Let me be the devil's advocate here. I know AT reviews (and others) usually regard same-colored RAM slots to be "correct" for dual-channel operation, but for me it's always made more sense when it's like this MSI board--one color for each channel. Of course, it wouldn't be confusing if manufacturers just chose one standard color scheme and left it at that.
quote: Let me be the devil's advocate here. I know AT reviews (and others) usually regard same-colored RAM slots to be "correct" for dual-channel operation, but for me it's always made more sense when it's like this MSI board--one color for each channel. Of course, it wouldn't be confusing if manufacturers just chose one standard color scheme and left it at that.
We completely agree about having a standard color scheme. The majority of boards have different colors for dual channel operation so our comments are based this fact. A previous MSI board we tested followed this pattern and then they change it on this board. It is too confusing in my opinion when a single supplier cannot agree on a color scheme between board releases. This is certainly not an MSI only issue either. :)
quote: NVIDIA has tweaked their implementation of ActiveArmor in the latest driver releases by reducing the amount of offloading the ActiveArmor engine provides thereby reducing the amount of hardware based Gigabit Ethernet acceleration. As a result the CPU utilization rates are not as low as before but this was done to avoid data corruption issues that have been dogging NVIDIA since ActiveArmor was introduced.
Hmmm, is this common knowledge? One of my friends suffers from this so badly that we had to set up his cable modem for use the the USB port (yuck). Is there a workaround/beta drivers? I'm sure NVIDIA wouldnt want this leaked if it was true? Why havent they done anything about it? The current AMD driver 6.70 is about 6 months old now and still corrupts data. Damn them!!!!
quote: Hmmm, is this common knowledge? One of my friends suffers from this so badly that we had to set up his cable modem for use the the USB port (yuck). Is there a workaround/beta drivers?
Yes, this is fairly common knowledge and we have actually referred readers to NVIDIA for assistance. I do have a new set of drivers for the Business Platform system and will be testing them next week.
hmmm, seems NVIDIA have more than just an issue with their ActiveArmor, from what i have been reading theres also huge problems with the IDE/SATA file tranfers as well. Wish i'd know about these issues earlier, up until today i been recommending the NFORCE4, but with all these issues its hard to recommend them at all. Why hasnt any articles been written up on the MAJOR issues with the Nforce4 chipset?
Just replying to your message to me in the other mobo review "Please email me - I have the photographs. We are doing some revisions on the engine and could not get these in but I did take the photographs for you."
I'm not the one that needs the pictures, I can identify the caps anyway... I was just thinking that it would be a nice addition to your articles, incase there where other readers that where interested in this too...
This board looks really nice though, United Chemicon KZG everywhere it seems, except for the Sanyo Polymers at the VRM and plenty more than what should "really" be necessary for a budget board like this... (okay, there looks to be one or four odd caps in the PCI section but they do oftenly not see very much ripple current so it should be ok)
I think you guys need to check your facts on the southbridge. According to the HardOCP article the board has the ULi 1575 southbridge. Are you sure the board has the nforce4 sli on the southbridge as that chipset is usually on the northbridge .
We will not comment in an open forum about another website's information that might or might not have been posted. However, I can ensure you this board utilizes the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI for the Southbridge (MCP) and the C51D for the Northbridge (SPP) as explained on the front page. If you still question our statements, then please visit MSI's website where the chipset information is available for this board - http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m...">MSI K8N Diamond
I wish you guys would post the EXACT BIOS (and, as necessary, jumper) settings you used to achieve your best overclocks, plus any issues you had with certain settings, etc. I'd love to see the actual notes from the lab, i.e. "Tried this clock skew value, crashed after X minutes."
While this wouldn't solve every overclocker's question, it would at least set us on the right path in optimizing our own systems, in terms of how certain values affect things.
I imagine you guys have a better understanding on what the BIOS settings do, as opposed to us everyday enthusiasts, who operate primarily on coincidences and conjectures. Especially in this age of hyper-tweakable motherboards with more and more components, it'd be really nice to know, for example, whether the hypertransport multiplier between the "NB" and the "SB" should match the chip-NB hypertransport multiplier, or whether that hypertransport bus speed is independent of HTT, and can be kept at 200/5X regardless of HTT value.
