A64 3700+

[Keith75]

I upgraded my 754 pin 3200 to a 939 pin 3700 last night only to find out the K8N Neo2 I got for $100 on the net is an OEM board which means it has a BIOS made to Compaq specs. In short what they did is remove alot of the options you would normally have and this also stops me from upgrading until they come out with an upgrade. Their current BIOS is from July of 04. I have contacted a company at esupport.com and am hoping they may be able to get me a normal BIOS again that I can upgrade using MSI's updates.

Keith

[Jeff]

Sorry to hear that!

You'll love the 3700+....thats what I got :)

[Keith75]

Yeah, I just received the new BIOS and can't wait to get home and try it. Got my fingers crossed. LOL

My 3200 was running at 2.4 GHz so the 3700 is actually turning in lower numbers in BOINC since it is only running at 2.3 until I get my BIOS fixed and can up the voltage a tad.

http://www.pcdirect.com/product.asp...MSK8NNEO2%2DPLO

[Empty_5oul]

an upgrade that makes you run slower, lol :?:

poss. it would be worth getting a new motherboard at some point? if you find problems like you have you will probably find other "corners have been cut".

anyway hope it now works and you can push it to its max. performance.

[Keith75]

My real reason for getting this is that I plan to put in a dual core chip when prices come down a bit. :cool:

I also hoped SSE3 and 1MB of L2 cache would help in gaming.

[mitro]

Congrats on the new setup! :D Ya sure that CPU won't do more on the volts you have? 3700's are know to be monsters! Best of luck to ya!

[Keith75]

Well, something is holding me back. Since I had the same memory in my 754 K8N running at 215 FSB stable I thought that it must be the CPU. It seems to run stable at 210 but 212 crashes during gaming. I am running it at 208 now. It says the CPU runs at 1.4v but my BIOS says it is running at 1.36. With this Compaq BIOS the only voltage options are Auto which is what I am on now and then the next one is 1.55v. I am thinking this is because it was made before the 90nm chips were even out.

Keith

[mitro]

I'm no expert on that board, but I think it MAY be possible to flash it back to a MSI BIOS. Try asking at www.ocforums.com or www.extremesystems.org . If that's possible, TRY running a lower multiplier with a higher FSB to make sure the memory isn't your limitation. Then if it is, you can just run the memory on a divider (you'll have to get info from someone familiar with your BIOS options)

[Keith75]

Nah, you can't just flash it back to MSI BIOS. I found esupport.com though that is the site of the BIOS manufacturer and they sent me a program and BIOS that should fix it back to normal. Going to try it tonight.

[Keith75]

Got rid of the Compaq BIOS and got the MSI one flashed onto it. :D

Surprisingly my memory was holding me back, not the CPU. I dropped the ram down to 166 speed then upped the FSB, I know there is no FSB anymore, to 216 and it is rock solid. Whats funny is that this ram was stable at 215 on my 754 board and only stable at 210 on this board using the same timings.

Keith