Saturday March 20, 2010 11:25 AM AEST

MSI P6N SLI Platinum

  • Email a Friend
  • Print Page
MSI P6N SLI Platinum
 
80
---
By Craig Simms
May 18, 2007
Tags: MSI | P6N | SLI | Platinum

We want to know what happened to the bronze, silver and gold editions.

We’re a bit ambivalent towards the 650i.

With ASUS offering the hybrid P5N32-E Plus and the onset of the 680i LT, performance wise 650i seems to be lagging, yet as far as price goes it’s still in the game as it offers cheap access to SLI.

MSI’s board comes with all the concessions made by transitioning from 680i to 650i – the single Ethernet port; two PCI-E x8 slots instead of PCI-E x16 (the primary port operates at 16x if you have only one card); support for eight USB instead of ten and four SATA ports instead of six. For most this won’t be an issue, however power users will want to gear for a 965 or 680i board to increase the breadth of features. In a bout of niceness, MSI has also included optical and coax S/PDIF on the back, and thrown in eSATA for good measure. The board is also populated by solid capacitors, no doubt inspired by GIGABYTE’s recent efforts in the field. We appreciate the extra longevity they give, let alone the fact that it’s a lot harder to knock the suckers off by mistake.

Finally there’s a parallel port on the back if you’re still using a printer from the 80s. If you are, let us know your address so we may come and beat you. Parallel ports must die.

One advantage that the 650i holds over the 680i LT is that the board is passively cooled – MSI in this case opting for a heatpipe network rather than the simple passively cooled northbridge and uncooled southbridge present on competitor’s boards. We’re wondering exactly why the southbridge therefore needs to be cooled – perhaps the heatsink is there purely to siphon extra heat from the northbridge.

Regardless, silence is always a bonus in our books, provided that the board can still perform. If you find your overclocking limited, MSI has bundled in an optional northbridge fan, which is unfortunately quite high-pitched and loud.

The biggest disadvantage is of course the manual hardware switch needed for SLI – in essence a card between the GPUs that needs to be popped out and switched around whenever you want to change modes. Possibly this is down to the 650i’s nForce4 heritage in that it uses the nForce 430 MCP, however in an age of software switching it’s an annoyance we didn’t expect.

Booting into the BIOS we found MSI’s ‘Cell’ overclocking menu to be decent enough, and after a bit of tweaking we managed to get the board running solid at 380MHz, but it wouldn’t boot at all above 400MHz. Annoyingly MSI’s BIOS still tells us that the board doesn’t support a 266MHz processor whenever the FSB is overclocked – it still works fine, but it’s clearly a relic warning message from pre-266MHz bus days. Come on guys, get this fixed already.

Layout wise the board is great, the only potential conflict being that the battery is obscured by the graphics card, should you ever need to yank it out. The floppy drive port is also placed at the bottom of the board which may cause issues. In somewhat of a rarity these days, there are two IDE ports for those who need to support older hardware.

Despite its mainstream nature the board works well and delivers performance close to the flagship products, it’s just not highly overclockable and even if MSI offers more than the norm, it is a little bare of feature. As we’ve said a number of times, if you’re never going to go SLI, get a 965 board – they’re much better value. If two NVIDIA GPUs are your thing and you don’t intend to push the limits of your system, then MSI’s P6N Platinum will be more than at home in your system. Ultimately the decision is your wallet’s.

 EVGA nForce 680i SLIMSI P6N SLI Platinum
Sandra Processor Artihmetic Dhrystone (MIPS)27,10027,122
Sandra Processor Arithmetic Whetstone (MFLOPS)18,59318,595
Sandra Memory Bandwidth INT (MB/s)5,5715,559
Sandra Memory Bandwidth Float (MB/s)5,6375,561
3DMark0610,81810,918

 
Product Info
Specs:
Socket 775; 650i; 2x PCI-E x8 (dual mode, operates at 16x in single mode); 1x PCI-E x1; 3x PCI; 2x IDE; 4x SATA; 1x eSATA; Realtek ALC888; optical and coax S/PDIF; 1x Gigabit Ethernet; 8x USB; 1x FireWire.
Supplier:
MSI
Price when reviewed:
AUD$264
price check*
No results found for MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard 680i.

Compare prices on similar products at staticice.com.au
*Products and prices sourced from staticICE and are in no way associated with Atomic MPC Powered by
 
This article appeared in the June, 2007 issue of Atomic.

Want to check out the first Australian review of Final Fantasy XIII? We got in this month's Atomic!

Plus HD projectors, Napoleon: Total War, Intel's new six-core processor, PC upgrading guide, and a whole lot more.

ON SALE NOW!
Comments

Be the first to comment on this article.
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Login or register to submit a comment.
 
 
Atomic Magazine

Issue: 111 | April, 2010

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.
 
Latest Comments
"@sirtrancealot, BF started on the PC and BC1 only on Consoles was a kick to the PC gamers ..."
by NRUFrost | Mar 20, 2010 8:14 AM
 
"RAGE!!!"
by Hawkeye | Mar 20, 2010 1:24 AM
 
"alex - bugger all. 78mg of caffeine. About the same as a cup of instant coffee. Taurine, Gurana ..."
by tantryl | Mar 20, 2010 12:51 AM
 
"Yummy yummy yummy om nom nom nom nom nom nom nom

GB"
by Ghost_Bear | Mar 19, 2010 11:59 PM
 
"Hawkeye: So if noone said anything about it you wouldn't think anyone cared and you would leave ..."
by fliptopia | Mar 19, 2010 10:05 PM
 
1) Sony Ericsson Aino6 plans 17%
2) Nokia E7147 plans 17%
3) Apple iPhone 3GS 32GB36 plans 17%
4) Apple iPhone 8GB43 plans 1%
5) HTC Magic5 plans 17%
1) Optus41 plans 11%
2) Vodafone7 plans 7%
3) Telstra BigPond30 plans 3%
4) iiNet32 plans 8%
5) Dodo34 plans 1%

Mobiles | Broadband | Credit Cards

Haymarket - Atomic MPC
Latest User Reviews
Logitech MX518 Gaming-Grade Optical Mouse
90%
Good shape, design and Ergonomics
 
Coolermaster HAF 922
100%
A case to make a statment and give your pc the Heavy Hardcore Grunt it needs.
 
Coolermaster Excalibur
50%
Atomic is under attack
 
XFX 9300 Motherboard
40%
HUGE letdown
 
CM Storm Sentinel gaming mouse
90%
Sexy and instant geek respect.