Lastly, have you tried the firewall drivers on this board, and does the firewall STILL cause bluescreens and corrupt downloads?
quote: I'd love to see the actual notes from the lab, i.e. "Tried this clock skew value, crashed after X minutes."
We will need a new server to handle the notes sections for some of these boards. ;-)
quote: I wish you guys would post the EXACT BIOS (and, as necessary, jumper) settings you used to achieve your best overclocks
We are probably heading in this direction shortly, especially for the enthusiast level boards. I will see what we can do on the next enthusiast level board with a table chart and short descriptions on how we arrived at the settings. I will say this, sometimes leaving most of the settings on Auto works best, the board/bios engineers are usually very smart about the default settings and then when you think all is okay, they hit you with a setting that should never be a default item.
We found on the MSI board, the NB-SB, SB-NB, and CPU-NB HT settings had to be synchronized or the board had stability issues. In fact, the CPU-NB default setting was at 800MHz, we had to change the option to manual, and then bump it up to 1000MHz to match the NB-SB and SB-NB HT settings at stock speeds. It does appear we had an average or below average board for the review, the latest retail sample that MSI pulled from their warehouse was able to post at 318HTT x9 with our test components.
If they are more details you would like to know, please comment or email me.
We tried the firewall with the 6.85 drivers. We could only recreate one particular situation that resulted in a corrupt download. It required the use of BitComet, downloading seven plus files (each over 200MB) concurrently, transferring the files to a media folder, and then unzipping a file while three others were still downloading. It only did it once but it did do it, is it NVIDIA or something else? I personally have not experienced any BSODs or corrupt downloads with the latest drivers, a clean load of XP, and staying away from the P2P software.
We have a new NVIDIA Business Platform system on its way so it should be interesting to see the tweaked ActiveArmor suite and driver updates that NVIDIA has been working on extensively over the last ninety days.
"Our initial impression of the MSI K8N Diamond Plus upon opening the box is that it has an extensive feature list, cluttered yet clean layout, heat-pipe cooling system, and that the overall quality of components utilized by MSI is very good."
Cluttered in that there is a LOT of stuff; clean in that it still works and there aren't any issues with connecting everything. It's an oxymoron, like "little giant". :)
Where are these PCIe 1x cards I've been hearing about? What exactly is available on PCIe besides video/network cards? I've heard that it's going to be a very long, slow transition to PCIe for sound cards due to noise/power issues with the spec.
From what I've heard, there's little or no difference in performance. However, the Powercolor would be the card I'd consider for future-proofness.
My only disappointment is it doesn't use ATI's Remote Wonder line of remote controls; they include an iR remote of their own choosing instead of the ATI RF model, IIRC.
quote: nteresting, how? Better, worse, wierd, or just unspecified in a frustratingly vague kind of way? ;-)
Actual throughput was different than the PCI based card, not trying to be vague but I think the article we are putting together will explain it best, new benchmarks, software versus hardware, TV Tuners- single, dual, SD, and HD, single core CPU , dual core CPU, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, ATI, MCE2005, Linux, PCI, PCI-E, USB, you know just the basics. ;-)
quote: It's surprising that so few companies opt for the faster IEEE 1394B standard, as the price difference can be very large.
I don't quite get this one. I can imagine it would say something like 1394b can be had on a s939 Gigabyte board for less than $ 100,00 e.g. GA-K8NF9 Ultra. It seems Gigabyte is the only one with 1394b for s939.
Fact is though that there are few F800 devices out there. If you do have one of these, your mobo options are limited.
It should have been "can't be very large" of course. I'm a bit befuddled on how that slipped in there, because I know I corrected that once before. Must have accidentally pasted over the original text at some point.... Ah, well - fixed now regardless.
