DVD Shrink

Ouch, with the TMPGEnc win, I thought the P5WDH would pounce here as well, not so much, MSI squeaks out a 1 second advantage.

Quake 4

Making the CPU / Memory / Hard Drive earn their pay in this test, and the P6NGM falls just a little short.

Subsystem Testing

The first thing we'll check is the audio. We downloaded and installed to test its CPU utilization.

CPU utilization was minimal throughout the DirectSound 2D and DirectSound 3D tests. With an average CPU utilization of 0.12% and 0.53% respectively, add to those decent scores the 3D Hardware +EAX tests in at 0.57%, you can see that the MSI P6NGM is on par with other Realtek HD Audio implementations.

As is typical fashion, the drivers for the Audio chipset feature “soft ports” for the rear panel connector so you can plug in as you see fit, without crawling to the back of the system (granted in an HTPC solution, this will not be used).

Overclocking

While MSI is known very well in the overclocking arena, this is a mATX motherboard with on-board graphics. Suffice it say, I was not expecting much.

What I got was a nice push to 2.67GHz, better then I expected to be honest. While its not as much as other boards have done on the same CPU, for the market they are going after, any OC is better then none.

HTPC

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but if Video is done right, there are no words to describe it, I will try my best. With the previous performance hurdles I was expecting a so so HTPC solution, in the end, I was wrong... The MSI P6NGM more then steps up to the challenge of being the base to which you build your Home Theater PC on. I plugged in the on-board HDMI into my Toshiba Regza 42HL67 (1080i / 720p) HDTV, while I am not pumping out 1080p video, I was still very impressed.

I pulled down several HD video from various sites, including several of Microsoft's HD WMV files (some of which are source 1080p and must be reduced to 720p). The playback was breathtaking, now I have a Toshiba HD-A3 (read BetaMax player) so I know how good an HD video should look, and the MSI P6NGM on-board HDMI provided me with flawless playback, no jitter, no pixelation, just pure clear streaming video.

Final Words

If you are looking for leading edge performance, well, you have clicked on the wrong review. If you want the base of an HTPC, then the MSI P6NGM very well could fill the HDMI void you and many like you are experiencing.

Pros: Awesome HDMI performance, HDMI on-board (no extra cards needed), NO FANS!!!

Cons: Only 2 slots for memory, sub-par network performance, memory slots are to close together.