Subsystem Testing

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

Peaking at about 3 1/2 % utilization the sound solution is on par with other Realtek sound codecs I've seen. In this day and age of machines running above 2GHz I don't think those few extra cycles will be missed.

Quality wise it is good. Highs can be a bit tinny but this can be tweaked easy enough, with mid range and bass being just about right for both gaming and music. The nForce2 drivers give a lot of options to tweak the sound how you want which can go a long way to improving things if you have a less than stellar speaker setup.

Hard Drive Performance

ATA Performance (Regular IDE)

Firing up HD Tach we found that CPU Utilization was at 9.3% which is pretty high, and an access time of 13.1ms.

LAN Testing

We used to test the networking speed, and Windows Task Manager for CPU usage. We copied a variety of install files, varying in size of 3MB to as much as 70MB per file from the MSI machine, to our ABIT AT7 Max.

Download speeds averaged about 8.9MB/sec, and upload speeds about 9.6MB/sec. The CPU usages was very low, averaging about 8% which is nice to see.

Final Words

One thing to bear in mind here is that if you already have an nForce2 SPP motherboard, chances are that unless you absolutely need FSB 400 support and want to squeeze out every last bit of performance, you will probably want to sit tight and wait for Athlon64. If you have yet to jump on the nForce2 bandwagon then now is the time to do it. The K7N2 Delta-ILSR is a great performing motherboard with a lot of integrated features and extra's to keep you connected and able to perform the tasks that matter most to you. Whilst board layout had a few annoying areas it was generally good, allowing for HDD and FDD leads to be placed correctly and without issues of crossed/messy cabling (with the power connector exceptions).

The nForce2 Ultra 400 screams along providing you with fantastic gaming performance as well as being more than capable of performing day to day tasks. At default settings the K7N2 Delta-ILSR is more than capable with keeping up it's brethren from other manufacturers, and under overclocked settings is just as happy to show off. MSI are very well known for stability historically, and the K7N2 Delta-ILSR is no exception to this. Despite my best attempts to kill the board with FSB overclocking, it didn't actually die until an FSB of 221MHz, which considering the low voltage and aggressive memory timings is pretty impressive. And I was still able to bring the board back to life without the need for a Duron being handy thanks to the 100FSB/133-166+ jumper on the motherboard. Bios options were overall good and easy to use, although some may find the 1.8v maximum on the CPU Core a little low.

MSI have created a pretty damn good board here, and I have no hesitation in recommending it, but bear in mind the question; Do you NEED 400 FSB support. If you can answer no to this and you already have an nForce2 based motherboard then you may as well stay with it. If you don't have an nForce2 motherboard, or need that 400FSB support then this board should be on your short list.

Pros
Fantastic performance
Great stability when overclocking
Very good looking board
Lots of features
Memory slots are away from AGP slot
Nice locations for IDE and FDD headers

Cons
CPU Core maximum voltage could be considered a bit low
Poor locations on power connectors

Bottom Line
The board is one of the best I have seen, with screaming performance and very good overclocking results. However if you already have an nForce2 based motherboard you would be better to hold out until the Athlon 64 arrives and the boards to go with it.