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We used the following hardware for testing of the K9N-SLI Platinum:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ processor (Socket AM2, 2.6 GHz, two cores)
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT video card
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• 2*512MB Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 5-4-4-9/2T
• FSP Epsilon FX700-GLN power supply

The ASUS M2N32-SLI will be duking it out two other AM2 boards that we have around:

• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi (nForce 590, SLI,)
• Foxconn C51XEM2AA (nForce 590 SLI, DDR2-800 @ 5-4-4-9/2T)
• Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 (nForce 590 SLI, DDR2-800 @ 5-4-4-9/2T)

For now, here is a listing of the tests performed:

• Business Winstone
• Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• SiSoft Sandra Memory Analyzer
• WinRAR
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• XviD Video Encoding
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• Rightmark Audio Encoding
• Call of Duty
• Doom 3
• Comanche 4
• Halo
• Jedi Knight 2
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Drivers used were NVIDIA ForceWare version 84.21 and NVIDIA nForce 590 version 9.34 drivers.

We used the excellent VGA2USB from Epiphan Systems to capture our BIOS screenshots.

Before we go on to the tests, I'd like to note that while some of you may think given the chipset and price discrepancy that it is not a fair to compare the 570 based K9N-SLI to three 590 based boards - but unfortunately this is the first Nforce 570 board we are testing, and the 590 boards we have previously tested are were best basis for comparison. Besides, you may be surprised at some of the results!

As this article is written, the four motherboards we are comparing are priced as follows:

• $129 MSI K9N-SLI Platinum
• $199 ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi
• $195 Foxcon C51XEM2AA
• $189 Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5

Ok, enough verbiage! Let's see how the MSI K9N-SLI faired against the competition...