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The 875P Neo-FIS2R is a well laid out board, with
quite a few notable features. As soon as we laid eyes on the 875P
Neo-FIS2R, we immediately thought, "MSI". It must have been the
signature bright red
PCB and branded Northbridge cooler that tipped us off! As a whole, we did
not have any major gripes with layout, except for the placement of the 12v power
connector, which is mounted between the AGP slot and Northbridge. Unless
you've got an extra long 12v lead coming form your power supply, you'll probably
have to drape the cable directly over the CPU. The ATX power connector is
mounted alongside the primary IDE channels and floppy connector, out of the way
of any components. The CPU socket is mounted way up at the "top" of the
board, flanked by a eight capacitors along a single edge. We also like
what MSI has done with the VRM (Voltage Regulator Module). On some of
their more recent motherboards, MSI has been mounting heatsinks to the MOSFETs
in the VRM. The MOSFETs in the power circuitry generate a significant
amount of heat, so keeping them cool is definitely a good idea. Something
case modders will appreciate is the illuminated, active Northbridge cooler.
The LEDs blink is a repeating pattern that will surely draw some attention.
We also liked seeing the color coded headers located at the lower edge of the
board. They make installing the 875P Neo-FIS2R into a case very easy,
without ever having to open the manual. Right above the headers, the 4
available SATA connectors are visible. Two of the SATA channels are
controlled by the ICH5R. The other two are powered by a Promise 20378
controller, that also provides a third IDE channel. If you take a look at
the external I/O connectors, you'll see a total of 6 available USB connectors
scattered amongst the legacy ports and Gigabit LAN jack.
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Specifications & Features of The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R |
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MSI's Flagship P4 Board |
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CPU
Chipset
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Intel® Canterwood 875P Chipset
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Supports FSB 533/800 MHz
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Supports ECC memory
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Support Single or Dual channel DDR
400*/333/266 memory up to 4GB
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Support AGP 8x or 4x at 0.8V (AGP
3.0) or 4x at 1.5V (not support 3.3V)
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Intel® ICH5R Chipset
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Integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0
controller, 480Mb/sec, 8 ports
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2 Serial ATA/ 150 ports
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2 channel Ultra ATA 100 bus Master
IDE controller
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PCI Master v 2.3, I/O APIC
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Supports both ACPI and legacy APM
power management - Serial ATA/150 RAID 0
Main Memory
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Supports 4 unbuffered DIMM of 2.5
Volt DDR SDRAM
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Supports ECC memory
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Supports up to 4GB memory size
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Supports Single or Dual Channel DDR
400*/333/266 MHz and up (*In order to use DDR 400, FSB 800 CPU is required)
Slots BIOS
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The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug &
Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board
automatically.
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The mainboard provides a Desktop
Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
On-Board IDE
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Dual Ultra DMA 66/ 100 IDE
controllers integrated in ICH5R
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Supports PIO, Bus Master operation
modes
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Can connect up to 4 Ultra ATA
drives
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Serial ATA/ 150 controller
integrated in ICH5R
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Up to 150MB/s transfer speed
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Can connect up to 2 Serial ATA
drives
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Supports Serial ATA Raid 0
FSB
Serial ATA
Interface
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Promise 20378 controllers 2 Serial
ATA ports in 150 MB/s operation mode and 1 ultra DMA port
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Support Ultra ATA, Serial ATA, Raid
0 or 1, Serial ATA Raid 0 or 1, Ultra/ Serial ATA Raid 0+1
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Connect up to 2 Serial ATA devices
and 2 Ultra ATA 133 devices
Audio
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6 Channel software audio codec ADI
S/W 5.1 channel audio 1980
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Compliance with AC97 v2.2 Spec
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Meet PC2001 audio performance
requirement
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Support SPDIF out via S-Bracket
only
LAN
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Intel® 82547EI (CSA interface)
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Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and
PHY in one chip
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Supports 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s and
1000Mb/s
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Compliance with PCI 2.2
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Supports ACPI Power Management
On-Board
Peripherals
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1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with
360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
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2 serial ports (COM A + COM B)
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1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP
mode
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8 USB 2.0 ports (Rear x 6 / **Front
x 2) (**Front USB ports are supported by pin-out)
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1 Line-In/Line-Out/Mic-In port
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2 PS/2 connectors
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1 LAN RJ45 connector
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3 IEEE1394 port controlled by
VT6306, with up to 400Mbps transfer rate.
Dimension Mounting Accessories
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D Bracket
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2 IEEE1394 Cable
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S Bracket
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Round Cable
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Serial ATA Cables
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The BIOS:
The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R was equipped with a very
complete AMI (American Megatrends Inc.) BIOS, as opposed to the more common
Award BIOS found on the vast majority on the motherboards available today.
From within the BIOS, users have the ability to enable or disable virtually all
of the on-board components. Users can also fine tune Memory and AGP
settings on the 875P Neo-FIS2R. There were early reports of memory
incompatibilities and overclocking issues in some initial reviews of this board,
but when using revision 1.4 of the BIOS, we did not encounter any BIOS related
problems during our testing.
Would be overclockers out there will be happy with
what they see within the 875P Neo-FIS2R's BIOS. MSI is definitely catering
to the hardcore enthusiasts with this board. From within the "Frequency /
Voltage Control" section of the BIOS, users can choose the speed at which they
want to run their memory and can raise the FSB to as high as 500MHz, in 1MHz
increments! VCore, DDR (memory) and AGP voltages can all be altered from this
section as well. Users can raise their processor's core voltage up to 1.95v,
DDR voltages range from 2.5v to a whopping 3.3v and the AGP voltage can be set
to anything between 1.5v and 2.1v, in .1v increments. Overall the 875P
Neo-FIS2R's BIOS is very "overclocker friendly". Speaking of
overclocking...
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Overclocking: MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R |
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A Ton
of Options |
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STOCK CPU SPEED |
CPU OVERCLOCKED TO
3.48GHZ (15 X 231MHZ) |
CPU OVERCLOCKED TO
3.48GHZ (15 X 231MHZ) |
When
we overclocked the three boards
in this round-up, our intentions were to find the maximum stable CPU and FSB speeds, with
all of the test systems configured with the same settings and hardware. We
bumped the CPU core voltage up to 1.65v, had the memory speeds determined by the
SPD and locked the AGP / PCI clock speeds to 66MHz / 33MHz.. We then raised the FSB from
within the BIOS until we
hit the point where the test systems were no longer stable. The speeds
reported here were the maximum clock speeds we could hit with each board, while
still being able to run our benchmarking suite. The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
performed very well. We were able to take our particular 3.0GHz CPU all
the way up to 3.48GHz (15 x 231MHz FSB) on the 875P Neo-FIS2R, which equates to
a 15.5% increase in clock speed! We should also mention that overclocking
with the 875P Neo-FIS2R can be done via their proprietary "CoreCell" software.
MSI's "CoreCell" software gives users the ability to monitor and tweak voltages, fan speeds and
the FSB speed from a single interface within Windows. We prefer to overclock our systems "the old fashioned" way, however. Next Up, DFI's "LANPARTY"
Pro875
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