MSI 945GT speedster-A4R + Vista ?

SandSand · Post by **SandSand** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:45 pm

Hi all
I just got my MSI 945GT speedster A4R up and running with Vista ultimate 32bit.
Seems to run fine, allthough I had some issues with the display driver for the onboard chip. Had to find a newer driver (7.14.10.1255) and install it manually, to get higher resolution than 1024x768. So now the display driver thinks my computer is a notebook. which is od but it seems works so far.

I'm really interested in getting your experiences with Vista (ultimate) on the MSI 945GT speedster A4R. Please share

Are you able to play HD material? Is a new graphics card necessary? (have not yet tested HD capabilyties myself)

I Intend to use it as a HTPC eventually.

My setup so far is:
MSI 945GT speedster A4R, BIOS 1.30
Vista Ultimate 32bit
T5600 (T7200, T7400 or T7600 would be nice to get some day)
HDD: Raptor 74GB

BTW. anyone know if I can update the bios to 1.40 in Vista ? or how else to do it?

buzzlightyear · Post by **buzzlightyear** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:49 pm

I updated to v1.4 bios right away because it fixes the graphic display confusion problem.
I am running T2250, oc'ed to 165fsb =2.145 ghz. I am running 32bit Vista Ultimate, two TV tuners and on-board graphic. Everything runs fine. the CPU load max'ed out at 60% when running HD TV; 80% running both HDTV and decoding HD AVI.

BTW it is cheaper to use the 533fsb version of CD/C2D like T2*50 or T5*50 because these CPU can be easily OC'ed to 666fsb via bio setting. You can find T2250 at around $40-50 on e-bay.

david25 · Post by **david25** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 11:44 pm

I have a Asus N4L-VM DH MB with a t7400 cpu, playing the hardest 1080p would use ~75% cpu at the full 2.13ghz. I upgraded to a 8600gts to get dvi output, games ability and gpu hd acceleration (which is still unreliable).

My l2400 laptop (1.66) can play the same 1080p clips, at 100% with the odd stutter.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:30 am

Where do you get BIOS 1.4? I think mine is at 1.2. I tried looking for newer BIOS on the MSI site and never could find this board on their dropdown list.
I had to manually change the monitor driver to "Digital Flat Panel (1280x1024)". Otherwise, it kept thinking my monitor was 1024x768.

I have a weird issue where the display flickers on the startup and shutdown screens, and also when doing the Windows Experience benchmark.

The onboard video is good enough for HD. I used Media Center playing back a recorded 1080i TV show and it was perfectly smooth and stutter-free. About 80% peak CPU usage with a super cheap Celeron M 520 (Merom) 1.6GHz that I got for $11 shipped. Much better results than I got from my AMD 690G which ironically, is supposed to be the fastest IGP available, and that's with a 2.3GHz (4400+) AMD X2!

SandSand · Post by **SandSand** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 4:23 am

buzzlightyear wrote:I updated to v1.4 bios right away because it fixes the graphic display confusion problem.

I have now also updated to BIOS 1.40

buzzlightyear wrote:I am running T2250, oc'ed to 165fsb =2.145 ghz. I am running 32bit Vista Ultimate, two TV tuners and on-board graphic. Everything runs fine. the CPU load max'ed out at 60% when running HD TV; 80% running both HDTV and decoding HD AVI.

I gues there won't be a problem with Hd mateiral thogh, great!
Which graphics driver are you using?

GnatGoSplat wrote:Where do you get BIOS 1.4?

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... at2_no=208

GnatGoSplat wrote:I have a weird issue where the display flickers on the startup and shutdown screens, and also when doing the Windows Experience benchmark.

This could also be a driver issue I think. This also happened to me with one of the drivers I tried.

Any of you know if the chipset supports any/and which of these display modes directly or via powerstrip?:
1368x768 at 50, 75 or 100 hz.
1920x1080 at (24/48/72), 50, 60, 75 or 100 Hz.
still in vista...

buzzlightyear · Post by **buzzlightyear** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:45 am

Your display flickering may be caused by the pre 1.4 bios getting confused with graphic output.

The bios can be found here

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... rod_no=243

The reason you have trouble finding it is bacause MSI has two model numbers for the same broad. In US it is 945gt speedster., outside of US it goes by a Server model name..

GnatGoSplat wrote:Where do you get BIOS 1.4? I think mine is at 1.2. I tried looking for newer BIOS on the MSI site and never could find this board on their dropdown list.
I had to manually change the monitor driver to "Digital Flat Panel (1280x1024)". Otherwise, it kept thinking my monitor was 1024x768.

