K8N Diamond Plus may be best SLI-16 board! ?

PeterAlt

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2005
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Wow, this silent heat-sinking board seems to have EVERYTHING, including SoundBlaster Audigy SE and EAX Advanced HD.

It looks like it has much of the same features as the Asus SLI-32 Deluxe, but with HD sound and possibly Bluetooth. I'm sketchy on the details and ask all of you to help me find more info on it, including merchants who carry it, their prices, any have it in slock, and are any taking pre-orders.

I had placed a pre-order for an Asus 32-SLI Deluxe, but the merchant has not yet gotten their shipment in. I just learned about this MSI model, and I may just cancel that Asus order and order or pre-order one of these babies!

So far, comparing the two boards feature for feature, the only shortcoming I see in the MSI is that it has 2 regular PCI expansion slots, versus e on the Asus model. But, if the board has really good audio, then it won't be necessary to add a PCI audio card (which I was planning on doing with the Asus board), and the lost slot bay is a null point!

I'm excited about this board and eager to learn more about it on time to make a decision to cancel the Asus order before they ship it!
 

nRollo

Banned
Jan 11, 2002
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Originally posted by: PeterAlt
Wow, this silent heat-sinking board seems to have EVERYTHING, including SoundBlaster Audigy SE and EAX Advanced HD.

It looks like it has much of the same features as the Asus SLI-32 Deluxe, but with HD sound and possibly Bluetooth. I'm sketchy on the details and ask all of you to help me find more info on it, including merchants who carry it, their prices, any have it in slock, and are any taking pre-orders.

I had placed a pre-order for an Asus 32-SLI Deluxe, but the merchant has not yet gotten their shipment in. I just learned about this MSI model, and I may just cancel that Asus order and order or pre-order one of these babies!

So far, comparing the two boards feature for feature, the only shortcoming I see in the MSI is that it has 2 regular PCI expansion slots, versus e on the Asus model. But, if the board has really good audio, then it won't be necessary to add a PCI audio card (which I was planning on doing with the Asus board), and the lost slot bay is a null point!

I'm excited about this board and eager to learn more about it on time to make a decision to cancel the Asus order before they ship it!



I think they discontinued these long ago? They aren't even listed on MSIs product page
 

nRollo

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Jan 11, 2002
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SunnyD

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Jan 2, 2001
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www.neftastic.com
Too bad it's MSI. :(

I have never had a good MSI board come through my doors. First time I tried it got replaced by an ABIT, second try was with an ASUS, and third strike was just an RMA for a refund. The other two boards still work fine to this day, as does my newest member - DFI.
 

nRollo

Banned
Jan 11, 2002
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Originally posted by: SunnyD
Too bad it's MSI. :(

I have never had a good MSI board come through my doors. First time I tried it got replaced by an ABIT, second try was with an ASUS, and third strike was just an RMA for a refund. The other two boards still work fine to this day, as does my newest member - DFI.


I've never had a bad MSI board. My K8 NEO is on a friends network still, and the SLI board in my sons box is rock stable.
 

standard141

Member
Jun 11, 2005
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board looks sweet however i hope it has a higher vcore than 2.5 cuz i wont buy it if it doesnt. i need 2.85 to run my ocz ram :( anyway i emailed this etailer citrus micro somewhere in illinois who has it for preorder and they said it probably wont be more than 159 give or take. i asked him about the vcore but they dont even know about the specs, he did say that it will be out in about 3 weeks maybe earlier.

heres the link:

Citrus Micro
 

PeterAlt

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2005
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Thanks "mega much"!

Now, I need to decide quickly whether or not I should cancel my Asus SLI-16 Deluxe order from another merchant who I pre-ordered it with and that merchant STILL hasn't gotten it in yet!

Well, the sound on the MSI is a major factor in my temptation to switch. If I stick with Asus, I'm getting an HD sound "daughter" card with a 3D processor that comes with this CD/DVD drive I'm getting, so my thinking is just to pass that sound down to the motherboard, but the MSI card still will have much better sound!

