The K8N Neo4
Platinum/SLI has all the regular NF4-SLI goodness as well as a whole host of
nice integrated features that we can certainly appreciate. Standard equipment
includes an additional Serial ATA II/RAID Silicon Image Sil3132 controller, IEEE
1394, a Sound Blaster Live! 7.1 hardware audio controller and two Gigabit NICs -
there are also two PCI Express x16 slots just waiting for SLI compatible
cards.
AC'97 audio has come a long way in the last year but it's
still no match for a dedicated hardware soundcard like the 96kHz/24-bit Sound Blaster Live!
7.1 featured on this board.
The advantages of this hardware solution include higher quality audio output,
better environmental audio support for games, and best of all, the Sound Blaster
Live! does not sap any CPU resources!
While there are rounded cables included with the board,
they are of poor flexibility, and not of much use over standard IDE cables. The
benchmarks were pretty nice across all of the tests, though the K8N Neo4
Platinum/SLI was a bit slower than a few of the other motherboards we've tested
recently in office based applications. In the 3D arena, the K8N Neo4 routinely
took top spot, and when it wasn't first, the motherboard was never far behind
the leader.
The MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI is a decent overclocker from
what we can tell, reaching a respectable 238 MHz in our tests. I have a feeling
the board could have gone higher if there was better cooling on the nForce4-SLI
chipset, but you can't win them all. With a retail price of $239 CDN ($192 US), the MSI K8N Neo4
Platinum/SLI is an affordable Socket 939 Athlon64 SLI-compatible board that
should keep the enthusiast happy.
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