Anybody use MSI K8N Neo3-F board?

[Zap]

This is a socket 754 Nforce4 board with PCI-E 16X and "AGR" slot, which is a pseudo AGP slot wired probably into the PCI. I think MSI states that it is a PCI 4X slot or something like that.

Newegg has it for $75

One Newegg review mentioned getting 2.7GHz from a 3200+ (2.0GHz) so it appears the board is overclockable. I'm wondering how much performance hit from the "AGR" slot because this looks to be a reasonable motherboard with an upgrade path. I can recycle RAM/video and use a Sempron 3100+ CPU I have laying around.

Anybody around here ever seen one of these in person? What's BIOS like? Vcore?

I might buy one of these - choosing between it and an Epox 8KDAI for a budget overclocking platform for the CPU/RAM/AGP video I already have.

 

[TStep]

Review. Was flipping through and found a review. The article was thinking the AGR is though the PCI-e at 2x not the PCI.

Edit: Got me curious. Needs to be translated, but I found this . Seems like a pretty big hit in performance over the AGR. If you click on the comparison set of pics (on top of the page) the AGP card is registered on the PCIx0 bus.

 

[Zap]

Thanks for the links. The second one was not comparing AGP to AGR, was PCI-E to AGR. However, quite a big performance difference.

The first link... was disappointed with their lack of overclocking success. In my experience some MSI boards overclock really high and some just don't want to - hit or miss. The CPU that will probably go in there is a 2800+ that will POST at 2.7GHz and will run stable at 2.5GHz. Would be a shame if I can barely hit 2GHz on that MSI board.

Just looked up the AGR compatibility list (PDF file from MSIcomputer.com) and the card I intend to use is not listed. The card is an MSI 5900XT and though the 5900 and 5900 Ultra are listed, the 5900XT is not. That worries me as I would think MSI has access to all their own cards to test for compatibility. However, one of Newegg's user reviews stated that a couple of cards were tested by the end user and worked fine even though they aren't on the "list."

Still thinking...