I agree too, there is no reason for manufacturer's to not include this. Firewire B devices will not be mass produced without the users with Firewire B ports. I have a Giga-byte s939 SLI mobo with Firewire B on there and I do want to purchase an external enclosure that supports the standard (along with A and USB), but I also wish we would get some highly OCable boards from the likes of Asus or Abit etc. that provides this feature for the future. And also I believe the article is wrong about the price difference being very large, or else you wouldn't see Giga-byte squeezing these into ~$100 boards with other manufacturer's at the same price point including only A (or no firewire at all).
Jason
I also must give credit to MSI for including a parallel and serial port.
There aren't that many people with a printerserver or USB-printer at home (I think).
Agreed. However, there are alternatives if you have the PCI-E slots available. Going the add-in route also allows you to run off the PCI-E bus. 1394b can saturate the PCI bus.
[quote]MSI provides an SLI Video Link card that is long enough to connect two NVIDIA based video cards for SLI operation along with a digital switching method that eliminates the use of jumpers to configure SLI capability.[/quote]
Does that switch between dual x16 and dual x16???
Something about the first page irked me, it isnt a normal introduction to the item being reviewed. it seems as if that needs to be a second page, and a new first page drafted up.
Just FYI, I've sent Gary a message to check the FEAR and COD2 CF numbers. They seem a bit low to me, but I haven't personally tested a CF system so I can't say for sure. Gary will most likely be on in a couple hours to comment, once he gets out of bed. Which is where I need to go now....
Take care,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
It looks like the current FEAR and COD2 scores for Crossfire are correct, in that CF doesn't work fully right now. Unlike SLI where profiles can be manually force, CF mostly works or not. Just in case anyone was wondering. :)
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42 Comments
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OvErHeAtInG - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Let me be the devil's advocate here. I know AT reviews (and others) usually regard same-colored RAM slots to be "correct" for dual-channel operation, but for me it's always made more sense when it's like this MSI board--one color for each channel. Of course, it wouldn't be confusing if manufacturers just chose one standard color scheme and left it at that.Gary Key - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
We completely agree about having a standard color scheme. The majority of boards have different colors for dual channel operation so our comments are based this fact. A previous MSI board we tested followed this pattern and then they change it on this board. It is too confusing in my opinion when a single supplier cannot agree on a color scheme between board releases. This is certainly not an MSI only issue either. :)
Wesleyrpg - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Hmmm, is this common knowledge? One of my friends suffers from this so badly that we had to set up his cable modem for use the the USB port (yuck). Is there a workaround/beta drivers? I'm sure NVIDIA wouldnt want this leaked if it was true? Why havent they done anything about it? The current AMD driver 6.70 is about 6 months old now and still corrupts data. Damn them!!!!
Gary Key - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Yes, this is fairly common knowledge and we have actually referred readers to NVIDIA for assistance. I do have a new set of drivers for the Business Platform system and will be testing them next week.
Wesleyrpg - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
hmmm, seems NVIDIA have more than just an issue with their ActiveArmor, from what i have been reading theres also huge problems with the IDE/SATA file tranfers as well. Wish i'd know about these issues earlier, up until today i been recommending the NFORCE4, but with all these issues its hard to recommend them at all. Why hasnt any articles been written up on the MAJOR issues with the Nforce4 chipset?Per Hansson - Sunday, April 16, 2006 - link
Just replying to your message to me in the other mobo review "Please email me - I have the photographs. We are doing some revisions on the engine and could not get these in but I did take the photographs for you."I'm not the one that needs the pictures, I can identify the caps anyway... I was just thinking that it would be a nice addition to your articles, incase there where other readers that where interested in this too...
This board looks really nice though, United Chemicon KZG everywhere it seems, except for the Sanyo Polymers at the VRM and plenty more than what should "really" be necessary for a budget board like this... (okay, there looks to be one or four odd caps in the PCI section but they do oftenly not see very much ripple current so it should be ok)
tekkstore - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link
http://www.tekkstore.com">tekkstore.comAnnonymousCoward - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
Macs still don't have a right mouse button? When will they put their stubbornness behind?goinginstyle - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
I think you guys need to check your facts on the southbridge. According to the HardOCP article the board has the ULi 1575 southbridge. Are you sure the board has the nforce4 sli on the southbridge as that chipset is usually on the northbridge .Gary Key - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
We will not comment in an open forum about another website's information that might or might not have been posted. However, I can ensure you this board utilizes the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI for the Southbridge (MCP) and the C51D for the Northbridge (SPP) as explained on the front page. If you still question our statements, then please visit MSI's website where the chipset information is available for this board - http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m...">MSI K8N DiamondThanks!
