PC Motherboard And Chipset Reviews And News
There's nobody quite like Mom and when it comes to performance desktop computers or business class workhorse machines, motherboards are always what bring the computing family together. Motherboards house all PC components from the processor, to memory and storage. Here you'll find our coverage on big motherboard brands and products from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, ASRock and many more, along with the chipsets from AMD and Intel that power the PC Master Race.
We have another premium Z170-based motherboard on the test bench today, by way of MSI. The MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK motherboard is the company’s top end gaming board for use with Intel 6th Generation Skylake-based Core series processors. The MSI Z170A Gaming M9 is packed with a host of premium features aimed at...
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We’ve already had a taste of what ASUS and Gigabyte have to offer in the way of Z87 motherboards, and now it’s time to give MSI’s lineup a spin. MSI’s offering of Z87 motherboards has essentially three tiers: the “POWER” series (which includes four XPOWER and MPOWER boards), a trio of gaming boards, and...
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The MSI XPower series of motherboards is clearly designed to curry favor with overclocking enthusiasts and the high-end gamers Asus has targeted with its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand. The XPower packs full support for all the latest buzzwords and capabilities, but MSI is also claiming to offer certain unique features that other manufacturers...
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The latest socket AM3 compatible Phenom II processors have been available for several weeks now and they had proven in our initial coverage to be excellent chips, a notable improvement over their predecessors in several respects, including overclocking and in their support for higher clocked DDR3 memory. Thanks to the Phenom...
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A few months back, Intel released the P45 Chipset -- at the time it was considered to be their mainstream offering, playing second fiddle to the X48 Express. With official support of a 1333MHz FSB, PCI-E 2.0, ATI CrossFire, and support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, there's a lot of roads to go down with the...
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DDR3 is the future of desktop PC memory in the near term, no question about it. Nonetheless, the transition to the next level of memory technology will be a gradual one, much like we saw when we advanced from DDR to DDR2. With higher latencies and higher price tags, the argument for migrating to DDR3 in its current state...
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In mid-Q4 2007, AMD released their 790FX, 790X and 770 chipsets, the final pieces required to complete their Spider platform. As the backbone of the new platform, the 700 series chipsets were designed with new feature sets to take full advantage of the Phenom processor's capabilities. With up to 42 PCI Express lanes,...
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Not too far back, there was a time when it was inconceivable that a motherboard had anything other than a green or mustard colored PCB that had a few sockets for the CPU and DIMMs, maybe a hard drive connector or two, and a floppy drive connection. Keyboards and mice were typically PS/2 based, although a COM port sufficed...
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Just around this time three years ago, Intel launched their 925X and 915 motherboard platforms, bringing to market a new microprocessor socket, support for DDR2 memory, and support for PCI Express. Although the chipsets were decent performers and had good features, Intel was criticized for forcing the adoption of these new technologies when...
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Nvidia's SLI technology launched in mid-2004, and was designed to provide high-performance rendering power for gamers. Because the technology was brand new, and the fastest thing on the market, SLI configurations demanded exorbitant price premiums over single card configurations, despite first generation issues like software compatibility,...
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ATI's chipset division, talented as they are, seem to have always played second fiddle to rival nVidia. Both nVidia and ATI started originally producing chipsets in 2001/2002 for low-end markets, using their experience in producing graphics processors as leverage to produce chipsets with integrated graphics abilities. Over time, both nVidia...
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It's a shame, really. After nearly one year on the market, Socket-939 Athlon64 motherboards are finally getting to a point where we've always wished they would be. Feature packed, refined, tweakable, and quiet. Why is this a shame? Well, as AMD is transitioning to their new Socket-AM2 interface, interest in Socket-939 platforms...
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There is a current trend in PC hardware to have two of everything. Whether it's two (or more) drives in a RAID configuration, dual-core CPUs, dual-channel memory, or adding an additional video card to increase frame rates; it's apparent that doubling-up is here to stay. Up until recently, running two video cards simultaneously...
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As Intel's Alderwood and Grantsdale chipsets have brought a whole new platform of technology to the P4, OEMs are now in full swing, bringing their own flavors to the mix. With support for Intel's new LGA775 processors, DDR and DDR2 and PCI-Express, the playing field has certainly changed. Granted, while upgrading will require a...
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The MSI GNB Max-FISR Motherboard Intel's Granite Bay With Dual Channel DDR and AGP8X By, Dave Altavilla December 8, 2002 It seems as though the entire PC world has been waiting for a Dual Channel DDR chipset to come to the Pentium 4. Although RAMBUS and RDRAM technology certainly had its merits, as the highest available bandwidth memory...
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The MSI KT4 Ultra-FISR Motherboard Review VIA's KT400 Chipset Matched With MSI's Best By, Jeff Bouton October 27, 2002 Most of us remember the transition from VIA's KT266A to the KT333 chipset. We had been patiently waiting for a worthy successor to the popular KT266A, anxious to see the next level in chipset performance. ...
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The MSI 648 Max Motherboard Review Great Performance at a Great Price... By, Robert Maloney October 23, 2002 Increased competition often leads to technological advancement at a faster rate than normal, because one company constantly tries to out-do another. This result of this competition usually leads to the end-user being rewarded...
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The MSI 845G Max-L Motherboard Review Integrated Graphics and Bluetooth Technology By -Chris Angelini June 28th, 2002 The i845 chipset gained quick popularity due to its DDR memory support, providing an alternative to the once-expensive RDRAM standard. In fact, many proponents of the chipset went so far as to call the i845 ?the...
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The MSI K7D Master Dual Socket A Motherboard Athlon Power X 2! By Marco Chiappetta May 21, 2002 There is no denying that AMD has done very well with their Athlon line of processors. A few years ago, back in the K6 days, AMD CPUs were found only in low-end desktop systems. The terms "high-performance" and "K6"...
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The MSI KT3 Ultra ARU Motherboard Review KT333 Muscle and All the Trimmings! By, Jeff Bouton March 24, 2002 This evening we will be taking a look at the new KT3 Ultra ARU motherboard from MSI. This is the first of what will surely become a long line of motherboards to incorporate the new VIA® KT333 chipset. The new chipset...
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The MSI K7T266 Pro DDR Socket A Monster Misguided? or Misunderstood?... By, Marco "BigWop" Chiappetta June 14, 2001 With the influx of DDR memory into the market place, came a craving for a high performing chipset to exploit the increased bandwidth offered by this new memory type. AMD was first to introduce a DDR chipset for...
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Micro-Star International's MS-6163 Pro These days there are a new breed of motherboards being brought to market by a few key manufacturers that are designed with the hardcore "overclocker' in mind. Micro-Star International sent us their crowned jewel in this exciting new arena, the MS-6163 Rev. 2.0, otherwise know as the...
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