Are mobile A-64's worth it? (eyeing the 3200+)

D

Decelerate

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
467
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-445&depa=0

Model# AMN3200BIX5AR
So I assume they're CG stepping.
It's 30 bucks more expensive than a normal Claw.

If they're worth getting I gotta move fast, they don't sell 'em in Canada (afaik). I got some contacts in the US for only this week.

From what I've read the K8N Neo Platinum can support it. Anyone can confirm it?

Looking for Air OC. Maybe in a Shuttle rig (do they have locks?)
Don't even know which to get.
SK83G
SN85G4v2
Do they support mobiles?

Anyone can help out on this issue?
 
Decelerate said:
From what I've read the K8N Neo Platinum can support it. Anyone can confirm it?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't touch that board with a ten foot pole. Here's a cut and paste from that link about the MSI K8N Neo Platinum:


MSI K8N Neo Platinum [AGP/PCI Lock, FID 4x-Max, HTT Adjust, VCore, VDimm, LDT; Tested with Athlon 64 Mobile 1.4v] The board has some SERIOUS quality issues (there are too many problems to list but users are seeing everything from stability issues at stock, inability to get voltage to stay above 1.45v, only parttime working RAM divisors, flakey AGP/PCI locks, to multiplier and voltage settings that won't 'stick') Unfortunately, this is nothing new with MSI boards. What that means is that you may get a board that works fine but it is *much* more likely that you will get a board that is a big POS which will cause you to waste endless hours pulling out your hair trying (and failing) to get the board to work correctly. Until further notice, this motherboard is NOT a good choice to use with mobiles (or any other CPU for that matter.)
 
Yeah, thanks for the clarification Roberty.

I'm wondering if mobile chips in general are worth it, with some other board that is
 
try the asrock board the recommend in the thread. doesnt seem to bad. uses the sis755 chipset.

nobody is really supporting the mobile so your going to be hard pressed to find a motherboard that you'd actually like to use a mobile on. might as well go with a regular a64 a hope for the best..... and still keep away from msi.
 
I think it's too early to tell yet with the Athlon 64 mobiles since some motherboards won't even boot with them installed unlike the SocketA mobiles. I'd probably just get a regular desktop Athlon 64.
 
I'm getting that CPU with an ASRock K8S8X this Tuesday. I'll
tell you how it works out.

-jellysandwich
 
jellysandwich said:
I'm getting that CPU with an ASRock K8S8X this Tuesday. I'll
tell you how it works out.

-jellysandwich
Click to expand...

Cool cool, I'll look forward to it
The ASRock uses a Via chipset right?
 
MSI K8N Neo Platinum [AGP/PCI Lock, FID 4x-Max, HTT Adjust, VCore, VDimm, LDT; Tested with Athlon 64 Mobile 1.4v] The board has some SERIOUS quality issues (there are too many problems to list but users are seeing everything from stability issues at stock, inability to get voltage to stay above 1.45v, only parttime working RAM divisors, flakey AGP/PCI locks, to multiplier and voltage settings that won't 'stick') Unfortunately, this is nothing new with MSI boards. What that means is that you may get a board that works fine but it is *much* more likely that you will get a board that is a big POS which will cause you to waste endless hours pulling out your hair trying (and failing) to get the board to work correctly. Until further notice, this motherboard is NOT a good choice to use with mobiles (or any other CPU for that matter.)
Click to expand...

one man's opinion. if there really were this many problems you would see people crying about this board alot more. fact is, the first week or so it was out, all the people that had problems went to the MSI forums and complained. well since they all are there to complain they all assume the board has alot of problems because everyone there is complaining of problems. hate to tell ya but 9/10 problems with a computer are user caused. and really how does one come to the conclusion that the AGP/PCI locks are flakey? i mean really, unless you have proof lets stick to facts people.
 
