Introduction
Today we are looking at MSI's K9N SLI Platinum - a medium range socket AM2 motherboard based on the nForce 570 chipset that aims to pack a lot of value as well as nearly all the functionality of the top end nForce 590 family of boards.
The nForce 570 SLI chipset is Nvidia's second highest performance nForce 5 chipset for AMD processors. It has 28 PCIe lanes, and supports a 2x8 SLI mode, or up to six PCIe slots in a 16x, 8x, 1x, 1x, 1x, 1x configuration.
The 570 also supports six SATA2 with RAID 0/1/0+1/5 support, and two PATA drives; "MediaShield" support, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports with TCP/IP acceleration. Up to ten USB2 ports and HD Audio round out this rather feature full chipset. As you can see from this brief overview, the K9N SLI Platinum is feature and I/O rich, and at an estimated price of $129USD it looks to be a viable option for those looking for a medium range board.
In this review the K9N-SLI Platinum is up against three other competitors that sport the same general family of Nforce chipset - albeit a higher end one - the Nforce 590. As the Nforce 570 is similar to the 590, we will probably find that these motherboards all fall in the same ballpark for most applications.
The Nforce 590 has the dual PCIe 16x slots as its main claim to fame, and also somewhat more ; the 570 only has dual PCIe 8x slots in SLI mode. While other differences exist, this is the main reason enthusiasts will pay more for the 590.
I think the 570 based K9N strikes a nice balance between the "economy" boards and the "high end" boards.
Detailed Motherboard Specifications
(taken from MSI's website)
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CPU |
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Supports 64-bit AMD® Athlon™ 64 / Athlon 64FX / Athlon 64 X2 processor (Socket AM2) |
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Supports Athlon 64 CPU: 3500+, 3800+ |
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Supports Athlon 64FX CPU: FX-62 |
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Supports Athlon 64 X2 CPU: 3800+, 4000+, 4200, 4400+, 4600+, 4800+, 5000+, 5200+ |
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| Chipset |
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| • NVIDIA ® nForce 570 SLI Chipset |
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HyperTransport link to the AMD Athlon 64/Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64 X2 CPU |
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Supports 2 PCI Express x16 interface (2nd X16 slot runs at X8 speed) / 2 PCI Express x 1 connection |
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Independent SATAII controllers, for six drives |
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Single Fast ATA-133 IDE controller |
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| Main Memory |
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Supports dual channel DDR2 533/667/800, using four 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs.
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Supports the memory size up to 8GB |
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Supports 1.8v DDR2 SDRAM DIMM |
Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR2 voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.
Example: Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 PC6400 operates at 2.0V, 4-4-4-12.
For more information about specification of high performance memory modules, please check with your Memory Manufactures for more details. |
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| Slots |
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Two PCI Express X16 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant) |
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2nd PCI Express X16 is compatible with PCI Express x 8 |
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Two PCI Express X1 slot |
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Three 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots, one orange slot reserves as communication slot. |
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Support 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface |
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| On-Board IDE/SATA |
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An IDE controller on the nVIDIA nForce 570SLI chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes. |
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Can connect up to 2 IDE devices |
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NV RAID supports 6 SATA II ports (SATA1-6). Transfer rate is up to 300MB/s. |
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NV RAID (Software) |
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Supports up to 6 SATA |
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RAID 0 or 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD is supported |
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RAID function work w/ SATAII HDDs |
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| 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. |
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Supports boot from LAN, USB Device 1.1 & 2.0 and SATA HDD |
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| Audio |
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Chip integrated by Realtek ALC883 |
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Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing |
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Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec |
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| LAN |
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Supports dual LAN jacks |
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Dual LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by nForce 570 SLI |
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| IEEE1394 |
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VIA 6307 chipset |
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Supports up to 2 x 1394 ports |
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Transfer rate is up to 400Mbps |
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| On-Board Peripherals |
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1 floppy port supports 1 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes |
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1 serial port |
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1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode |
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1 audio jack (5-in-1), coaxial/fibre SPDIF out |
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10 USB 2.0 ports (Rear x 4 / Front x 6) |
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2 RJ45 LAN jack |
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1 D-Bracket 2 pinheader |
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2 IEEE 1394 a connectors (Rear x 1/ Front x 1) |
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1 CD-in pinheader |
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1 IrDA pinheader |
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As you can see, the board is not exactly short of features! My personal favorites are the 6 SATA2 ports with RAID 5 support and the dual Gigabit Ethernet adapters - not only does this board provide SLI for gamers, slap in a nice X2 processor and it might make a decent mid-range server too!
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