MSI - MSI K7N2 nForce2 Review @ Firingsquad

Chris Angelini has reviewed the MSI K7N2 (nForce2 SPP/MCP), over at Firingsquad. MSI has opted not to use the Turbo version of NVIDIA’s MCP (Media and Communications Processor) so this board lacks many features present in most current nForce2 boards, although the upside is it comes with an inexpensive price tag and packs enough punch to give even the ASUS A7N8X a run for it’s money:

“Nevertheless, we found the K7N2 to perform right on par with the more expensive board from ASUS and even though we couldn’t unlock the multiplier on our pre-production Athlon XP 2800, we were still able to reach 2.32GHz by simply bumping the front side bus up to 173MHz. Take note that board’s front side bus is limited to 200MHz, so if you unlock your processor’s multiplier, you still won’t have much headroom to experiment with front side bus settings.

Then again, if tweaking isn’t a top priority, you may even want to check out MSI’s K7N2G. That particular model offers the same feature set as the K7N2, but also includes an integrated GeForce4 MX core and can effectively take advantage of the memory bandwidth afforded by NVIDIA’s dual channel DDR memory bus. And at roughly $130, the K7N2G is a much better value if a high-end 3D card is out of the question.”MSI K7N2 nForce2 Review @ firingsquad.gamers.com

source: forum