.fm>
wrote:


There is a clockgen for the board:

http://www.cpuid.org/clockgen.php

;-)

John

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

"gwfung" <gwfung@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1116473622.714009.326530@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

>
> Need to start collecting 64 drivers and get on 64-bit, how many of you
> are running windows 64? Think I found Network, Sound, and Video; are
> there other system drivers for stuff on-board?
>
MSI has them already. They'll send you a link to their FTP site if you just
ask. XP 64-bit running perfectly here.
--
Cari
(MS-MVP Printing & Imaging)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

Updated notes on the new 3.4 bios: Cool & Quiet is now fixed for Rev.
E (Venice) Processors!
After the bios update, I also noticed the sound drivers needed to be
reloaded, so I wonder if they may have fixed something there too.
Fans do not seem to be controlled by Cool & Quiet, but only the bios,
but that is not too much of a problem. Someone else has noted that
the fan voltage adjustments have been removed from this bios; perhaps
this was causing some problems.



"RichH" <richh-nospam-@wonu.fm> wrote in message
news:LpSdndPfO_8oCBffRVn-jg@comcast.com...
A few notes that may be of interest on this ATI Chipset board. Just
built a system with this board,an A64 3000+ Venice processor, 512 meg
DDR 400 (256x2 dual channel), and 2) 80 gig SATA drives in a mirrored
RAID config.

1. RAID issues: This board uses the ATI SB400 southbridge, which
contains SATA controllers from Silicon Image. In the XP device
manager, they show up as an ATI 4379 SATA Controller & an ATI 437A
SATA Controller (In the bios I have SATA 3&4 configured for RAID).
The ATI RAID is based on the Silicon Image 3112 chipset, and uses SI
drivers customized for ATI. The Mobo I installed had the latest bios
at this writing (v3.3), but all the drivers were several months old.
This is normally not a problem, but in this case it was. The included
RAID driver install floppy installed o.k. at WinXP load time (pressing
F6), but after Windows XP Pro SP2 was loaded there were ?? on both
SATA RAID controllers. Installing the drivers off the CD did not
help. Windows update had newer drivers which I installed. Upon
rebooting, I could no longer load the OS even into safe mode -- the
machine would just lock up. So I downloaded the latest drivers from
MSI, made a new RAID floppy driver disk, and reinstalled XP with a
reformat/reload. This time all was well, no ?? in device manager.
All drivers are WHQL and stable.

Another issue with the RAID is most chipset makers have a RAID
monitoring & configuration utility for Windows which was not included.
I downloaded the latest Java based monitoring utility from Silicon
Image which works well. Of course Java must be installed 1st:
http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/3124-SATA%20RAID%20Management%20Utility.zip
The filename indicates it is for the SI3124 but it is also for the
3112 & 3114 Chipsets.
It would be nice if MSI included this on their disk or website, though
they are not the only OEM not to do so these days.


2. System monitoring Utilities: This board comes with NO monitoring
utilities except what is in the system bios. None of the utilities on
MSI's website work as of 5-17-05. MSI Corecenter gives an error
message that the mobo is not supported. MSI PC Alert 4 shows CPU &
system temps, though I don't think they are correct, and fans speeds
which are definetely not correct, and no voltages at all. MSI
Digicell merely links to Corecenter if installed, which of course does
not work. This is a disappointment; I hope MSI corrects this soon.


Others on the forums here have noted possible issues with sound
quality when gaming; I have not tested the sound for games but it is
fine for general use. Overall it is a very nice board once the newer
& stable drivers are installed.