MSI K8N Diamond Plus (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16)

The K8N Diamond Plus is an excellent feature-rich, enthusiast motherboard.. With the extra PCIe lanes available from the nForce4 SLI X16 chipset, the motherboard has a much better spread of PCIe expansion slots as compared to the old K8N Diamond. As the flagship motherboard in MSI’s Socket 939 lineup, the K8N Diamond Plus doesn’t skimp out on enthusiast features as well. What we’re talking about here is its overclocking abilities. MSI has really outdone themselves here with a highly overclockable motherboard (earning it our Most Overclockable Product award) and an excellent set of tweaks available, of which we were particularly pleased with the DDR Power Boost and CPU down-stepping features.

At the end of the day, if you already own an nForce4 SLI motherboard, you are still very much in the game. Like the move from AGP 4x to AGP 8x, there is little to gain in real world performance with an SLI x16 setup from the old SLI x8. For users who are looking to buy a new PC however, the nForce4 SLI X16 is the best chipset you can get your hands on for the AMD platform and the MSI K8N Diamond Plus may just as well be the board you’ve been waiting for.

HardwareZone