Sound Tests - Soundblaster Audigy SE

Like the K8N Diamond before it, the K8N Diamond Plus also uses an upgraded sound solution; for this board it takes the form of the Soundblaster Audigy SE. This is a nice solution; very low CPU utilization, 7.1 sound and a signal-to-noise ratio of 100 dBA. Like other HD solutions you also get 24-bit sound and a 96 kHz sampling rate, and also support for EAX 3.0 which can be utilized by quite a few games. Obviously this isn't Creative's high end solution, or even a new solution, but it is far better than most.

Sound Tests - Gaming Performance

Disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS, lets us see just how much CPU the SoundBlaster uses in our standard 1280x1024 UT2K4 test; very little indeed, and very much with in our error margin. This reminds me of the days of the Soundstorm onboard solution, so I guess it's fitting that this is also an nForce based board.

Network Performance

2 Gbit capable NICs are included onboard with the MSI K8N Diamond Plus; the first coming from the nForce 4 chipset itself with a second possible via a Marvell chip. We copied a home video DVD image of 2.6GB via network direct to another Gbit capable computer.

Overclocking

Overclocking with the MSI K8N Diamond Plus can be achieved in two ways; via the BIOS or the BIOS and MSI's Core Cell software in Windows. MSI's K8N Diamond Plus offers Dynamic overclocking which can be controlled either in the BIOS or from Windows and the CoreCenter software supplied. Overclocking options are ranked with a military theme, with the highest option (Commander) giving you an 11% dynamic overclock. The software isn't exactly the greatest and looks to need an update (it reads my SYS temp as in the 50's for example, the temperature of the Northbridge) for this board but it does work.

Of course you can also do things the old fashioned way, which as we have seen in the BIOS section of this review, you are amply catered for. Before I go any further, I would like to comment that this board has been a little fussy with it's ram during testing, so it will probably be worth checking out the MSI forums and the . My Ultra PC4000 for example, while it did work in the board, would only run at half the frequency of the FSB. The Corsair and Mushkin sticks I have on hand (PC3200's to PC4000's) all worked without issue.

The first thing I did was to drop the HTT frequencies to 400MHz (or 2x) as well as selecting a 1/2 divider on the Ram, and an 8x CPU multiplier; low settings, but it does give us a lot of headroom to play with. Jumping straight in at 220MHz was not a problem, and 230MHz also proved to be easy enough. At the 250MHz mark, everything seemed fine. Infact, I never ran into trouble until I got all the way up to a 294MHz, where PiFast would quit suddenly halfway through a run. Final stable FSB speed was 288MHz, and there is the possibility that the motherboard was not to blame here, but that the CPU had reached it's limit. Looking around the web it would seem that this is par the course for this board for a lot of folks, although more than one has mentioned not being able to go higher than 300MHz, something which I fell just short of being able to confirm.

Either way, a near 290 odd FSB is a very nice clock for a motherboard to reach, and since this is the first BIOS for this board, it is also quite possible we will see greater clocks to come.

Final Words

MSI have a great board on their hands with the . There is a plethora of features and peripherals included onboard, and coupled with the extensive extras included, you should be very happy with the package overall. This of course comes hand in hand with a high price, but our thoughts are that is is a fair one.

The package includes cables and ports for just about everything; SATA, IDE, USB and Firewire. Infact there is very little, if anything, that you would be missing to get your system up and running. One thing I did look for was a 4pin AUX power to 8pin AUX power adapter but one wasn't included. I've used an adapter, a 4pin plug (in the correct holes) and a true 8pin AUX without any noticeable issues.

The motherboard itself sits on a great looking and laid out black PCB which for those who appreciate the aesthetic qualities of hardware, will find pleasing to the eye. No real areas of issue on the motherboard layout and design where found, although I do question the rather low 3 phase power for the CPU; especially since the previous K8N Diamond actively cooled the power regulators and the Plus does not. Being based on the SLI 16x chipset, the K8N Diamond Plus uses a two chip design for it's features. MSI have chosen to cool both using a vertical actively cooled 'Northbridge', and a passive 'Southbridge' connected to the former via a heatpipe; this keeps the noise and power down while keeping the cooling potential high, and is something I am pleased to see.

Another nice feature is that MSI have done away with a jumper for clearing the CMOS and use a simple push switch instead. Six SATA II headers, two IDE headers and a floppy header provide the connections for your drives and all are laid out nicely along the right hand side. While the 24pin power header joins them on the left hand side, the other two power headers sit on the right side behind the I/O panel. Just to reiterate, the MSI K8N Diamond Plus uses an 8pin AUX power and also requires a 4pin Molex connection to give a boost to the graphics card.

Being an SLI capable motherboard, two PCIe 16x slots can be found, seperated by a gap of two slots. We have not bothered to going into the virtues of using twin 16x slots over twin 8x slots (there are plenty of articles on the net to tell you the actual difference isn't that big currently) here, but there is very little point for any gamer not to buy a dual graphics capable motherboard at this point. Other PCIe connections found on the board are 1x and 2x slots, although the 2x slot is actually 4x in size.

Overclocking is catered for quite well within entire section of the BIOS which can be used to tweak to your hearts content. MSI have even supplied you with the ability to supply upto 4.1v for your DDR memory. The Dynamic overclocking options work well enough, but are (as expected) a little conservative with only a possible 11% maximum overclock. However, support for a lot more via manual tweaking is there, with a 450MHz possible FSB frequency. We were never able to breach 300MHz during testing however, with our highest clock being 288MHz. One thing that is a little different is that MSI have labeled the HTT settings as MHz frequencies, rather than multiplier ratings, but overall the BIOS is very functional and convienent.

I would have liked to have seen some way of saving different BIOS configurations as well as a 4 phase power solution (or greater). I also found the board to be a little bit twitchy when it came to certain memory; I never had any memory rejected by the board but it did refuse to run some except at much lower settings than expected. Still, MSI do have a , which is standard for pretty much any board on the market and most folks looking at a board such as this will have/plan to have one of the high end brand names listed; I only really bring it to attention for the sake of a complete review.

Apart from those areas, the board has performed admirably in all of our tests and I believe currently holds the highest AMD FSB overclock of all the boards that have come through our labs. It has been rock solid throughout and a joy to work with. I can't say currently that it will be one of those boards folks will look back on in a few years time and instantly couple it's name with enthusiast excitement, but it certainly is a great performer for the above average enthusiast for right now. Still, it is quite early days for this particular board, and history has shown that a BIOS update can do wonders.

With a high end enthusiast motherboard such as this one, it pretty much goes without saying that if you want the best from it, you'll also want to provide it with decent support components such as a high powered quality PSU and a good brand name Ram setup. If this board has caught your eye then make sure you don't cut corners with the rest of the system, and you'll be a happy end user indeed.

If you have any questions or comments on this or other articles, register for our Forums and start posting.

HOME