Hi Murdok,
Thanks for your efforts to get certain issues remedied with the latest MSI BIOS for the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. I did some testing where the SATA1 compatibility issue is bugging me really:
1. Temperature Readings:
These tests were carried out with BIOS 1.8mod:
Ambient Temperature: 22°C
Coolant Temperature: 27 °C
@200MHz x 13:
BIOS 1.7: Idle Mode CPU 39°C/SYS 34° Max Load CPU 52°C/SYS 40°C
BIOS 1.8: Idle Mode CPU 47°C/SYS 41° Max Load CPU 58°C/SYS 42°C
@200MHz x 14:
BIOS 1.7: Idle Mode CPU 46°C/SYS 40° Max Load CPU 57°C/SYS 40°C
BIOS 1.8: Idle Mode CPU 51°C/SYS 41° Max Load CPU 66°C/SYS 43°C
The temperature readings of BIOS 1.8 seem to be on the higher side compared to the readings up to BIOS version 1.7.
2. SATA1 Compatibility Issue:
These tests were carried out with BIOS 1.5:
1. Test
SATA1, Maxtor 6Y120M0, single disk, boot ok, formatting ok, transfer rate PATA1=>>SATA1 33MB/s, CPU IRQ use 1,56%
SATA2, Maxtor 7B300S0, single disk, boot ok, formatting ok, transfer rate PATA1=>>SATA1 33MB/s, CPU IRQ use 1,56%
2. Test
SATA1, Maxtor 7B300S0, single disk, PC won’t POST and boot WinXP
SATA2, Maxtor 6Y120M0, single disk, PC won’t POST and boot WinXP
3. Test
SATA1, Maxtor 6Y120M0, RAID0, boot ok, formatting ok, transfer rate PATA1=>>SATA12 10MB/s, CPU IRQ use >50%
SATA2, Maxtor 7B300S0, RAID0, boot ok, formatting ok, transfer rate PATA1=>>SATA12 10MB/s, CPU IRQ use >50%
Total sustained transfer rate around 20MB/s with extremely high CPU IRQ usage.
Transfer rates as single disks copying large amount of big files with a couple of GB:
PATA1 =>> PATA2 =>> 33MB/s
PATA1 =>> SATA1 =>> 33MB/s
SATA1 =>> SATA2 =>> 57MB/s
SATA2 =>> SATA1 =>> 57MB/s
PATA1 =>> SATA1 and SATA2 =>>SATA1 simultaneously 22-28MB/s each
For further analysis of the problem I have used Sysinternals Process Explorer 9.01 which shows that there is an increasing CPU load up to 60-70% at the Interrupts/Hardware interrupts during formatting (WinXP format, Partition Magic 8, Partition Expert SE 2003) which kills the system and requires a dirty shutdown. The recognition of the HD attached to SATA1 failed almost every time after POST and WinXP struggles each time during boot up. One time it got recognised and was available but a simple copy test brought lots of CRC errors up until the system started hanging with BIOS Version 1.5.
With BIOS Version 1.6 and 1.7 the system won’t even boot with the Maxtor 7B300S0 attached to SATA1.
As soon as Maxtor 7B300S0 drive is attached to SATA1 PC won’t POST and boot WinXP and in conjunction with RAID0 and SATA2 CPU IRQ use is extremely high and the array remains of no use with BIOS Version 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7. There is no problem if the Maxtor Diamondline III 300GB 7B300S0 is attached as single disk to SATA2/3/4. There is no problem with the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB 6Y120M0 on SATA1 so far.
With BIOS Version 1.8 and Maxtor 7B300S0 drive attached to SATA1 PC will POST but XP will not load. If Access Mode for SATA1 in BIOS is set to Large PC will POST but as soon as XP boot screen shows up system hangs.
3. Conclusion:
Up to and including BIOS Version 1.8 there is a bug which prevents the Maxtor Diamondline III 300GB 7B300S0 from being recognised through BIOS during POST if it is attached to SATA1 – SATA2 does not seem to have this bug! SATA1 seems not to be defective because Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB 6Y120M0 is working flawlessly. This bug should be identified and remedied. It may appear with other SATA II hard drives as well. The usage of 4 of these drives is impossible at the moment.
These SATA problems have been reported to support of MSI.de and MSI.tw but as expected neither acknowledgement nor bugfix. Good example for lousy customer support. :motz
Autor
Thema: K8N NEO2 Platinum 1.8 BIOS BUGS & Optimierungen (Gelesen 23330 mal)