Hardware MSI K9A2 CF

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/12/21/msi_k9a2_cf/1

With the AMD Phenom processors dropping in price hand over fist, some great deals on AMD ATI Radeon HD 3800-series graphics cards to be found... could MSI's K9A2 CF make now a good time to invest in that Spidery thing?

 

Thanks, this looks like a good candidate for my next upgrade (though by then there may be even better options, maybe even for less - it's a rapidly moving target isn't it?)

 

Whats the point in spending £150 on a mobo then, if for £60 you can get something just as able?

 

There isn't if you don't need the features, because you can get away with something like this.

 

and its red, so it will go with the crossfired 3800's nicely if you want to keep the red theme

 

good interesting read. thanks.

this looks and feels like a strangely facinating board with a very focused gaming purpose and market.

comparatively speaking, fantastic sound, dual PCI-X 16, no RAID... cheap yet highly functional.

too many people buy premium-end boards and only use 50% of the features.

hahaha... this one is for gamers with zen like emotional control and mental clarity. more money should go for the graphics baby!

 

Yes RAID - 0, 1, 0+1

The more I think about it the more I should have given it a recommended award. It's hard, it looks "lacking" but when you spell out the features it sounds like it should cost more than it does.

 

Oh crap! Really!

That's makes it into my list of a Lean & Mean mobo.

 

What, you cant give it post-publishing?

 

come to think of it, this board sits squarely on ABIT's designed for gamers philosophy.

 

with some Adata Vitesta RAM ...

 

Bugger, another option to look at. I'd just got things narrowed down to P35 boards.

Nice to see thorough reviews on the budget boards, the non-gamers (and poor people) also need to know they're not buying a dog. One disappointment is that many new boards have dropped legacy sockets (even down to the PS2 mousehole), this one has dropped the PP but that's arguably the easiest (for me) to live without. But as you say, there's a lot of wasted space on the I/O plate...

 

you used the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe when i updated the Bios to 1501, i asume thats what you used to get the X4 going
when i updated my bios to 1501 i Lost 2 HT link speed options in the Bios under chipset and resulted me HT link speeds running at 200mhz, soon as i droped it back to 14xx Bios i was able to set the ratio back to 5x (from 2x and 3x in list order but with 1501 Must of been set to 1x but could not set it as it was hidden)

did yours have the same problem ? (i useing an 5000+ black edition)

good review thought

 

wow that does look pretty good. Out of interest what sort of Memory did this: 2GB DDR2 800MHz at 3-3-3-9-1T timings?

I like the suggestion of the Athlon X2 BE-2350 too.

I will go with cpemma too - not enough budget board reviews so this is awesome.

 

We've been doing some research and we're definitely aware of that... it's something we're working on.

 

I didn't go into that much detail with it at the time we got it, it was merely to have a nose to see what it was capable of. We always run the latest BIOS and grom what I remember I did have to drop the HTT down to 4x, as well as jacking up the voltages everywhere too. Thing is about an AM2+ board is that it's designed to be capable of 2.0GHz HTT, so it'll EASILY do an overclocked AM2 at 1.5GHz HTT.

I'm trying harder to look at more interesting budget boards, but it's a case of many factors - what motherboard companies finish first and get to us in good time, and it being technologically interesting at least.

 

Is there a mix up of FPS pictures for the multi-gpu game performance test with the single-gpu ones? I hope that multi-gpu doesn't give less FPS then single? If so it is the same for all boards... Did I miss something here? Nice reading, but I would like get this straightened out.

 

Multi-GPU was with two HD 3850, which are slower than a single Nvidia 8800 GT. The AMD HD 3870 is closer to the power of the Nvidia 8800 GT, but we didn't have two of them at the time.

 

Ooo, I see. I don't even have one Thanks for the answer.
But I was nearly certain that two 3850 is faster then one 3870 AND for that matter one 8800GT as well. But maybe the 8800GT was SLI? And isn't it so that the Crossfire set up will be two PCIe 8x not two x16? I'm very near too by one of these boards anyway.

 

Ok, I orded a K9A2 Platinum instead - mostly (only) because the PCI-e 8x when (if!) running crossfire sometime in the future. You seem to drop some 20 FPS in Call Of duty 4 (190->170, 1280*1024 noAA) if using 8x PCI-e. Not that anyone would notice that, but 10-15% performance loss here and now may mean more in future more taxing games, don't you think?

Again - nice reading.