Also, I'm going to need another expansion slot because I plan on getting a second MCE-compliant TV tuner card (its a home theater PC I'm building). I currently have a Visiontech ATI 550 Pro-based card. Nvidia makes a dual tuner PCI card, and my originally thinking was to dump the ATI 550 Pro, but the reviews I've seen all give the ATI card far better approval. With one less PCI bus on the MSI motherboard, I would not be able to stack up multiple tuner cards, like I planned....

....HOWEVER, today I learned about the Powercolor ATI 550 Pro PCI-e card!! Well, I knew about it earlier but I was of the impression that it used a PCI-e x16 bus. For that reason, I never considered it since the second PCI-e x16 slot is where my second silent heatsinked Aopen 6600-based SLI-enabling card is going! BUT, today, I learned that the new Powercolor ATI PCI-e Theater 550 Pro card goes not in the PCI-e x16 slot, but in the (what I had thought to be totally useless before today)... the empty, never planned on being used PCI-e x1 slot!

But I still loose a regular PCI slot if I go with MSI, but I won't need to add a PCI sound card with it, which I would have ended up having to get (maybe)....

I really hate making decisions!

-- undecided
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Aug 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: Rollo
Originally posted by: SunnyD
Too bad it's MSI. :(

I have never had a good MSI board come through my doors. First time I tried it got replaced by an ABIT, second try was with an ASUS, and third strike was just an RMA for a refund. The other two boards still work fine to this day, as does my newest member - DFI.


I've never had a bad MSI board. My K8 NEO is on a friends network still, and the SLI board in my sons box is rock stable.
I had several of K7T series all go belly up from the bad caps fiasco, one took the PSU with it. Even the RMA replacements I ordered for the first 2 went belly up, 1 inside of 2 weeks! Swore them off for years after that. I was 1 of the most vocal critics of MSI during that time too.

Well, I was building a dual opteron system and decided to gamble on their K8T Master2 since it was dirt cheap, even less than the low-end Tyan, and had limited overclocking capability. It turned out to be a very good board aside from using Xeon cooling :confused: So when you recommended the K8N SLI I decided to gamble again since I was getting it for $113 in the Mwave X2 combo with HL2 coupon too. This board serves my needs very nicely, is rock solid stable as you noted, overclocks well with the right bios, and the 24bit SBLive has me saying "Soundstorm who?"

The only thing I am still leary about is the caps they use, I plan to keep this board a few years so longevity will be tested.
 

solofly

Banned
May 25, 2003
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MSI is second after Asus in my book. I would get MSI over DFI for example any day of the week. On board sound card and stuff like that don't matter to me cause I prefer the real thing such as the new X-Fi. I saw the picture of the new MSI x16 and I like it but it ain't no Asus.;)
 

standard141

Member
Jun 11, 2005
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honestly id say wait and see because if the price is aboud 50 dollars less than the asus and it performs better then the msi is a far better deal than the asus. just my 2 cents
 

phusg

Junior Member
Mar 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
This board serves my needs very nicely, is rock solid stable as you noted, overclocks well with the right bios, and the 24bit SBLive has me saying "Soundstorm who?"

Hmmm, don't forget soundstorm was a Dolby Digital Live (DDL) chip that could encode a AC3 stream in real-time. 24bit SBLive won't do that for you and nor will any X-Fi chip. I want soundstorm back too :(

Point taken about longevity of caps though. I'm no engineer, but I suspect this is also related to the quality of the power circuitry. The ASUS is 8(!!!)phase, which is certainly good for stability of the processor, I'm not sure yet how many this MSI board has.

Bear in mind that for the passive heatsink/heatpipe to work properly on these boards they cannot be mounted upside down (as is the case in certain, er, cases).


 

Superguy

Member
Sep 12, 2005
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Any word on what the price would be?

I heard that MSI would start shipping it around now.

The Asus is a rip off at $269 at Newegg. :thumbsdown:

Just hope it works well with the X2's.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Originally posted by: phusg
Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
This board serves my needs very nicely, is rock solid stable as you noted, overclocks well with the right bios, and the 24bit SBLive has me saying "Soundstorm who?"

