MSI P6N SLI Platinum - PAGE 13
J. Micah Grunert - Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
How can I put this ever so bluntly? To be perfectly honest, using the BIOS that came with the board, overclocking on the MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard... well it sucks! Not that the final overclock I had achieved was bad (actually pretty decent for an MSI board), but it was a nightmarish ordeal of uncertainty, double checking and random guessing. Where to start? I'll list my frustrations in point form for the ease of understanding. But to provide some lineage, these problems arose with the original version 1.1 BIOS that the P6N SLI Platinum had been shipped with. I had used the MSI Live Update Utility for re-flash the BIOS, with that same BIOS (just hoping there was an updated version available). As for the problems that persisted;
Poor BIOS design.
No reference for stock system voltages (VTT and V-Core most notably).
Limited CPU Multipliers (which is a CPU issue, not a BIOS or board issue).
Large error pertaining to CPU identification during the POST sequence (see screen shot below).
What the hell, the E6400 processor isn't supported? Running at a reduced CPU clock speed? I can't friggin' believe it! But wait, the BIOS registers back with the proper CPU type, and even gives me a wholly believable CPU frequency of 424MHz x 8 for 3.39GHz of performance power (for my best OC).
Boot into Windows, and all of the benchmarks run at what feels like 3.39GHz. But check CPUz to see how fast the system is running during the overclocking stage and it shows me this. The first screen shot is CPUz for stock, and the second is for the overclock. You may notice that both of these CPUz checks indicate that a 6x CPU multiplier has been set, when in reality I was using the 8x cpu multiplier when running CPUz.
 
More blunt remarks.
BIOS does not communicate with CPUz properly.
Switching between the 6, 7, and 8 CPU Multipliers had no affect.
The D.O.T. overclocking presets in the BIOS (Private, Sergent, and General and so on) didn't work.
No difference between 4-4-4-12 @ 1060MHz and 5-5-5-15 @ 1100MHz memory timings.
So, what does all this ranting and raving on my part mean. The MSI P6N SLI Platinum BIOS is broken! Everything still works, but with inhibited functionality (CPU multiplier and D.O.T. overclocking control and memory speeds specifically). And not being able to reference CPUz (an overclockers most valued tool) properly is near unforgivable. The BIOS simply ignores most of my settings in favor of its own secretive selections. If there were a 'Golden Raspberry' award we could give, this board would get it, hands down.
But thankfully, one of our contacts at MSI was kind enough to send us a Beta BIOS (version A7350NMS.P04) that resolved the CPU Multiplier and to a lesser degree, the memory issues. Still, it was rather aggravating that I couldn't pull down a proper CPUz reading, even after this Beta BIOS was installed. So to be perfectly honest, the MSI P6N SLI Platinum runs pretty well, but the BIOS needs a line by line overhaul the likes of which none have ever seen before. Unfortunately, MSI still only offers that original version 1.1 BIOS on their site. In the end, the Beta BIOS we used for our final testing solved the following issues;
Allowed for shifts in the CPU multiplier.
Improved the memory performance sightly.
But in terms of the overclocking settings that were used:
FSB Clocks of . . .
1698 MHz (424 MHz x 6) for 2.563 GHz
1698 MHz (424 MHZ x 7) for 2.988 GHz
1698 MHZ (424 MHZ x 8) for 3.414 GHz
Memory Clock set to . . .
1030 MHz at 4-4-4-12/2T timings
So we'll be running all of our overclock testings at the single memory clocks across all three of the maximum FSB speeds and three different multipliers. I had played around with some 5-5-5-15/2T memory settings, but there was no real benefit to be seen. Something else to fix in the BIOS. Time to see if the MSI P6N SLI Platinum is a decent OC motherboard, or not.
There's some really big charts waiting, so if you'll just turn to the next page.
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