DDR500 and the Mysterious Vanishing PAT

Question

So. I don't really post here, but I lurk almost daily. Thus I'm pretty much at the end of my tether with these two (apparently unrelated) issues.
First, although I have RAM specifically rated at 500 MHZ, whenever I try to change the DDR Frequency from Auto to 500, I get the now infamous Dram-timings-too-tightly-set message at post. Now matter what I do. I've tried turning everything memory related to its lowest possible setting, upping the voltage to 2.75 and even manually lowering the timings to the lowest possible level (verified by CPUZ), all to no avail. Am I just SOL here? Does anyone know if this is either memory incompatibility (which would be just silly since this is SOLD AS DDR500) or a broken bios setting? I'm stumped.
Second, my pat (or MAT or whatever we're calling it these days) shifted off at some undetermined point and will not turn back on no matter what I do. I'm running turbo mode right now and have tried downgrading to fast, but no dice. Since I haven't actually pulled up CPUZ since I got a stable overclock with which I was happy, I really don't know what the causative factor is. All I know is that when I got the board (mid-September) CPUZ read PAT as enabled, whereas now it lists it as disabled.
As I said, I'm basically just pulling my hair out at this point, so I'd be grateful for any help.

Answer 1

Hey Rob, you live where I do! (I mean, more specifically than “Earth”) Greets.
OK, do you mean DOT rather than MAT? MAT=PAT: they're only different because PAT is basically the term MSI uses because...OK, here's what happened, if memory servers. The 865 chipset is basically the same as the 875, except that MAT (Intel’s tem) is disabled. Several companies found a way to re-enable MAT in the 865; I think that had to do with lying to the chipset or BIOS as to what the some certain frequency is. Don't quote me on that, since (a) I read it in an article only cursorily and (b) it's been quite awhile since I did any of this in depth. Because of this, certain Springdale (865) chipsets actually outperform most canterwood (875) chipsets. Then Intel’s legal department got to work and basically said no one else could use the term mat; hence we have P(erformance)A(cceleration)T(echnology), hyper-something-or-other from ASUS(I think) and others.
Moreover, I don't *think* your agp/pci busses should be overclocked if you have the correct setting in the bios (66.7/33.3). Or, at the very least, clockgen reports my busses as correctly clocked with a 220 MHz FSB. And I'm pretty sure that clockgen is accurate. I'm actually wondering whether MSI merely disabled PAT/MAT via performance modes in this bios release, perhaps in preparation of a release in which PAT/MAT isn't tied to memory timings (at present, fast, turbo and ultra turbo enable PAT/MAT, but they also tighten your memory timings; most of us have thought that these two things should have separate settings).
So that's the what as far as I understand it. For the record, I am very invested in these issues. If anyone else has any data that might help, speak up. PLEASE.