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MSI 845Pro2-R Motherboard Review
MSI 845Pro2-R Motherboard Review - PCSTATS
The MSI 845 Pro2 (model: MS-6528) is a six PCI slot packing socket 478 Pentium 4 solution with 3 DIMM's capable of supporting upto 3GB of PC133 SDRAM.
 82% Rating:   
Filed under: Motherboards Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: MSI Nov 23 2001   Max Page  
Home > Reviews > Motherboards > MSI 845Pro2-R

The BIOS Features

The BIOS that powers the MSI 845Pro2-R is pretty overclocking and tweak friendly. With a fair amount of adjustments for memory, voltage and clock speeds it gives you a good set of tools to make custom adjustments.

Processor Adjustments are standard; CPU clock adjustments range from x8 - x24 and CPU FSB can dialed in upto 132MHz in 1MHz intervals.

AGP/PCI Clock can be adjusted if you so desire or simply left to auto configuration.

Both VDIMM and Vagp (AGP Voltage) can be tweaked in 0.05 volt increments, while CPU Vcore (Voltage to the Core) can be tweaked on 0.025V increments.

 

Memory Adjustments:

The Award BIOS also allows some modest adjustments to be made to the SDRAM. CAS latency can clipped to 2 if you've chosen to configure your own settings and override the SPD data. RAS-to-CAS, and RAS Precharge also follow suit in the 2, or 3 settings department.

 

Test system specs and benchmarks

Test System Specs:
Computer: Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz socket 478 processor
MSI 845Pro2-R Motherboard
VisonTek Geforce 3
256MB Twinmos PC166 SDRAM
60GB Samsung HDD, 5400RPM
Software: Windows 2000 SP1
DirectX 8.1 Beta
DetonatorXP 21.81
Benchmarks:

SiSoft Sandra 2001 LE
e-Testinglabs Benchmark Suite
3DMark 2001

The MSI 845Pro2-R comes with a very well equipped BIOS for small system tweaks. In any case, lets move on to our first and most used benchmark, Sisoft's Sandra 2001SE and compare the 845Pro2-R to the Epox 4B2A.

Sisoft Sandra: CPU Benchmark
Setting: ALU: FPU/SSE2:
MSI 845Pro2 15 x 100MHz (1.5GHz) 2951 MIPS 780/1857 MFlops
Epox 4B2A 15 x 100MHz (1.5GHz) 2917 MIPS 788/1872 MFlops

Sisoft Sandra: Multimedia Benchmark
Setting: Integer: Floating point SSE2:
MSI 845Pro2 15 x 100 MHz (1.5GHz) 5998 it/s 7351 it/s
Epox 4B2A 15 x 100 MHz (1.5GHz) 6058 it/s 7424 it/s

Sisoft Sandra: Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Setting: Int ALU: Float FPU:
MSI 845Pro2 15 x 100 MHz (1.5GHz) 475 MB/s 478 MB/s
Epox 4B2A 15 x 100 MHz (1.5GHz) 600 MB/s 611 MB/s

In general it seems that the Epox board has a bit of a head start in terms of performance over MSI's solution. Record setting performance this isn't, but among i845 solutions it will be interesting to see which motherboards prove themselves better than the rest.

E-Testing labs Benchmarks:

WinMark 99
Setting: Business Disk High-end Disk: Business Graphics: High-end Graphics:
MSI 845Pro2 5090 11100 427 851
Epox (1.5GHz) 4500 10400 444 900

Content Creation Winstone 2001
Setting: Content Creation Winstone
MSI 845Pro2 42.9
Epox 4B2A (1.5GHz) 47.1

Business Winstone 2001
Setting: Business Winstone
MSI 845Pro2 32.7
Epox 4B2A (1.5GHz) 32.0

Again, the results here are on par with what we have been seeing between these two i845 based motherboards. In some instances the 845Pro2-R comes out ahead, but for the majority of the tests the Epox board has a slight lead. The differences overall are very small, and really don't equate to much in the real world.

Finally, no round of benchmarks would be complete with out a little action from MadOnion's 3DMark2001. You have to admit, those 21.81 DetonatorXP drivers can make just about any system look better!

MadOnion 3DMark 2001
Setting: 3D Marks
MSI 845Pro2 5148
Epox 4B2A (1.5GHz) 5561

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Contents of Article: MSI 845Pro2-R
 Pg 1.  MSI 845Pro2-R Motherboard Review
 Pg 2.  845Pro2-R Motherboard Features
 Pg 3.  — The BIOS Features
 Pg 4.  Conclusions

 
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