Major problems I am having with the K8N neo platinum:(:(

Question

Hiya all,
I bought this K8N motherboard two weeks ago and at first I seemed very happy with it, but when fulfilling the final steps in the installation of my PC(being installing of all my important games, voice over IP software, firewalls, security etc)I started noticing some very very disturbing things.
First of all, my onboard sound is totally unusable for online gaming, my microphone cannot be set up no matter what combinations of options I use. The sound is just messed up. When i and my friend enter our ventrilo server and he starts speaking he hears himself 10 times in an echo, and its not him thats causing this its me. When another friend joins and i leave all is just fine(hence i am the cause). Also to try and fix this problem i bought a soundblaster live 5.1. I can install it under windows XP but for the life of me I cannot get my microphone to lit up my ventrilo voicechat thus my voice is not recognized and not processed, so this then also does not work, 2 methods to get voice over IP working and none of them work??? I will award MSI the nobel price of irony for that.
Secondly, all punkbuster related online games have become totally unplayable. At first I got very annoying freezes every 2-3 minutes, it lasts a few secs and then i can play on for 2-3 more minutes until it happens again, and again and again....... Now I fixed that particular problem by downloading specially modified Call of Duty 3.9 ATI catalyst drivers but the fun doesn't stop there. Now when I play games I get strokes of extreme choppyness in an online game like Enemy Territory. When setting my fps to a steady 76fps and seeing it stay that way and knowing it can easily stay stable even at 100fps is what I find very very weird. So my comp runs very smooth, but lo and behold there is still choppy performance, other players struttling ahead as if all of them have major lag(while all sport pings of ~20-40).
When I then start shooting its even more difficult to get a good aim cuz they lag and one time they are here, the next they are in an entirely diff spot and my shooting certainly doesn't help to decrease the choppyness:) Its not allways this bad but every game I play has these bad spells, sometimes the entire game, sometimes only half the time depending on whats happening onscreen I guess.
Now with my Pentium 4 2.8Ghz and my exact same radeon I did not have any of these problems, its a slower comp but it still runs these online games 10x smoother??? I have noticed however that it is indeed mainly related to punkbuster or opengl related games. And as far as I can tell, only ATI suffers from it, since my friend who has exactly the same setup as me runs supersmooth with no lag whatsoever. All he has diff from me is his graphics card, which is nvidia???
Am I now forced to shell out another 300$ for an nvidia based card that matches the speed of my 9800 pro?? This whole buying of the MSI has grown into quite the ordeal.
Thirdly, I am also noticing some strange temps on my CPU, i have a zalman CPS7000A-alcu and it should cool better than stock, but after 4 reseats and applying of AS5(applied according to their instructions on site)it still gives me temps of 59°C at full load????? I find this really really high, and I do know i applied the paste very very good. I can tell cuz after I reseated it a few times each time you can clearly see how good it has spread towards all the edges. And its a fine thin layer, so no probs on my end. I am doing all this by the book and with greatest care.
As I am a clanbase player, and a very good one at that, I am seriously hampered in my gaming experience. While I used to get killed/deaths ratios of on average K:60-90+ /D:11-20 on my P4 for Enemy Territory I now have a very hard time even getting on K:50 D:32 each level. This is a serious dent in my budget as well since now for sanctioned events I will have to buy a new comp just to be able to play to my old standards:(:(:(
I have reached a point where I cannot do anything anymore, I have asked many questions already(ATI, Punkbuster, Nvidia, MSI), and all i get is standard set up mailing lists with what I could do. If this is customer support then plz crown me Sultan of Brunei, cuz I can do it like this too. Is this adressing a problem, eeerm I think mr Spock after looking at it logically would not even deem this worthy to an answer, since its that obvious.
So basically noone is willing to help, they are very willing to grab your money but when it comes to support all you get is a cheap script saying, when mail sent to [email protected] send "Standard mailing list A" back, when mail sent to [email protected] reply with "standard mailing list Ç", etc etc.
Sad very sad how they treat us poor dumb customers these days,
Regards,
A disgruntled MSI buyer
PS : I said above this problem is mainly related to ATI based cards but when you try to tell me i should try new drivers then plz don't go there cuz I tried everything from omega to iota and nothing works, the only thing that even stops the freezing is the specially modded drivers some dude fixed up. But it still leave me with crappy performance.

