MSI: SLI Plus Eight

by Gary Key on April 11, 2006 8:00 AM EST
Test Setup

The NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 chipset fully supports all AMD Athlon 64 processors in both stock and overclocked conditions.

Performance Test Configuration
Processor AMD Athlon 64 4000+ utilized for all tests.
RAM 2 x 512mb OCZ Technology PC4800 Platinum Edition
Settings: DDR-400 at (CL2-2-2-5, 1T)
Hard Drive(s) 2 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer)
1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE (16MB Buffer).
System Platform Drivers NVIDIA Platform - 6.85
Video Cards 1 x EVGA 7900GTX (PCI Express) for all non-SLI tests.
2 x EVGA 7900 GTX (PCI Express) for all SLI tests.
Video Drivers NVIDIA nForce 84.21 WHQL
Cooling Zalman CNPS9500
Power Supply Fortron Source FX700-GLN
Operating System(s) Windows XP Professional SP2
Motherboards ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 (ULi M1695/1697)
Abit AT-8 (ATI RD480/ULi1575)
Asus A8N-SLI Premium (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI)
Asus A8N32-SLI (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16)
Asus A8R-MVP (ATI RD480/ULi1575)
Asus A8R32-MVP (ATI RD480/ULi1575)
ECS KA1 MVP (ATI RD480/SB450)
EPoX EP-9U1697-GLI (ULi M1697)
MSI K8N Diamond Plus (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16)


We tested our 7900GTX video cards using NVIDIA 84.21 WHQL drivers and ATI X1900XT cards with Catalyst 6.3 to provide the latest video performance results. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1280x1024x32 unless SLI is enabled. Resolution in SLI and comparative X1900XT CrossFire benchmarks is 1600x1200x32 with 4XAA and 8xAF where applicable. 3DMark03/05 benchmarks use a "Standard Score" setup at the 1024x768 video resolution while 3DMark06 uses the "Standard Score" setting of 1280x1024.

Overclocking and Stress Testing General Performance & Encoding
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  • 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.

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