MSI 848P Neo-LS: 800MHz FSB on a Budget

Company: MSI
Product: 848P Neo-LS
Street Price: $89 USD
Date Reviewed: October 13, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

MSI 848P Neo-LS Overclocking:

MSI provides a Windows based overclocking utility but we prefer making the changes manually in the BIOS. For overclocking we used our Intel 3.2 ES because it has unlocked multipliers and allows us to push our mainboard much further than our 2.4C is willing to go. For our testing we used a 12x multiplier, technically making the processor a 2.4C. We know that the CPU can do 300FSB using the 12x multiplier and lowering the memory divider to 3:2, so that was our starting point. The system was semi stable but prime 95 would crash after an hour or so. Taking the FSB down one notch to 299, the system was 100% stable through Prime95. As you can see from the screenshot above, the torture test ran without a single error for over 34 hours.

These are really impressive overclocking results for a budget board, or any board for that matter. It was not able to make it quite as high as the IC7 MAX3 but that could be due to a number of factors such as room temperature and the power supplied by the board. PC Health Status showed the rails fluctuating quite a bit especially the VCore. It would jump from 1.58V to 1.65V. The chip could be reading incorrectly but it would be a good explanation for the instability right at 300MHz FSB.

There will not be that many people who will run the system at this high of an FSB. We doubt that anyone is going to have a 2.4C with a Prometeia or VapoChill on a budget board. So overall, the 848P Neo-S should satisfy a majority of the overclockers out there. The voltages, memory dividers, and FSB options are all there for a great overclock. It is up to the user to utilize these functions.