Answer 1

Quote
Originally posted by Capcom
Hiya all,
I bought this K8N motherboard two weeks ago and at first I seemed very happy with it, but when fulfilling the final steps in the installation of my PC(being installing of all my important games, voice over IP software, firewalls, security etc)I started noticing some very very disturbing things.
First of all, my onboard sound is totally unusable for online gaming, my microphone cannot be set up no matter what combinations of options I use. The sound is just messed up. When i and my friend enter our ventrilo server and he starts speaking he hears himself 10 times in an echo, and its not him thats causing this its me. When another friend joins and i leave all is just fine(hence i am the cause). Also to try and fix this problem i bought a soundblaster live 5.1. I can install it under windows XP but for the life of me I cannot get my microphone to lit up my ventrilo voicechat thus my voice is not recognized and not processed, so this then also does not work, 2 methods to get voice over IP working and none of them work??? I will award MSI the nobel price of irony for that.
Secondly, all punkbuster related online games have become totally unplayable. At first I got very annoying freezes every 2-3 minutes, it lasts a few secs and then i can play on for 2-3 more minutes until it happens again, and again and again....... Now I fixed that particular problem by downloading specially modified Call of Duty 3.9 ATI catalyst drivers but the fun doesn't stop there. Now when I play games I get strokes of extreme choppyness in an online game like Enemy Territory. When setting my fps to a steady 76fps and seeing it stay that way and knowing it can easily stay stable even at 100fps is what I find very very weird. So my comp runs very smooth, but lo and behold there is still choppy performance, other players struttling ahead as if all of them have major lag(while all sport pings of ~20-40).
When I then start shooting its even more difficult to get a good aim cuz they lag and one time they are here, the next they are in an entirely diff spot and my shooting certainly doesn't help to decrease the choppyness:) Its not allways this bad but every game I play has these bad spells, sometimes the entire game, sometimes only half the time depending on whats happening onscreen I guess.
Now with my Pentium 4 2.8Ghz and my exact same radeon I did not have any of these problems, its a slower comp but it still runs these online games 10x smoother??? I have noticed however that it is indeed mainly related to punkbuster or opengl related games. And as far as I can tell, only ATI suffers from it, since my friend who has exactly the same setup as me runs supersmooth with no lag whatsoever. All he has diff from me is his graphics card, which is nvidia???
Am I now forced to shell out another 300$ for an nvidia based card that matches the speed of my 9800 pro?? This whole buying of the MSI has grown into quite the ordeal.
Thirdly, I am also noticing some strange temps on my CPU, i have a zalman CPS7000A-alcu and it should cool better than stock, but after 4 reseats and applying of AS5(applied according to their instructions on site)it still gives me temps of 59°C at full load????? I find this really really high, and I do know i applied the paste very very good. I can tell cuz after I reseated it a few times each time you can clearly see how good it has spread towards all the edges. And its a fine thin layer, so no probs on my end. I am doing all this by the book and with greatest care.
As I am a clanbase player, and a very good one at that, I am seriously hampered in my gaming experience. While I used to get killed/deaths ratios of on average K:60-90+ /D:11-20 on my P4 for Enemy Territory I now have a very hard time even getting on K:50 D:32 each level. This is a serious dent in my budget as well since now for sanctioned events I will have to buy a new comp just to be able to play to my old standards:(:(:(
I have reached a point where I cannot do anything anymore, I have asked many questions already(ATI, Punkbuster, Nvidia, MSI), and all i get is standard set up mailing lists with what I could do. If this is customer support then plz crown me Sultan of Brunei, cuz I can do it like this too. Is this adressing a problem, eeerm I think mr Spock after looking at it logically would not even deem this worthy to an answer, since its that obvious.
So basically noone is willing to help, they are very willing to grab your money but when it comes to support all you get is a cheap script saying, when mail sent to [email protected] send "Standard mailing list A" back, when mail sent to [email protected] reply with "standard mailing list Ç", etc etc.
Sad very sad how they treat us poor dumb customers these days,
Regards,
A disgruntled MSI buyer
If you would like to submit a list, numbered (1, 2, 3, 4) with problems and your complete configuration, I'd be happy (along with others) to go through and find the problems for you.
If you just want to post a rant with "MSI Sucks" and admit your a chump for doing a stupid thing like buying an MSI boar: Then just return it please. Save others the trouble and get your money back.
That way you are happy, and don't have such a high stress level.