infinity9 said:
one man's opinion. if there really were this many problems you would see people crying about this board alot more. fact is, the first week or so it was out, all the people that had problems went to the MSI forums and complained. well since they all are there to complain they all assume the board has alot of problems because everyone there is complaining of problems. hate to tell ya but 9/10 problems with a computer are user caused. and really how does one come to the conclusion that the AGP/PCI locks are flakey? i mean really, unless you have proof lets stick to facts people.
Click to expand...
Not to prevoke a war here but it has already been proven that the PCI/AGP lock on that board is hit or miss
 
AMD T-type said:
Not to prevoke a war here but it has already been proven that the PCI/AGP lock on that board is hit or miss
Click to expand...

Yea, why take a chance on a board with an extraordinary amount of complaints already? It's not like MSI has a great rep of taking care of problems with their products. :rolleyes: Just go to their forums and you'll see what I mean.
 
Not looking good, I can get only 2.25 Ghz from this thing
so far.

Any higher and 3dMark01SE crashes.

But I'm not gonna lie. I'm new to overclocking, so I might
have missed something.

-jellysandwich
 
Dont bother with mobile right now. The current thought is that they are:

1. more expensive
2. dont OC much better (if any)
3. MSI boards are risky
4. most boards dont even work at all...
 
Yeah the MSI issue is real bad, eyeing Gigabyte if i'm not going SFF.

As for mobile, noticed the mobo issues, I guess I'll go 3000 or 3200 Claw
 
How many people who claim the MSI is a bad board have owned them? I'm not the biggest MSI fan but I hate seeing people jump to such conclusions without and evidence to back it up. The PCI/AGP locks most certainly work. The original bios had issues. Honestly its like a bunch of wives gossiping about the neighbors. 20% truth with 80% stupidity mixed in. Fact is all the nforce 250 boards have issues, but not for everyone. The MSI right now is one of the only boards that will achieve 250+ HTT with regular sucess. The renowned Asus (which I am a big supporter of) wont even go past 230 but do you hear scream bloody murder? Well when the MSI was released and it wouldn't do past 230 for some people they did. In fact I haven't seen but a few negative comments about the Asus and it is one of the worst overclocking A64 boards even released. Running at 200 the MSI is rock solid with no issues, and the REAL remaining ones have pretty much been fixed with the lastest bios. I've never seen soo many misguided souls that have such confidence with so little to support it.

BTW, if you can prove the locks dont work with the latest bios then please do, because I haven't seen a soul mention it since the first weeks it was out. If you cant then I suggest you stop providing information to people needing advice without any facts to support it. The computer world needs all this misinformation to end! It hurts us all in the industry, not just the companies you target with false accusations.

-- sigs of the A64 authorities --

System Specs
AMD XP2800+ cpu @ 2.35ghz - 188X12.5
Gigabyte GA-7VAX MB
ATI 9600XT
200 GB Hard Drive
512mb Corsair XMS PC3200 ram
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 22" Monitor

Athlon 2600+ Mobile @ 2.7GHz w/ SLK-900A
DFI NFII Ultra Infinity || 2 x 512MB KHX PC3000
ATI 9800np -> 9800Pro @ 445/380
WD 36GB Raptor SATA || 2 x WD 200GB 8MB SATA
NEC 2500A DVD+RW || Sony DDU1621 DVD-ROM
Antec TruePower 430W || Dual 19" NEC FE990's

-- hmm no athlon 64 --
 
infinity9 said:
How many people who claim the MSI is a bad board have owned them? I'm not the biggest MSI fan but I hate seeing people jump to such conclusions without and evidence to back it up. The PCI/AGP locks most certainly work. The original bios had issues. Honestly its like a bunch of wives gossiping about the neighbors. 20% truth with 80% stupidity mixed in. Fact is all the nforce 250 boards have issues, but not for everyone. The MSI right now is one of the only boards that will achieve 250+ HTT with regular sucess. The renowned Asus (which I am a big supporter of) wont even go past 230 but do you hear scream bloody murder? Well when the MSI was released and it wouldn't do past 230 for some people they did. In fact I haven't seen but a few negative comments about the Asus and it is one of the worst overclocking A64 boards even released. Running at 200 the MSI is rock solid with no issues, and the REAL remaining ones have pretty much been fixed with the lastest bios. I've never seen soo many misguided souls that have such confidence with so little to support it.