Odeen - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
Hi,I wish you guys would post the EXACT BIOS (and, as necessary, jumper) settings you used to achieve your best overclocks, plus any issues you had with certain settings, etc. I'd love to see the actual notes from the lab, i.e. "Tried this clock skew value, crashed after X minutes."
While this wouldn't solve every overclocker's question, it would at least set us on the right path in optimizing our own systems, in terms of how certain values affect things.
I imagine you guys have a better understanding on what the BIOS settings do, as opposed to us everyday enthusiasts, who operate primarily on coincidences and conjectures. Especially in this age of hyper-tweakable motherboards with more and more components, it'd be really nice to know, for example, whether the hypertransport multiplier between the "NB" and the "SB" should match the chip-NB hypertransport multiplier, or whether that hypertransport bus speed is independent of HTT, and can be kept at 200/5X regardless of HTT value.
Lastly, have you tried the firewall drivers on this board, and does the firewall STILL cause bluescreens and corrupt downloads?
Gary Key - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
We will need a new server to handle the notes sections for some of these boards. ;-)
We are probably heading in this direction shortly, especially for the enthusiast level boards. I will see what we can do on the next enthusiast level board with a table chart and short descriptions on how we arrived at the settings. I will say this, sometimes leaving most of the settings on Auto works best, the board/bios engineers are usually very smart about the default settings and then when you think all is okay, they hit you with a setting that should never be a default item.
We found on the MSI board, the NB-SB, SB-NB, and CPU-NB HT settings had to be synchronized or the board had stability issues. In fact, the CPU-NB default setting was at 800MHz, we had to change the option to manual, and then bump it up to 1000MHz to match the NB-SB and SB-NB HT settings at stock speeds. It does appear we had an average or below average board for the review, the latest retail sample that MSI pulled from their warehouse was able to post at 318HTT x9 with our test components.
If they are more details you would like to know, please comment or email me.
We tried the firewall with the 6.85 drivers. We could only recreate one particular situation that resulted in a corrupt download. It required the use of BitComet, downloading seven plus files (each over 200MB) concurrently, transferring the files to a media folder, and then unzipping a file while three others were still downloading. It only did it once but it did do it, is it NVIDIA or something else? I personally have not experienced any BSODs or corrupt downloads with the latest drivers, a clean load of XP, and staying away from the P2P software.
We have a new NVIDIA Business Platform system on its way so it should be interesting to see the tweaked ActiveArmor suite and driver updates that NVIDIA has been working on extensively over the last ninety days.
Gary Key - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
Just not my week....Should read - If there are more details you would like to know, please comment or email me.
slashbinslashbash - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
PLEASE learn the difference between "discreet" and "discrete".JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
I don't know about you, but I like my audio solutions to be unobtrusive. Nothing worse than audio that gets in your face with static and stuff.... ;)mbhame - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
"Our initial impression of the MSI K8N Diamond Plus upon opening the box is that it has an extensive feature list, cluttered yet clean layout, heat-pipe cooling system, and that the overall quality of components utilized by MSI is very good."...how can a layout be 'cluttered yet clean'?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Cluttered in that there is a LOT of stuff; clean in that it still works and there aren't any issues with connecting everything. It's an oxymoron, like "little giant". :)nullpointerus - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Now I know how to describe my room.nullpointerus - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Where are these PCIe 1x cards I've been hearing about? What exactly is available on PCIe besides video/network cards? I've heard that it's going to be a very long, slow transition to PCIe for sound cards due to noise/power issues with the spec.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
See http://www.siig.com/productList.asp?pid=1013&c...">this page for examples. I do wish they made PCI-E sound cards though.LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
There are TV tuner cards based on ATI's Theater 550 chip, Powercolor makes one, details can be found here:http://www.powercolor.com/product_series_Theater.h...">http://www.powercolor.com/product_series_Theater.h...
