MSI K8N Diamond Plus Motherboard

Price: Rs 14,000 (3 yrs warranty)

Key Specs:Socket 939, X16 SLI, 6 SATA II, 1 Gb Dual LAN, Creative SoundBlaster live audio

Contact: Microstar International, Delhi. Tel: 41758808.Email id: info@msi-india.com  RQS# E31 or SMS 130331 to 9811800601

The K8N Diamond Plus motherboard is meant for high-end

gamers. It is based on the nVidia nForce4x16 SLI chipset and is loaded with

drooling features. For one, it has a 24-bit onboard audio based on a Creative

Sound blaster Audigy SE chipset, which provides high quality 7.1 channel EAX HD

audio. It supports nVidia SLI technology, which allows you to plug in two nVidia

graphics cards into the board. Plus, unlike conventional boards, this one has

six SATA ports. This is possibly because the board comes with an extra secondary

RAID controller chip that offers RAID 0,1, JBOD levels than regular boards

having 4 SATA ports. Other features include two Gigabit LAN ports, coaxial and

optical S/PDIF Out, and five audio jacks.

We tested the motherboard using an AMD Athlon FX-55 2.61

GHz, 1 GB DDR 400, 120 GB SATA drive and an XFX 7800 GT card. We stressed it

using our regular slew of benchmarks. 3DMark '05 gave a  score of 7184,

which is better than the ECS RD 480 and MSI RD 480 (also reviewed in this

issue). PCMark also gave an impressive 4994, but the MSI GM2  gave us a

score of 5672. With Doom3 and FARCRY we got frame rates of 91 (Ultra Quality)

and 119 respectively at 1600x1200 resolution. These are pretty good scores

coming at a higher resolution compared to MSI RD 480 which was tested at

1024x768. But the scores decreased dramatically with higher AA. The BIOS gives

features for those who love to overclock the board a little but do it at your

own risk as the warranty stands void if the board is damaged by overclocking.

Bottom Line: The performance we obtained from this board

using the 7800 GT card and its added features make it a good buy.

Abe Kurian