bit-tech Shopping: MSI S775 Intel P35 DDR2 ATX Audio Lan supports Core 2 Duo + Core 2 Quad

• Intel Celeron D
• Intel Core 2 Duo
• Intel Core 2 Extreme
• Intel Pentium 4
• Intel Pentium D
• Intel Pentium Extreme Edition

• Audio - Bass/Center Audio Out Jack
• Audio - Line In (1/8" Mini)
• Audio - Line Out (1/8" Mini)
• Audio - Microphone In (1/8" Mini)
• Audio - Optical (S/PDIF)
• Audio - Rear Surround Audio Out Jack
• Audio - Side Surround Audio Out Jack
• Ethernet - RJ45 Twisted-Pair (XBaseT)
• IEEE 1394 - 6 pin Powered
• Keyboard - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2)
• Mouse - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2)
• Serial ATA - 7 pin
• USB - Universal Serial Bus 2.0

• Floppy - 34 pin Header
• Front Audio
• IDE - ATA/EIDE/ATAPI 40 pin
• IEEE 1394a
• Serial ATA - 7 pin
• Serial RS-232
• USB 2.0

• Floppy Controller
• IDE (Ultra ATA 133) Controller
• RAID Controller
• SATA 3Gbps (Serial ATA II)

Rating: 8

Time with product: 4 Months

Strengths: Easy to overclock; Effective fancy looping heatsink on chipset; very stable.

Weaknesses: Power consumption; crossfiring two ATI video card requires a power supply of 600W and up on this motherboard.

Summary: With a power supply of 500W and standard 667MHz DDR2, I was able to overclock a quad core Q6600 with MSI P35 Platinum Motherboard to 3.2 GHZ without having to pump up the CPU voltage. This MSI P35 Platinum motherboard is rock solid and stable for overclocking. However, when I tried to use two ATI HD2600XT video cards on two PCIe x16 in crossfire mode, the other cards on the PCIe x1 slots could no longer be detected by Windows Vista 64. Apparently, the video cards and the motherboard were fighting for the limited current coming out of the two 12V rails of the 500W power supply. I resorted to using only one video card until I have a higher wattage power supply. I highly recommend this motherboard for overclocking with sufficient power supply.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 14

Strengths: Excellent cooling system on the chipset, perfectly spaced interface slots, space for 8Gb of RAM and two x16 graphics cards. DDR2 and DDR3 support!

Weaknesses: A little short on regular PCI slots so more than 2 tuners in an HTPC is going to be a challenge. Couldn't get the I/O plate to attach correctly.

Summary: I've used MSI boards before and been less than impressed; however, I took a chance on this one because it offered a lot of clearance for a passively cooled Radeon HD card. Turns out I got a lot more for my money than I thought I would. The cooling system on the chipset is very efficient and does not interfere at all with the cooling system on my CPU. Even better, the fan from the CPU provides cooling directly on the innovative heatpipe/heatsink on the chipset. With support two PCIe cards and room for 8Gb of RAM (either DDR2 or DDR3!), this motherboard is awesome. I only had one glitch during installation: I couldn't get the I/O plate to play nice with the ports on the back so I just left it off. Even the drivers installed with Vista Ultimate without a hitch. THAT's saying something!

Rating: 4

Time with product: 8 Months

Strengths: Quiet "Rollercoaster" Cooling, convenient jumper extenders, onboard diagnostic LEDs, quality capacitors, eSATA ports, good overclocking recovery system and onboard sound

Weaknesses: BIOS revisions do not work properly with default/auto options, misleading BIOS configuration instructions, 2 SATA ports are blocked if you use a video card that takes up two slots.

Summary: Installing Vista Ultimate on Raid 0 was a piece of cake. The setup didn't ask for drivers and that's a good thing because I didn't have a floppy drive. This board is a well-engineered motherboard with a unique cooling system with lots of room around the processor socket for aftermarket coolers. It has an onboard BIOS reset button with diagnostic LEDs that help narrow down POST-related problems. It also has a 200/266/333 FSB jumper on the motherboard. This jumper can cause your auto/default BIOS settings to work unpredictably and cause alot of headaches. Just leave it at the default 200 Mhz and do not use it. If you are thinking of running Crossfire/SLI at full PCIe x16 speeds, this board is not for you. It also does not have any parallel or serial ports. Other than the blocking of the SATA ports when using big video card, the biggest flaw with this board is the BIOS. The 1.1 version that ships with the board does not work stably at the default/auto settings. 1.2 and 1.3 revisions are even worse. Things get better from version 1.4 but even with the latest version 1.6, the board does not work properly (for me) using the default/auto settings and some of you may have to manually configure everything in the Cell Menu. Hopefully they will have this fixed in 1.7.UPDATE: Bios Rev. 1.7 fixed the problems I mentioned above. I can now run default/auto settings without any problems.UPDATE 2: Board died after 3-4 months of use. Paid $24 shipping for RMA. Got back repaired board after a couple weeks. There are problems with Intel's chipset and RAID drivers that causes stuttering and preventing PCIE from working at 16x potential. The latest drivers fix this.UPDATE 3: Board died again around 8 month mark after a BIOS upgrade.