Gary Key - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
We are currently reviewing the Powercolor T55E-P03 for an upcoming HTPC article. I think the results against the PCI cards will be interesting. ;-)LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
From what I've heard, there's little or no difference in performance. However, the Powercolor would be the card I'd consider for future-proofness.My only disappointment is it doesn't use ATI's Remote Wonder line of remote controls; they include an iR remote of their own choosing instead of the ATI RF model, IIRC.
nullpointerus - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Interesting, how? Better, worse, wierd, or just unspecified in a frustratingly vague kind of way? ;-)Gary Key - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
Actual throughput was different than the PCI based card, not trying to be vague but I think the article we are putting together will explain it best, new benchmarks, software versus hardware, TV Tuners- single, dual, SD, and HD, single core CPU , dual core CPU, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, ATI, MCE2005, Linux, PCI, PCI-E, USB, you know just the basics. ;-)
nullpointerus - Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - link
Cool, thanks. I'm looking forward to reading it.ceefka - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
I don't quite get this one. I can imagine it would say something like 1394b can be had on a s939 Gigabyte board for less than $ 100,00 e.g. GA-K8NF9 Ultra. It seems Gigabyte is the only one with 1394b for s939.
Fact is though that there are few F800 devices out there. If you do have one of these, your mobo options are limited.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
It should have been "can't be very large" of course. I'm a bit befuddled on how that slipped in there, because I know I corrected that once before. Must have accidentally pasted over the original text at some point.... Ah, well - fixed now regardless.Myrandex - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
I agree too, there is no reason for manufacturer's to not include this. Firewire B devices will not be mass produced without the users with Firewire B ports. I have a Giga-byte s939 SLI mobo with Firewire B on there and I do want to purchase an external enclosure that supports the standard (along with A and USB), but I also wish we would get some highly OCable boards from the likes of Asus or Abit etc. that provides this feature for the future. And also I believe the article is wrong about the price difference being very large, or else you wouldn't see Giga-byte squeezing these into ~$100 boards with other manufacturer's at the same price point including only A (or no firewire at all).Jason
Duplex - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
1394B to the people!!! Couldn't agree more!--
I also must give credit to MSI for including a parallel and serial port.
There aren't that many people with a printerserver or USB-printer at home (I think).
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Agreed. However, there are alternatives if you have the PCI-E slots available. Going the add-in route also allows you to run off the PCI-E bus. 1394b can saturate the PCI bus.http://www.siig.com/product.asp?pid=1013">PCI-E Firewire 800 adapter
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
[quote]MSI provides an SLI Video Link card that is long enough to connect two NVIDIA based video cards for SLI operation along with a digital switching method that eliminates the use of jumpers to configure SLI capability.[/quote]Does that switch between dual x16 and dual x16???
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
LOL Sounds like someone has been cut & pasting together reviews.Gary Key - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
No cut and paste, the sentence content was corrected, lets call it an editorial difference of opinion. :)decalpha - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2739&p=...">http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2739&p=...The MSI K8N Diamond Plus was extremely stable with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel operation
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Corrected to DDR.MIKEMIKE - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
meant that to read:Something about the first page irked me, it isnt a normal introduction to the item being reviewed. it seems as if that needs to be a second page, and a new first page drafted up.
redbone75 - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
I may be mistaken, but I think it's called an introduction.MIKEMIKE - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Something withthe layout, and introduction of the mobo irked me and turned me off of the review in general, not sure what specifically though.Gary Key - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Thanks for the comments. At times we try different layouts, some work, some do not, but hopefully we progress for the better over time.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
Just FYI, I've sent Gary a message to check the FEAR and COD2 CF numbers. They seem a bit low to me, but I haven't personally tested a CF system so I can't say for sure. Gary will most likely be on in a couple hours to comment, once he gets out of bed. Which is where I need to go now....Take care,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
It looks like the current FEAR and COD2 scores for Crossfire are correct, in that CF doesn't work fully right now. Unlike SLI where profiles can be manually force, CF mostly works or not. Just in case anyone was wondering. :)