MSI - MSI K8N Neo & Neo2 Platinum (s745 & s939) nForce3 250 Motherboards Review

We are going to take a look at two of the latest motherboards from Micro-Star International, better know to most of us as MSI. We chose to look at both the socket 754 and 939 platforms to give a comparison of the performance as well as the price.

Both boards are priced roughly in the same area, between $166 and $195 Canadian. Both the K8N Neo and K8N Neo2 are based on Nvidia’s Nforce3 250 chipset. For the socket 754 based Neo they reference the chipset as Nforce3 250Gb where as on the Neo2 the chipset bares the Nforce3 250 Ultra moniker. The main difference being the Neo2’s ability to run at 1000MHz Hypertransport speed required by the socket 939 CPUs. The Nforce3 250Gb chipset is limited to 800MHz, but that is all that is required for the socket 754 Athlon64 CPU.

…MSI has delivered two excellent products in the K8N Neo and Neo2 Platinum. Both provide a ton of options, good overclocking and very nice performance all at a fairly reasonable price. If you are looking to upgrade to a new Athlon64 system, and want one of the fastest boards available take a good look at MSI’s K8N Neo Platinum and K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboards.

Highly Recommended

PROS:
Cool stealth black finish
Four channel SATA RAID
Good performance
Good overclocking
Excellent features
Great layout
Reasonable Price
Three Year Warranty
CONS:
Limited voltage options
Average SATA RAID performance
Problems with onboard audio
Uncertain upgrade path for K8N Neo (s754)

MSI K8N Neo & Neo2 Platinum (s745 & s939)
Nforce3 250 Motherboards @ the Crucible