3D Mark 2001 SE

This is still a standard baseline benchmark to test motherboards, however hardly definitive.

As FSB ramps up, so does the score. The dip at 250 is more than likely due to much more loose ram timings.

Aquamark

Best score at 250, this was a pattern all throughout testing.

Doom 3 - Timedemo 1 @ 640x480, no vsync, no autoexec.cfg settings.

There was some improvements from overclocking the system. It's pretty apparent that in it's current configuration the system is both limited by the CPU and the video cards. Improving or overclocking either would probably have netted upward results.

Unreal Tournament 2004 - 640x480 Max details settings

Biggest increase at 230fsb most likely due to the clock increase, it tips down from there because of looser timings. This game clearly requires tight timings over just raw fsb speed.

Overclocking and Stability
This portion right here is probably where I spend the majority of time testing. Not because it's necessarily the most important (especially for people whom don't overclock at all) but because it's so time consuming. This board is very particular to the settings in the BIOS. I often found that +/- .05 volts to the hyper-transport bus was the difference between complete stability and crashing. That said, after spending the time to find the correct settings, this board overclocked exceptionally well, was very stable, and very quick. This board has a wealth of overclocking settings for the most discriminating of tweakers. Rather than go on about how I went about achieving my specific results, I'd rather simply say all the settings I ended up with.

Using my Zalman 7700Cu and 3500+ Winchester I ended up with overclocks like this:

Highest OC no ram timing changes @ 2-2-2-5 1T 10.5 x 230
5x HTT, 1.450 vcpu, 9.9% extra, cpu 2.85, VDD 1.70 nf4 voltage s/w hole remapping: disabled

250fsb overclock obtained @ 2.5-3-3-6 2T 10 x 250
4x HTT, 1.450 vcpu, 9.9% extra, cpu 2.85, VDD 1.75 nf4 voltage s/w hole remapping: disabled

300fsb overclock obtained @ 3-4-4-8 2T 7.5 x 300
4x HTT, 1.450 vcpu, 9.9% extra, cpu 2.85, VDD 1.70 nf4 voltage s/w hole remapping: enabled

Final Words

Jeremiah's $0.02

The performance and overclocking speak for themselves, the bundle was all useful, the onboard sound worked well, it had other useful features like an onboard BIOS reset button, 6 SATA ports including RAID, it all just adds up. There isn't any major flaws with this board that I can point out.

This board performed very well on every account. A number of things have been changed between the sample board I first received and the final production board. Even though some of the performance was lessened in favor of more stability, the stability is very welcome. Working with the Neo4 was a very enjoyable experience with tons of options in the BIOS that allow a multitude of tweaking, in some ways almost too much. I found that this board was pretty picky in some regards (referring specifically to BIOS settings), and it required a significant amount of tweaking at times in order to reach overclocks that I desired with the utmost amount of stability, but after finding out the appropriate settings performed very solidly. Picking a board for the perfect SLi solution seems significantly easier with this board, and it easily is a solid contender for anyone's very short list as far as NF4 SLi solutions are concerned.

Hubert's $0.02

I have recently received the same board for some 7800GTX SLI testing and am pretty much in agreement with Jeremiah's feelings of this board. Faults are few, but I did have some issues with the SLI bridge adapter. Simply put, it's a pain to use, especially given the ease of switching between SLI and single mode on the ASUS board. That being said, I'm not a fan of DFI's jumper method either, and will gladly pick MSI's method over DFI's.

I did not get a chance to test the engineering board Jeremiah did, so I can't comment on lost performance for stability, but make no mistake, it's still plenty fast. Jeremiah didn't have access to other Socket 939 boards during the course of this review, but I do, and while I did not have the time to run through all the boards, based on my gaming results, the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI was easily the fastest of the bunch, surpassing even the ASUS A8N SLI board.

As for stability, this board has been a big relief for me as our ASUS board has really been acting up recently. We pointed out during the ASUS review that older SATA hard drives and some memory modules seemed to cause problems (according to ASUS), but oddly enough, those same parts plugged right in and worked with the MSI board. It's been awhile since we've awarded our highest honour to a motherboard, but the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI is well deserving of it.

Pros
Excellently placed connectors on the PCB
Tons of BIOS options
Great for overclocking
Plenty of SATA connectors on board
BIOS reset button on-board
Great bundle, tons of extras

Cons
SLi bridge adaptor annoying to use
Southbridge gets covered by installing a video card into second slot
Lots of tweaking required for high level overclocks (not for dabblers)

The Bottom Line: This is by far one of the best solutions on the market right now, and I have no problem saying that this is the board I will be using for some time in my own personal rig.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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