MSI BIOS' are typically filled with all types of all types of enthusiast friendly options that enable users to tweak their computer system to the nine's. The BIOS for the MSI K9N SLI Platinum motherboard includes all the usually tweaks and adjustments you could expect.

Athlon64 overclockers know how important it is to have HyperTransport tweaks and with the K9N SLI Platinum you can adjust both the speed and width of the HyperTransport bus.

Here in the Memory Configuration section of the BIOS you'll find the memory timing adjustments. There are the usual options like CAS Latency, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS precharge as well as new options like Row Cycle Time and Row to Row Delay.

Here you find the overclocking options, the motherboard clock speed can be adjusted from 200-500 MHz in 1 MHz increments, you can also adjust the memory divider options and increase the DDR2 memory to a maximum of 2.3V. There are full multiplier adjustments and CPU voltage goes as high as 1.45V.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the MSI K9N SLI Platinum motherboard test system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions is indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this nForce 570 SLI based motherboard is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next page.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system #1 reference system #2 processor: amd Athlon64 FX-62 Intel Pentium D 940 Clock Speed: 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz Motherboard: MSI K9N SLI Platinum (NF 570 SLI) ASRock AM2V890-VSTA (VIA K8T890) Asus M2N32SLI-DLX (NF 590 SLI) Foxconn C51XEM2AA (NF 590 SLI) Foxconn 975X7AA-8EKRS2H (975X) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: Corsair Twin2X2048-8500 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: AMD Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Thermaltake Jungle 512 Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 VIA 4in1 5.09a nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware 9.35 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Intel INF 7.22 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Benchmarks: SYSMark 2004 Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 Super Pi SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark05 3DMark05 3DMark06 FarCry Doom 3 Quake 4