MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum RAM Question

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EDIT 9-17-07
FOR THOSE OF YOU WANTING TO TRY 4GB'S OF RAM WITH YOUR MSI K8N BOARD I WAS NOT SUCESSFULL. I HAVE SUMMARIZED MY EXPERIENCE IN POST #25.
GOOD LUCK AND THANKS TO ALL THAT SHARED THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE!
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Good day all!
I'm hoping a few of you are still running, or at least remember how you ran the K8N MotherBoard.

Currently I'm running 2 1Gb ram chips and want to expand to 4Gb.
I've decided to stay with XP Pro (32 bit) and Sonar 6PE for the foreseeable future, so my questions are thus.

memtest86 returns this info on the current memory
CHIPSET: nForce3 250 (ECC:Disabled)
SETTINGS: RAM 201 MHz (DDR402)/CAS:3-3-3-8/Dual Channel (128 bits)

Do I have the RAM set up right? Meaning should the ECC be disabled?

Is the CAS something I set in the BIOS or does the Chip determine the CAS setting?

The MSI User Guide shows 4 Double Sided chips at DDR333 or 4 Single sided at DDR400.
SETTINGS shows 201MHz (DDR402), What does that tell us?

Am I running DDR400 chips at 200MHz?
Is that something I set in the BIOS?

Do I try to match the existing RAM or just buy 4 new matched chipsets? I assume I want 4 single sided chips running at DDR400.

The User Guide mentions the "South Bridge" resource deployment and the 3Gb limit.
With the Windows 3Gb switch I should be good to go?

Last, should I overclock the CPU and or RAM? The User Guide discusses it at some length, FWIW when I run the "monitor" feature from the
BIOS all temps seem to be well within normal range.

Currently my systems runs fine, great in fact, and I plan to stay with XP and 6PE until all the dust settles with Vista and we have to move
for Sonar 8 or whatever. This is what I have always done in the past. I let the tech types lead the charge (and thank you for that)!
I'm still running 6.0. Should I install ONLY the 6.1 patch, are there really problems with 6.2 if you are not running Vista?

When I upgraded to the dual-core I installed all the BIOS and Windows patches, but DID NOT reinstall Windows. I think it's probably time to
reinstall and clean up the registry bloat, etc.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Full Specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum MotherBoard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.21 GHz
2 GB Ram (2 x 1 GB chips)
300 GB 7200 RPM main drive XP on 1 partition (20 GB) Samples etc on the other partition
80 GB 7200 RPM Audio Drive
500 GB external drive for project backup and storage
XP Pro SP2 (32 bit)
Sonar 6.0PE
EZDrummer
Dimension Pro
Rapture
Spectronics Trilogy

Thanks

Jim,
Thanks for the reply! The more I research the 3GB switch, the less I think I want to mess with it, without some real world input on how it runs on this MoBo. Will lowering the CAS to 2-3-2-5 be noticeable (these are published figures for the OCZ Platinum 2 GB Kit) The kit runs about $125 after rebate and shipping. Since I plan to wait on moving to Vista I would like to kick this system in the arse a little. I built it 2 years ago with an eye to going X2 when the prices came down. I did that last year and the system remains very stable. It passes the memtest86 with flying colors, maybe I should leave well enough alone.
Again thanks for your help!
Would still like to hear from anyone running 4GB of RAM on this MoBo.

Jim,
Poked around Tom's and Anandtech a bit. Also googled "South Bridge resource deployment"; this is giving me a headache! The truth is 2 years ago this was a "pretty good" board, but now it's just "archaic". After reviewing the MSI user's Guide I think I'll just leave well enough alone. I might see if I can find some info at MSI about the "memory hole remap", perhaps this was included in the BIOS update for dual core, or is available now.
Thanks again for your help, if I do anything I will post results. For now "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT".
Still would like to hear some real world results!
Thanks again,

Conley,
Thanks!
Checked out the thread and poked around a bit in the RAM GUY posts. Looks like DDR333 is all that can be expected with 4 sticks of RAM. Given that my system is currently running fine and passed the memtest86 with flying colors I guess I will make music instead of obsessing over performance!
Thanks again,

I still have that same board, and like Conley, run it with an A64 X2 4800 CPU. I'm running 2GB of OCZ memory at stock speed (2.4 GHz CPU, 400 MHz RAM).

The best way to get 3 GB with four slots is to run two pairs of sticks, a pair of 1 GB sticks and a pair of 512 MB sticks. That maintains dual-channel operation on the memory system. If you don't run in pairs, then it drops to single-channel operation, which is (in principle, and often in practice) a speed hit.

Right. I seem to recall the speed drop with added sticks as well... it may be why I stuck with the 2 GB.

Conley,
Currently I'm running generic RAM from the shop I bought the case, mobo, etc. (2 years, no issues) I've been looking at OCZ Platinum, and then at the Corsair (based on your post), assuming that all the RAM should/must match. Also, why upgrade if not using a stick with a lower CAS potential. How did you get the BIOS to reconize the RAM as DDR400? From your posts at RAM GUY it looks like you were running at DDR333 when you first upgraded to 2GB. Evidently you replaced 2 of the 512 sticks with 1GB's, did you upgrade the BIOS at that point? Which model Corsair are you using? Also, you're NOT using the /3GB switch?
Thanks

Conley,
So, something like the 1GB's in the GREEN slots and the 512's in the PURPLE? Sounds like you added the EXTRA line ("MS WIN XP Pro /3GB") to the BOOT.INI file so that at boot up you can select to boot "normally" or with the 3GB switch? I haven't tried to reasearch in depth at the MSI site yet, I too updated the BIOS for dual core support, perhaps the BIOS update enables the DDR400 with all slots filled...
Thanks alot

Conley,
Yes a pic would be nice if you have time. No issues with XP and Sonar, all good? Are you running Sonar 6.2.1? I finally ran the 6.0.1 patch, wasn't having an issues so I waited. No one seems to be complaining, but there are some who have had issues with 6.2.
Thanks again for you help and input!

