MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R Motherboard Review
A lot of
manufacturers like to bundle just the bare necessities with their
products so it's always a bit of a treat to test out a top of the line model
that comes with literally everything in the box. There
are different flavours of the 875P Neo which are designed to fit
different requirements and budgets, but the -FIS2R version is like getting A/C,
leather, CD, and mag wheels with that new car. Heck, we're even geeky
enough to get a little excited about that "new motherboard smell"
that wafts out of the box once the anti-static bag is cracked
open.
This bright
red ATX board is currently MSI's flagship model on the i875P Canterwood chipset. It commands a
bit of a premium in terms of price, retailing for $245 CDN ($185
US) or thereabouts. With the release of the 875P Neo and 865PE Neo2 motherboards, Canterwood
and Springdale-based respectively, MSI is now also targeting the overclocking market head
on.
The question as we see it is whether
or not MSI can provide the gear necessary to convert die hard overclockers who
usually have a lot of brand loyalty (ie. Asus, Abit,
Epox).
Converting these folks who are
admittedly obsessed with speed, is not necessarily going to net a company a
hudge influx of sales either. After all lets face the facts, overclockers are
generally considered to represent only a very small portion of the entire
mainboard consumer markets. What is more significant is that overclockers and
die hard enthusiasts typically set the trends that mainstream consumers follow.
For the enthusiasts out there reading this, just try and count how many
motherboards you've recommended in the past year to people - I'll bet it's quite
a few!
Of course
there is a lot more to a good motherboard than simply how well it
overclocks. As you'll see in the next few pages of this review, the MSI
875P Neo-FIS2R is also one well rounded
mainboard. Starting from the
beginning, we find 5.1 audio, three IEEE 1394 ports, Serial ATA/Serial
ATA RAID, an additional Ultra/133 channel and Intel Gigabit CSA LAN
among other features.
| msi 875p
neo-fis2r |
|
|
Ships with the following:
- Rounded IDE ATA100 Cable
- 4x Serial ATA Cables
- FDD Cable
- 2x Molex/4 Serial ATA Power
- Driver CD
- Serial ATA Floppy Driver
- RAID Driver Floppy
- User Manual
- Serial ATA Manual
- MSI Super Pack Software
- I/O Back Plate
|
| Brackets: |
|
Optical Audio Bracket
USB Bracket
IEEE 1394 Bracket
|
Colourful
isn't she? The layout of the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R is excellent;
with nothing major that will get in the way of anything else.
The 875P Neo also includes a small mountain of cables, connectors,
and brackets to take advantage of all the "goodies" which are onboard. For example,
we find four convict-orange Serial ATA cables, two Molex-to-Serial ATA
posthumously power connectors, a rounded IDE cable and a pretty extensive software package
which actually includes..... useful software!
The
motherboard supports 533/800 MHz FSB based Northwood Pentium 4
processors and the four DIMM's will accept up to 4GB of PC1600/2100/2700/3200 DDR SDRAM. The
board runs best with a dual channel DDR configuration (two similar sticks in
the light or dark blue DIMM sockets), but is flexible
to run on just one DIMM if that is all you have on
hand.
Rounding out the integrated features we
find five 32-bit PCI slots for future upgradability as well as a 8x AGP
socket.
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