I have a weird issue where the display flickers on the startup and shutdown screens, and also when doing the Windows Experience benchmark.

The onboard video is good enough for HD. I used Media Center playing back a recorded 1080i TV show and it was perfectly smooth and stutter-free. About 80% peak CPU usage with a super cheap Celeron M 520 (Merom) 1.6GHz that I got for $11 shipped. Much better results than I got from my AMD 690G which ironically, is supposed to be the fastest IGP available, and that's with a 2.3GHz (4400+) AMD X2!

EFoppen · Post by **EFoppen** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:53 am

GnatGoSplat wrote: I have a weird issue where the display flickers on the startup and shutdown screens, and also when doing the Windows Experience benchmark.

I have this mobo since early this year and for a long time, I could not use the onboard video. As soon as I installed one of the drivers to replace the default drivers, my screen went black (to the laptop flat panel I guess). Did not matter which output I used, VGA or DVI. So I used a PCI-e card.

I recently tried again with a later version of the video drivers from Intel, and BIOS 1.4. I am way more succesful now! But, the same flickering screen running:
- in Aero 'basic' mode
- high resolution (1920x1200) on my 24"panel

When running in Aero Glass mode, everything is fine. But as mentioned, during boot/logon/logoff/shutdown, Glass mode is not enabled so I see the flickering.

Other than that - everything seems to be working fine now. Had quite some issues to start with (get a Core 2 Duo running on it), but that was solved with BIOS updates.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:02 pm

EFoppen wrote: When running in Aero Glass mode, everything is fine. But as mentioned, during boot/logon/logoff/shutdown, Glass mode is not enabled so I see the flickering.

Yeah, that's exactly what I get. I just flashed the BIOS to v1.40 (thanks for the link, buzzlightyear). It fixed the monitor detection problem, now my monitor resolution is identified correctly. The BIOS display and settings menus are fullscreen instead of being shrunken in the middle. This hasn't fixed the flicker problem in the logon/logoff/non-Aero. That first happened when I updated to the latest Intel drivers from the Intel site. Previous to that, i didn't notice the problem with the original Microsoft WDDM drivers but the Windows Experience rating was lower with those drivers.

nzimmers · Post by **nzimmers** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 4:51 pm

A new video driver was released on Sept 03/2007!!!!!!!!!

check http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... rod_no=243

hopefully it will fix the 'defualt to laptop disply' issue + there are now vista drivers

nzimmers · Post by **nzimmers** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 8:51 pm

just wanted to add that the new graphics driver works great - no more video problems!

buzzlightyear · Post by **buzzlightyear** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 4:23 am

I download the version 7.14.10.1246 for Vista directly from Intel back in April. Never have any video problem.

I guess it takes awhile for MSI to get their Vista version. MSI's version has a higher number 7.14.10.1277.

nzimmers wrote:just wanted to add that the new graphics driver works great - no more video problems!

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:31 pm

The MSI version is older than the current version on the Intel site which is 7.14.10.1283. I gave it a shot, it didn't help the startup/shutdown flicker issue at all.

SandSand · Post by **SandSand** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:20 am

I'm now running driver ver. 7.14.10.1322, from intel's site.

buzzlightyear · Post by **buzzlightyear** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:44 am

Look like Intel is working overtime to update these graphic drivers.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:12 am

Yeah, for the most part I'm actually rather impressed with Intel. It's the only IGP I'm able to get MPEG2 hardware decoding to work with Vista Media Center. 690G and even an nVidia 7300GS need a big fat CPU just to get smooth HDTV decoding while the GMA950 in the 945GT can do it no problem with a Celeron 1.6GHz.

buzzlightyear · Post by **buzzlightyear** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:38 pm

I could not get my SATA WD3200 Caviar SE recognized as the second drive.

Is there anything special I need to do in the BIOS?

I am using the most uptodate drivers.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:54 pm

The latest 1322 drivers DID fix the startup/shutdown screen flickering problem!

SandSand · Post by **SandSand** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:46 am

buzzlightyear wrote:I could not get my SATA WD3200 Caviar SE recognized as the second drive.

Is there anything special I need to do in the BIOS?

I am using the most uptodate drivers.

In BIOS, Integrated Peripherals, OnChip IDE Device, On-Chip Serial ATA, you might try the Enhanced mode which enables both SATA and PATA, for up to 6 drives total.