BTW, if you can prove the locks dont work with the latest bios then please do, because I haven't seen a soul mention it since the first weeks it was out. If you cant then I suggest you stop providing information to people needing advice without any facts to support it. The computer world needs all this misinformation to end! It hurts us all in the industry, not just the companies you target with false accusations.
Click to expand...

Hold your panties there, want some stories? here:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.c...ad.php?t=117815

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?threadid=17262841&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

And there are other posts/threads where MSI's quality products are being questioned. Enough so to start wondering and considering not getting them. Before you unleash Thor's Hammer on everyone on this board you should start by kindly asking for facts. It would have been more polite.

If you want more proof on the debate, simply ask, not throw a thorch in an otherwise fairly peacefull thread.
 
im not here to debate. im here to discuss facts. you want to know about quality problems? how about look at the kv8 pro. was supposed to have working pci/agp locks from the start, now users are being told the 1.0 boards WILL NOT ever have pci/agp locks. yet i have seen twice as much crap over the k8n which actually has working pci/agp locks and multiplier adjustment. something the kv8 pro lacks, the 1.1 has pci/agp locks but overclocks poorly and has no multi adjust yet. but why is abit not being totally racked over the coals like msi? i consider this a much worse problem. but you know people love abit, they couldnt make a bad board...

sorry to be so harsh but we really need to stop spreading so much unfounded rumors about computer products. you wonder why companies dont want to accept returns from customers? its because over 80% of the stuff they get back isnt acutally defective, user error. dont get me wrong i would love for everything to work perfectly and no problems but we need to address real issues, not theories. i once saw where a guy was convinced that sideband addressing was causing his system to crash but he had no bios option to turn it off so he wanted a new motherboard without sba. he really should be checking the flux capacitor, im certain it was the problem.
 
Hmm, maybe because no one covered Abit before you brought it up?

And/or maybe because I specifically asked for MSI opinion?

Yes I have heard about Abit not having working locks, and I'm sure many others did too, but a quick CTRL-F for the word "Abit" or "kv8" reveals no one has suggested/opinionated on Abit until you did.

As far as "rumors" go, on such a developped board, rumors based on false information/facts tend to get shot down pretty quickly, unless they have some traces of truth. I have shown you some of them in my last post. MSI seems to fit that category.

I have heard way too many reports of bad capacitors on MSI boards to ignore the possibility. Others have the same and/or different concerns regarding MSI.

Seriously, the only company I trust right now is Asus, and that's because I'm running an Asus mobo & Asus graph card right now. I'm also eyeing Gigabyte, because I have heard good critics on it, and near nil bad ones (aside from the price). And their new "PEG incident" is annoying me as much as many others who had great trust in Asus.

Now why is Gigabyte being let alone while MSI's getting some flak? Unless we're on a Gigabyte fan board (which I doubt [H] is currently) then I believe that many/most are happy with their product, and that says as much as all the flak going on with MSI.

Now is MSI an actually good company with good products? Maybe, but with these ongoing rumors going around I'm not planning to be a consummer guinea pig. If they're truely of great quality, then the rumors will dissapear on their own.

