MSI P6N SLI Platinum - PAGE 6
J. Micah Grunert - Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
For testing the MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard, we'll be using the standard selection of hardware for an Intel Core2 based system. Those parts are as follows:
Intel Core 2 E6400 (Socket LGA775, 2.66 GHz, two cores) processor
Corsair TWIN2X1024 PC-8500 DDR2 memory (4-4-4-12/2T 800MHz)
XFX 7800 GT video card
OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply
Noctua NH-U 12 CPU cooler
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATAII 80GB hard drive
Sony DDU1613 DVD-ROM optical drive
Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2
Drivers are important:
NVIDIA ForceWare 93.71 graphics drivers
DirectX 9.0c
DotNetFix 2.0
NVIDIA 9.53 chipset drivers for the 680i
NVIDIA 8.43 chipset drivers for the 650i
Intel 8.1.1.1010 chipset drivers for the P965
Respective audio and additional drivers for each motherboard.
Speaking of motherboards, here's the competitors we'll test against:
Abit IN9 32X-MAX with the NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset
Asus P5N32E-SLI Plus with the NVIDIA 650i SLI chipset
MSI P965 Platinum with the Itel P965 chipset
MSI 975X Platinum with the Intel 975X chipset
Now normally, I don't think I would ever test one motherboard against four others, but I just couldn't pass up the chance to see how the best of NVIDIA stacked up against the power of Intel. Unfortunately, I don't have any ATI chipset based boards in the lot, simply due to the fact that ATI Xpress chipset based boards typically run with AMD processors, and not the Core 2 we will be testing with. I for one would be happy to see an AM2 processor plunked onto a NVIDIA chipset based board, but the recent marriage between AMD and ATI would suggest otherwise.
On a happy note, there are some new ATI chipsets making their way to market, but I'll save that for my next motherboard review.
Let's get testing!
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