Written By:
Date Posted: June 14 , 2002

Final Words

I am having a hard time deciding what to say about this board. While the K7D Master is the best mainboard I have had the privilege of testing, it is also the most expensive. It is hard for me to recommend the K7D Master to average consumers because when it is all said and done, you will pay a minimum of $450.00 for the board and two compatible processors. I found SMP to be extremely beneficial in everything from loading applications and serving the web, as it reduced lag and made things seem to run a whole lot smoother.

If you are looking to build yourself the ultimate workstation or server and money is no issue, then the MSI K7D Master would make a perfect foundation for your new system. It is truly a fine piece of work.

Pros
Extremely stable throughout testing
Great benchmark and real-world performance
Works with non-registered DDR
Runs with Athlon XP's in SMP mode*
Best mainboard I have ever tested

Cons
No overclocking prowess
BIOS not tweaker-friendly
Costs a lot
Only one IDE cable included

Known Issues/hardware conflicts
The original BIOS revision will not allow the K7D Master to boot with any ATI Radeon 8500 based cards. The latest revision solves this issue.

Bottom Line
The combination of stability and performance that the K7D Master possesses is almost impossible to beat.

*Some newer Athlon XP's have the fifth row of the L5 bridge cut, not allowing them to work in SMP mode. Connecting the bridge the same way you would connect the L1 bridges to unlock the processor multiplier will enable MP mode on these chips.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss it in our forums.

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