Currently I'm running an old Tascam 688 MidiStudio into an Echo Gina 24/96-2 in 8 out. The Tascam dates from the Cakewalk Pro 3.0 days; it works, what can I say. But, I'm looking for a Mixer/Control board. The FW1884 looks interesting, but until Tascam & Cake work out the bugs in Sonar 6... I've thought about the DM 3200 or 4800, but I'm not tracking live drums so that would be overkill, and again the Tascam/Cake issues. Are you going to move to 7.0 when it hits? (I missed a couple of Pro Audio Versions, but I have every one of Sonar) I kind of think I'll wait and make sure it works under XP rock solid, Cake has to move on to Vista, but I hope they look after the XP users. Vista still makes me nervous, let the techies get it all worked out. I built this machine to run 5.0, searched the posts; the MSI board & Athlon 64 were pretty hot stuff then. Still Solid!
Thanks again.

Well, there you go. One noteworthy thing that I could add here is that with the OCZ I was able to attain 1T timing. If I was in fron tof my machine, I could tell you the rest of the parameters, but I don't recall having to change any of them.

It's been a while, but I believe I remember 1T making a worthwhile difference on the memory bandwidth reported by memtest. I am not sure if 1T will be attainable with two pairs of slots filled, tho. (Not saying it's impossible, just that I haven't tried it.)

For those still using the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum this was my experience trying to upgrade to 4 GB's of ram.
I added a 2 GB kit of OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K that's 2 1GB sticks of their DDR400 Platinum RAM; rated at 2-3-2-5 1T. I pulled my existing ram and inserted the OCZ and ran memtest86 v3.3 overnight. I let the BIOS (running v1.C) set the latency.
Memtest reported:
Memory: 2048M
Settings: RAM 201MHz (DDR400)/CAS 2.5-3-2-5/dual channel (128 Bit)
This ran 7 passes in just over 8 hours with no errors.

I then put my generic ram back into the system to see if it would run the 4 GB's. With the OCZ in the Green dimms and the generic in the purples the machine WOULD NOT BOOT. I switched the OCZ to Dimms 1&2 (green & purple) and the generic to Dimms 3&4. The machine booted and ran memetest again.
Memtest reported:
Memory: 3584M
Settings: RAM 157MHZ(DDR333)/CAS 2.5-3-3-7
Memtest ran SLOW, 4% of the pass complete at 38 minutes.

I shut down and set the RAM in the "Cell Menu" of the BIOS as follows:
DDR400 CAS at 3 auto on the next 3 and timing at 2. Launched memtest again with the following report:
Memory: 3584M
Settings: RAM: 201MHz (DDR402)/CAS 3-3-3-8
Again the test ran VERY SLOW.
There is more data reported by memtest that I had not previously paid attention to.
L1=128K 18121MB/s this must be the L1&2 cache on the CPU
L2=102K 4502MB/s
Memory: 3584M 1878MB/s this is the physical RAM and the evidently the speed its actually running?
The DDR and CAS reports are the SETTINGS in the BIOS?
Am I right in thinking the key here is the 3584M @ 1878MB/s?
Windows recognized the 3.5GB of RAM. I did not install the /3GB switch as I felt the slower clock rate was unacceptable and did not go any further. Also, I had received an email back from Cake Tech support that Sonar will not use more than 2 GB's of ram without LaTiDoo. With memtest running VERY SLOW and reporting the same RAM speed at 1878MB/s, regardless of the BIOS setup, I felt I had reached a dead end.

I pulled the generic ram and went into the Cell Menu and set the RAM up as follows:
CAS "2"
Min RAS Active "Auto"
RAS to CAS "Auto"
Row Precharge "Auto"
Timing "1T"

Memtest then reported:
L1 Cache: 128K 18121 MB/s
L2 Cache: 1024K 4502 MB/s
Memory: 2048M 2215MB/s again I think this is the important number
Settings: RAM: 201MHz (DDR402)/CAS 2-3-2-5/Dual Channel (128 Bits)

My machine does "feel" more responsive with the OCZ RAM. I have not pushed it enough in Sonar to benchmark latency, track count etc. Also I did go through the musicxp.net tuning tips so some of the faster "feel" could be due to that.

I purchased 2 of the OCZ matched pairs, but when the system slowed down with 4 GB's; and the MSI data is clear on this, 4 sticks of double side ram will run at DDR333 , I felt it best to return the 2nd pair unopened. Perhaps 4 matched sticks would have yielded better results. Good luck if you decide to pursue going beyond 2 GB's.
If you have not read the "mother of all MSI K8N threads", check that out HERE. Also, here is a LINK to some info on the MSI forum site.

Anyone who knows exactly what memtest is trying to tell us could PM me with some links to properly evaluating the memtest results. Perhaps that would be a good thread.

My thanks to all who posted their thoughts and experience.