How is MSI Nvidia Board

[andhra]

I am planning to buy 50 systems for my company from Micron. They are using the MSI Nvidia board in their athlon based system. How is this board? Any input / Advise is appreciated. Thank you

 

[Theslowone]

Here is a review from the anandtech team.
Tomshardware also has a comparision them against the kt233as.
This is a review on just the msi nvidia boards.

I haven't used them but I heard they are pretty good, if that helps any.

 

[AA0]

given MSI's track record for boards mysteriosly dying after just over a year of use... I'd stay away. Until MSI can prove they've fixed this problem, I won't use them. I'd spend the extra money and go with a quality brand, re. Asus, Abit, even someone like FIC which makes boards ultra reliable and stable.

 

[Athlon4all]

It's solid. Great value at the price, just need to follow specific guidelines when installing memory, and don't expect great ocing but that prolly doesn't matter in your situation. But why not just build 50 PC's?

 

[subhuman]

Got my first nForce build finished last night based on this MSI board. It was really smooth and seemed very stable, I was surprised. My first MSI was DOA. That's one of the reasons I've began to start ONLY buying ASUS or Intel boxed boards, a DOA is a huge hassle and my two recent "reattempts" at trying both a Gigabyte board, and an MSI board both turned out DOA. I wish the cheaper motherboards were as good

Anyway, I am impressed with the MSI - EXCEPT ONE REALLY ANNOYING THING - it doesn't seem to come with a backplate! I think the ASUS nForce board does, and honestly it would have been worth the $40 more to me to have that thing. Because the nForce chipset has onboard lan, it needs a special backplate. Intel boxed motherboards come with these, but this MSI didn't. So it was a 3 hour deture over to the shop to custom cut my own backplate. If you have a cheap case with thin backplate, this might be done easily in 40-45 minutes with a pair of tin snips - I had to use bigger tools, the stock backplates on the rackmount case was like 8 gauge steel This one annoyance will make me avoid this motherboard in the future.

Other than that one annoyance (which admittedly some may not find as big a deal as I did), this board is great! I went with it over the ASUS, because I wanted to see the nForce fully used - the ASUS A7N266E uses a Realtek chip for network.

One really nice thing about the MSI, is it comes with 4 *extra* USB ports (6 total!) one has LED diagnostics, which is cool, you can 'see' whats going on from outside the case, without opening it up. (I see it more as a cute gimmick, but it's still neat). ALso, I got the CNR/AMR or whatever little card, which had SPDIF out, and the surround channels. That was a nice touch, and the first time I'd used any of those 'funny useless' slots used. I just need a source for cheap CNR-lan cards for my non-nForce builds now

I have a 1700+ XP chip on it, running WinXP Home, and it's fast. I would use it over a VIA any day. I still haven't tested the PCI performance yet, I expect to do that this evening.

 

[pigseye2]

Subhuman,
Please provide an update on PCI performance. I'm very interested in how the Nforce compares to the KT266A.

thanks,
Pigseye

 

[jfunk]

I'm running this board w/ 1600+.

So far it is great. The newest BIOS has fixed pretty much all the problems w/ the RAM and LAN dropout issues.

I can't compare performance directly to a 266A, but from what I've read, the 266A is the better performer.

I must also say I've never had a bad MSI board. I've built several hundred systems over the years, and so far the only DOA boards I've ever gotten were one Abit BH6, and one FIC VA-503+, plus another ABIT BH6 if you count a bad AGP slot as DOA. I've used Intel, Biostar, Gigabyte, FIC, ECS (just for k7S5A recently), MSI, Asus, Epox, and DFI. Of course people are gonna get bad boards here and there, but you must question whats happening to the boards AFTER their arrival when people talk about getting two or three in a row.


j

 

[John]

The K7N420 Pro in my other box is solid. HDtach 2.61 yields comprable scores to my 8KHA+. Overall it is a damn fine integrated solution, and the unified driver makes life easy.

 

[AA0]

I still believe reliability is the most important part of buying a computer, especially for business. Companies shouldn't try to save money, especially if they want a long life out of them, like most do. Even performance doesn't matter, unless thats what they are for, but it doesn't sound like it.
I'm not blaming the chipset here, just the boards from MSI.

 

[Def]

I know two people who I helped build an nForce system within the past few months. Both are running superbly. This is not the best board for overclocking, but otherwise the thing is dead stable. In fact, one friend kept his up for over 3 weeks, and this was his first boot into Windows XP Pro! He had to shut down to update Windows, not due to instability.

I haven't had experience with the KT266A, but from the things I've seen from a KX133/KT133/KT133A, I'm staying FAR FAR away from VIA.

Hope this helps.

 

[subhuman]

Well I do like the nForce better than any VIA I've worked with (which includes KT266A), but unfortunately my PCI tests show that nForce has about the same PCI performance as the VIA, which is to say, not that great I was really disappointed by this, and messed with the setup for a couple hours trying to get the numbers up.

Oh well, AMD systems are great for what they are, but for really serious PCI stuff like recording tons of audio tracks, video capture & editting, etc, it's clear the platform makes a huge and noticeable impact. I'll stick with Intel for that and use nForce/AMD machines for Internet/gamer people. I know SiS has better PCI than both nForce & VIA, and maybe some day, I will try eg the ASUS SiS745 board, but I'm in no hurry...

 

[jfunk]

<< I still believe reliability is the most important part of buying a computer, especially for business. Companies shouldn't try to save money, especially if they want a long life out of them, like most do. >>



I hear that. Now if only I could convince the cheapass business people I've dealt with the same thing. Funny thing is the people who just want to spend as little as possible are always the first ones to bitch about their stuff not performing as good as something else they saw too!



j

 

[AA0]

I know those types, and I tell them this is the cheapest there is, and its an Asus board. That way I won't get the complaints, and they will be happy. I have one person that calls me each time he gets a win98 illegal operation, which isn't often because the board is stable... but man, if I picked cheap boards, I'd never hear the end of it. For the price difference of the overall system, paying that much more isn't a big deal.

 

[WetWilly]

subhuman

my PCI tests show that nForce has about the same PCI performance as the VIA, which is to say, not that great

What PCI tests/benchmarks did you run for the nForce vs. VIA PCI performance comparison?