Only confusing and ongoing debate I see around is ATI vs NVidia, and that's probably been ongoing since the dawn of the Radeon.
 
infinity9 said:
How many people who claim the MSI is a bad board have owned them? I'm not the biggest MSI fan but I hate seeing people jump to such conclusions without and evidence to back it up. The PCI/AGP locks most certainly work. The original bios had issues. Honestly its like a bunch of wives gossiping about the neighbors. 20% truth with 80% stupidity mixed in. Fact is all the nforce 250 boards have issues, but not for everyone. The MSI right now is one of the only boards that will achieve 250+ HTT with regular sucess. The renowned Asus (which I am a big supporter of) wont even go past 230 but do you hear scream bloody murder? Well when the MSI was released and it wouldn't do past 230 for some people they did. In fact I haven't seen but a few negative comments about the Asus and it is one of the worst overclocking A64 boards even released. Running at 200 the MSI is rock solid with no issues, and the REAL remaining ones have pretty much been fixed with the lastest bios. I've never seen soo many misguided souls that have such confidence with so little to support it.

BTW, if you can prove the locks dont work with the latest bios then please do, because I haven't seen a soul mention it since the first weeks it was out. If you cant then I suggest you stop providing information to people needing advice without any facts to support it. The computer world needs all this misinformation to end! It hurts us all in the industry, not just the companies you target with false accusations.

-- sigs of the A64 authorities --

System Specs
AMD XP2800+ cpu @ 2.35ghz - 188X12.5
Gigabyte GA-7VAX MB
ATI 9600XT
200 GB Hard Drive
512mb Corsair XMS PC3200 ram
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 22" Monitor

Athlon 2600+ Mobile @ 2.7GHz w/ SLK-900A
DFI NFII Ultra Infinity || 2 x 512MB KHX PC3000
ATI 9800np -> 9800Pro @ 445/380
WD 36GB Raptor SATA || 2 x WD 200GB 8MB SATA
NEC 2500A DVD+RW || Sony DDU1621 DVD-ROM
Antec TruePower 430W || Dual 19" NEC FE990's

-- hmm no athlon 64 --
Click to expand...


I don't have a Athlon 64 system YET but I've been doing my homework because I'm about ready to pull the trigger on building a new Athlon 64 system. I posted this in a earlier thread about an earlier experience with MSI. Most dealers won't help on a RMA after the first 6-12 months. You have to deal directly with the manufacturer after that. MSI absolutely doesn't offer ANY warranty support to the end user - trust me I know. I had a socket A MSI board a couple of years ago (first generation) that should have still been under warranty (8 months old). It had developed leaking capacitors and developed the dreaded "Cold Boot" issue. You had to unplug the power supply for a few seconds before it would fire up on a cold boot. I searched the forums at MSI and apparently this was a VERY common problem at the time. MSI will not deal with anyone but the reseller's - NO end user support what-so-ever and the business that I had bought it from new was no longer in business. That one bad experience with MSI's so called "Warranty Support" did it for me. After reading quite a few people having problems with this motherboard would be enough for me to shy away from it especially after my previous experience with MSI with a motherboard that I bought new and that was clearly still under warranty with a very legit RMA issue (two obviously leaking capasiters - I still have this POS out in my garage - I can email you pics if you are a non believer) and the cold boot issue because of it. I'm truely glad that you happened to get a good one unlike some of the others. Just hope you don't have to ever RMA it through MSI though. :rolleyes: Lotsa luck on that one.
 
i know this isn't the most helpful comment?
but i've owned 2 msi products before and they both died on med within a week
one was a gf4 4800ti and other was a kt6 mb, both the quality was absolutely crappy, maybie i was just unlucky but the freaken heatsink actualy fell off the card, it was off when it happend i put it back on, i attached a better zalman heatsink with a fan directly on it and i got crazy artifacts, and it just got worse until even on 2d was unreadable over time, mb was crap slowly ticked down on counting all my ram, i replaced my ram no change, started getting all sorta errors in windows it was a truly sucky experience
 
Yeah it seems everywhere I look there's someone who had a bad experience with MSI...

