MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board...
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#1: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: Shadow_BshwackrLocation: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 1:56 pm
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A very interesting article at Tom's Hardware.

If you like building your own machines, you know how much research goes into finding those choice pieces with the features you're looking for. Most of the high end gaming rigs here at CC use an ASUS board, but it looks as if MSI is wanting a piece of the pie... Wink



Over the last year, several companies have been able to make a name for themselves with their Athlon 64 SLI mainboards. Arguably, the two companies that were able to build the best reputations in this market were Asus with the A8N-SLI line, and DFI with their highly overclockable LAN-Party models. However, neither company was shy about pricing their offerings accordingly high.

While others also offered competitive products, they also felt the intense pressure of a highly competitive market. For example, Abit's day-to-day business is governed more by financial woes than by product launches. ECS and Winfast (Foxconn) still have a ways to go before they become the household names they're aspiring to become. Finally, although Biostar also launched several new products last fall, their market penetration has not been up to expectations, aside from the developing market in Brazil. Aside from Asus, only Gigabyte was able gain market share, thanks to a number of innovations.

With its new K8N Diamond Plus, MSI is now aiming to re-establish itself as a dominant force, hoping to bypass Gigabyte and thereby position itself as the number two company after Asus. To this end, our review sample came with a 31-page PowerPoint presentation, meant to ensure that both potential buyers and the press are made aware of even the most minute details about this new product.

MSI clearly aims the K8N Diamond Plus at the 3D gaming market. The board offers SLI support - including two PCI Express slots with 16 lanes each - above-average overclocking options, as well as an audio subsystem meant to blow the competition out of the water


To read the whole article: Click HERE!

#2: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: ShadesLocation: 3rd Branch up, 'Ye Olde Oak', Green Wood. PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 4:55 pm
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Asus have great mobo's and we've been suggesting them and some MSI boards for a while over at B.Y.O..

#3: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: Shadow_BshwackrLocation: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:21 pm
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I agree Shades and ASUS made overclocking easy in the BIOS.... (UHm...not that we would EVER think of OC'n...

#4: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: ShadesLocation: 3rd Branch up, 'Ye Olde Oak', Green Wood. PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 1:38 am
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Of course.
Wink

Back in the day, my mobo was rated as supposedly pretty good for what I wanted but I couldn't install the RAID-0 config I was after and Gigabutt were less than useless for after-sales.

Their site had duff links, was mis-informed (and mis-informative), and communicating directly suffered more than a little from a language barrier (seems you have to go direct to Taiwan if you have any questions).

After being told for 6 weeks there was nothing wrong with my board and that everything wrong with the world, since the demise of the Roman Empire to present day, was entirely my fault, I gave up and just gave myself a normal set-up with 2 x 80Gb drives instead.

Six months later (without hearing anything further from Gigabutt), I happened to notice an interesting item referring to my mobo on their site; It suggested that there was a fault with my BIOS which somehow prevented the RAID-0 set-up and that they'd now patched it.

Buggers!

#5: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: Uhu_FledermausLocation: Blaricum, The Netherlands ~GMT+1 PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:29 am
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Six months later (without hearing anything further from Gigabutt), I happened to notice an interesting item referring to my mobo on their site;

It suggested that there was a fault with my BIOS which somehow prevented the RAID-0 set-up and that they'd now patched it.


Laughing maybe you should change to a another mobo after all, at least from me they would not get one penny's worth anymore Wink

I allways have used ASUS mobo's be it with AMD or Intel CPU's and are very happy with 'm, alltough they are maybe not the cheapest ones around, at the end of the day it pays you back by less hassle and good quality and support.

me two pence's worth for the round archive Wink

#6: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: ShadesLocation: 3rd Branch up, 'Ye Olde Oak', Green Wood. PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 10:42 am
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Yep, I'm starting to think about a rebuild but I'll wait until it's closer to the time before planning components.
But I'm a stubborn s.o.b., and always vote with my feet. Gigabutt won't see another penny outta me no matter what they put out in future.
Asus are in the lead with me for mobo's at the moment. It's still a toss-up between amd and Intel, and nVidia and ATi, because the market will have changed so much by the time I'm ready.
I reckon I'll be able to cannibalise everything else from my existing rig.

#7: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: XcalibeR PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:39 pm
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I've got an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum in my comp... been running without a hitch for a year now. Never had any problems with it. Perfect layout, plus the abilities of NForce 4 make it a perfect board Smile

#8: Re: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Main Board... Author: IMS_JoseCuervoLocation: NEW YORK,PARIS,LONDON,FADETTE PostPosted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:33 pm
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im running an MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum and love it. i built this system about 8 months ago and decided to stay AGP. what sealed the deal for me with MSI was after Anandtech benched it against ASUS,ABIT and several other well known mobos and concluded this board was the best socket 939 board they had ever tested.



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