MSI: SLI Plus Eight

Final Words

The MSI K8N Diamond Plus offers one of the more impressive feature sets on a Socket 939 board that we have tested and is available for around US $190. The overall performance of the board was excellent and at times class leading. The stability of the board was superb in our benchmark, gaming sessions, and general application testing. However, the heatsink layout, size, and use of a cooling fan on the Northbridge chipset could have been executed better. We are also perplexed at the lack of passive cooling for the VRM components considering the board is targeted at the AMD enthusiast market. We believe MSI should take a closer look at the Asus and Abit passive cooling solutions for their next board design. With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.



In the video area, the inclusion of dual PCI Express x16 connector provides full SLI support with sixteen PCI Express lanes per graphics connector. The performance of the board under general video and SLI testing was at times class leading while maintaining excellent stability across a wide range of games and applications. The performance and stability with the current range of NVIDIA graphics cards was very good in both stock and overclocked settings. The close proximity of the C51D Northbridge heatsink to the first PCI Express x16 connector will prevent users with modified cooling solutions from utilizing this slot. MSI provides an SLI Video Link card that is long enough to connect two NVIDIA based video cards for SLI operation. The x4 PCI slot will accept a PCI-E video card but it will only work in x2 transfer mode and cannot be combined with the two x16 slots for accelerated 3D graphics capability.

In the on-board audio area, the MSI board offers the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE audio codec. The audio output of this codec along with the Wolfson WM8775 ADC and Cirus Logic CS4382 DAC in the music, video, and DVD area is very good for an on-board solution. The audio quality in gaming was clearly better than the Realtek HD solutions but did not match the output of the Sound Blaster X-FI. If you plan on utilizing this board for extensive gaming, then you might still want to purchase an add-in sound card for additional features and slightly better performance; however, we have no hesitations in recommending the Sound Blaster Audigy SE for the majority of users looking to save money on a discrete audio solution.

In the storage area, the MSI board offers the full compliment of storage options afforded by the NVIDIA nForec4 and SiL3132 chipsets. The board offers RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 ability with SATA 3Gb/s and dual channel ATA133 Ultra DMA support via the nForce4 chipset. SATA 3Gb/s, NCQ, and Hot Plug capability is provided by the Silicon Image 3132 chipset. The performance of the NVIDIA and Silicon Image controllers were very good but still trailed the ATI/ULi SATA and IDE controllers slightly.

IEEE 1394 capability is provided by the VIA VT6306 chipset with a single port being provided on the I/O panel along with a PCI backplane for access to the two on-board headers. The MSI board offers ten USB 2.0 ports when utilizing the three USB 2.0 headers and four ports on the I/O panel. The performance of the NVIDIA USB 2.0 solution is very competitive with those offered by Intel or ULi and clearly better than the current ATI offering. We never witnessed any incompatibilities with the USB or Firewire ports during testing with several peripherals.

In the networking area, the MSI board offers the PCI-E based Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet controller along with the PCI based Marvell 88E1115 Ethernet PHY. Both solutions offer excellent throughput performance and very competitive CPU utilization rates. NVIDIA's recent driver tweaks have substantially addressed the data corruption issues with the ActiveArmor engine while still maintaining a balance of performance and stability compared to other solutions.

In the performance area, the MSI board generated excellent benchmark scores across the board while maintaining superb stability during testing and general usage. The board's overclocking performance was very good at stock multiplier settings while being disappointing during our maximum HTT overclocking tests. We were unable to reach the 300HTT setting during our testing, but that hopefully can be resolved with a new board or possibly further BIOS tweaks. While the current overclocking levels will not be acceptable for the hardcore overclocking crowd, they should suffice nicely for the general enthusiast users.



The MSI K8N Diamond Plus is a well rounded platform that offers a high degree of performance and stability. We have to give MSI credit for taking the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 chipset and improving upon the feature set and ,in most cases, performance relative to other boards in the general enthusiast market. MSI wisely chose their peripheral options with a unique audio solution from Creative Labs, class leading IEEE 1394A performance from VIA, and one of the best PCI-E based Gigabit Ethernet controllers from Marvel.

While we sing the praises of the board, we must also be aware of the faults, minor ones at that, but enough to make us wonder what MSI was thinking during the design development phase of this board. The location and size of the Northbridge heatsink along with a fan limits the cooling options available for the CPU and custom GPU cooling solutions. While MSI set out to provide a passive cooling solution for the board, they apparently got lost at the Northbridge, and never made it to the PVM area - an area that begs for passive cooling considering this board is targets the enthusiast crowd. Our limitation in not reaching the 300HTT level also underscores a potential issue for a board that was designed with the overclocker in mind, including a BIOS that now begs the user to find the board's limits, limits that come too quickly in our opinion.

We can think of several boards that offer similar performance and options for a lower price, but none that offer the ability to utilize SLI in full x16 capability while providing class leading performance and stability. This board has a personality, one that we really like but at times drives us crazy, like a sibling or close friend is apt to do occasionally. A minor change here and there would result in a board that would be very difficult not to absolutely recommend. If these annoyances are acceptable, then by all means do not hesitate to purchase this board. If not, we're hoping MSI gets it completely right when AM2 is launched.