Not planning to be a part of the statistic ;)
 
I have the MSI K8N Neo Platinum and it isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. There are some problems, but I've had problems with every single computer I've ever had. Guess what people it is a fact of life that motherboards or any other mass produced item don't work perfectly. I've had Abit, Asus, Soyo, MSI boards. I haven't noticed that much difference between any of them. The Abit sucked, the Asus died pretty quickly (the rma process was horrible), the Soyo is still running, and the MSI is working nicely now.

I think one of the big problems with the Athlon 64 is the chip itself and how it was designed. Before the A64 there was a chip on the motherboard that controlled the RAM, but now with the A64 the memory controller is on the chip itself. The A64 can be finnicky with ram, such as how it may not like to run dual sided RAM in multiple slots. The bad part to this is that if you buy 2 x 512MB sticks to get 1GB it may not like to run it, but remember the A64 is single channel so the 2 sticks don't really help you. It does suck though that you might have to buy one 1gb stick to reach your desired level of memory, and that can cost some serious change. But blame AMD, not the motherboard manufacturer.

As for some of you saying the MSI doesn't have a working AGP/PCI lock, I don't think you have the board and are repeating something that someone said who probably didn't have the board either. There is a working AGP/PCI lock on the MSI K8N Neo Platinum, as there are on all NForce3 boards to my knowledge. I was acutally looking at the Abit KV8 Pro before I decided on this board, and the deciding factor was the working AGP/PCI lock.

If you are having problems overclocking the A64, I suggest you read this guide as I found it extremely informative and helped me out quite a bit on my experiments into overclocking my A64 3000+.
 
Granted MSI must be doing some good, or else they would have been out of business long ago.

But you can't deny the presence of many posts of people struggling with MSI boards.

IMHO if the boards are really that great, the rumors would've died long ago. I don't see any other mobo manufacturer getting bashed as much as MSI right now, and it's kinda scary.
 
Decelerate said:
Granted MSI must be doing some good, or else they would have been out of business long ago.

But you can't deny the presence of many posts of people struggling with MSI boards.

IMHO if the boards are really that great, the rumors would've died long ago. I don't see any other mobo manufacturer getting bashed as much as MSI right now, and it's kinda scary.
Click to expand...

If you go to any board for any motherboard manufacturer you will find tons of the same posts. For the most part people who are on those boards have problems and that is the only reason they went there.
 
Yes but I hear about MSI on every board I go, including this one. And I browse through a lot of forums.

From my experience, the outcry against MSI is above average. They're the OCZ of motherboards.

And even OCZ has a more reputable status now, because they cleaned up their act and release quality product after quality product. That's how you kill rumors & gossip. Slowly

Even after all this time, I'm still reluctant to jump on OCZ. MSI's in a worst position in my eyes.
 
Decelerate said:
Yes but I hear about MSI on every board I go, including this one. And I browse through a lot of forums.

From my experience, the outcry against MSI is above average. They're the OCZ of motherboards.

And even OCZ has a more reputable status now, because they cleaned up their act and release quality product after quality product. That's how you kill rumors & gossip. Slowly

Even after all this time, I'm still reluctant to jump on OCZ. MSI's in a worst position in my eyes.
Click to expand...

yeah i wont touch OCZ stuff....after their early years of so much crap...but I have had 3 MSI boards in a row now,

kt3 ultra, k8T-fis2r, and now a k8n (754). all have been solid peformers, and good overclockers. I have had more problems with asus and abit (my current nfs7 v2.0 will simply NOT overclock no matter what, and I damn near shot it after some BIOS flash problems, LOL) however, my kt7a-raid was a rock solid monster. it would OC like mad, and even after soldering votlage mods and shorting out pelts on it and getting condensation all over it, it still ran like a champ.

some people seem to have bad luck with certain brands...and not others. what a wacky world we live in!!!
 
I have had no trouble with my board. I work at an electronic store and have heard no more complaints about msi boards then any other board. Some of you people are making it sound like 9 out of 10 msi boards explode in a week.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top