MSI: SLI Plus Eight

by Gary Key on April 11, 2006 8:00 AM EST
SLI Performance

Gaming Performance - SLI


Gaming Performance - SLI


Gaming Performance - SLI


Gaming Performance - SLI


Gaming Performance - SLI


The performance of the MSI K8N Diamond Plus in our SLI gaming benchmarks is very competitive and at times class leading. The board displayed excellent stability throughout the benchmarking process and during actual game play. We noted the temperature of our 7900GTX cards were not above normal after extended testing or game play due in part to the two slot space in between the x16 slots. We provided CrossFire results as a high level comparison between the two platforms with the ATI solution providing strong results in games that typically favor their architecture and vice-versa for games that favor the NVIDIA architecture.

Graphics Performance - SLI


Graphics Performance - SLI


Graphics Performance - SLI


The performance pattern continues in the synthetic benchmarks with the MSI board providing very consistent performance figures compared to the other SLI offerings. It is interesting to note that based upon our graphic settings, the x8 SLI based Asus A8N is just as competitive as the x16 SLI based solutions. Basically, the performance of these Socket 939 boards is so close that your choice of manufacturer and core logic chipset should be based upon features, customer support, and overall product stability.

Gaming Performance Disk Controller Performance
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  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    Agreed. However, there are alternatives if you have the PCI-E slots available. Going the add-in route also allows you to run off the PCI-E bus. 1394b can saturate the PCI bus.

    http://www.siig.com/product.asp?pid=1013">PCI-E Firewire 800 adapter
  • Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    [quote]MSI provides an SLI Video Link card that is long enough to connect two NVIDIA based video cards for SLI operation along with a digital switching method that eliminates the use of jumpers to configure SLI capability.[/quote]
    Does that switch between dual x16 and dual x16???
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    LOL Sounds like someone has been cut & pasting together reviews.
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    No cut and paste, the sentence content was corrected, lets call it an editorial difference of opinion. :)
  • decalpha - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2739&p=...">http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2739&p=...

    The MSI K8N Diamond Plus was extremely stable with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel operation
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    Corrected to DDR.
  • MIKEMIKE - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    meant that to read:

    Something about the first page irked me, it isnt a normal introduction to the item being reviewed. it seems as if that needs to be a second page, and a new first page drafted up.
  • redbone75 - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    I may be mistaken, but I think it's called an introduction.
  • MIKEMIKE - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    Something withthe layout, and introduction of the mobo irked me and turned me off of the review in general, not sure what specifically though.
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link

    Thanks for the comments. At times we try different layouts, some work, some do not, but hopefully we progress for the better over time.

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