Hmmm, don't forget soundstorm was a Dolby Digital Live (DDL) chip that could encode a AC3 stream in real-time. 24bit SBLive won't do that for you and nor will any X-Fi chip. I want soundstorm back too :(

Point taken about longevity of caps though. I'm no engineer, but I suspect this is also related to the quality of the power circuitry. The ASUS is 8(!!!)phase, which is certainly good for stability of the processor, I'm not sure yet how many this MSI board has.

Bear in mind that for the passive heatsink/heatpipe to work properly on these boards they cannot be mounted upside down (as is the case in certain, er, cases).
Yes sir, it blows the manufacturers dumped the APU largely in favor of realtek. I'm just stoked a few have chosen to go with a better hardware based solution. Most of the last 4yrs I've had at least 1 nF1 or 2 based system in my home with the nV APU.

It has been a trade off for certain, while the lack of on the fly DDL is a big minus, the far superior analogue output of the SBLive is the big plus on its side :)

I ahdn't considered the orientation of the heatpipe, it'll be interesting to see if any issues stem from it over time.
 

phusg

Junior Member
Mar 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
I ahdn't considered the orientation of the heatpipe, it'll be interesting to see if any issues stem from it over time.

There are issues already. See the comments section of the Asus review here on Anandtech (I think) for someone who's already run into this with a Lian Li V-1000 (I think) case.

Didn't think about the quality of the analogue output, good to hear that's of a high standard. My nforce1 games PC is jacked up analogly(?!?) at the moment. The DDL interests me mainly for my HTPC, which in the future should be a great games PC too given a HDTV!

I can't believe the Asus is going to start selling for $269. The MSI will probably be priced similarly.

Does this MSI also include the bundled bluetooth and WiFi of the previous Diamond Deluxe whatever?
 

DAPUNISHER

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Aug 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: phusg
Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
I ahdn't considered the orientation of the heatpipe, it'll be interesting to see if any issues stem from it over time.

There are issues already. See the comments section of the Asus review here on Anandtech (I think) for someone who's already run into this with a Lian Li V-1000 (I think) case.

Didn't think about the quality of the analogue output, good to hear that's of a high standard. My nforce1 games PC is jacked up analogly(?!?) at the moment. The DDL interests me mainly for my HTPC, which in the future should be a great games PC too given a HDTV!

I can't believe the Asus is going to start selling for $269. The MSI will probably be priced similarly.

Does this MSI also include the bundled bluetooth and WiFi of the previous Diamond Deluxe whatever?
Well it remains to be seen if MSI's heatpipe solution suffers issues, and it seems like it is too early to pin anything on the Asus implementation just yet?

You know, this musing on the APU made remember I have used another MSI the last couple years. I bought a MSI K7N420 Pro from the FS/FT here that was a working pull from a Micron system. The board is still in 1 of my nephews systems with a old spitfire Duron chugging along nicely on the G2MX IGP&the MCP-D.

Now if I understand it correctly, almost without exception, the board makers used better CODECs and DACs than the realtek, so the analogue sound quality should be better on most nF1 boards with the APU than the nF2 with the crabs on them. For gaming the only thing holding you back is sktA, but for most HTPC usage it'll be great.

I'm not certain if the Diamond Plus will have the bluetooth and WiFi bundle, but it seems probable to me.

For now though, it seems no SoundStorm=No DICE (Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder) :p I wonder if they ever marketed that slogan- No SoundStorm? No DICE!
 

PeterAlt

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2005
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Just wondering -- If I do end up with the Asus board, I do not want to "waste" the six mini input/outputs and the spif coax/fiber optic outputs by disabling the board's sound all-together. I was wondering if I "pass through" sound generated by a processor I would add would cause any work-load on the CPU, if the 7.1 codec is enabled? Also, would "pass through" without the 7.1 codec enabled, concerning CPU work-load, be just as if I had a separate sound processor output directly to a speaker/amplifier system (assuming the sound processor I use processes the sound independently from the CPU)?
 

PeterAlt

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2005
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I think I made a mistake by giving up on this and ording an Abit AN8-SLI. I haven't gotten it yet, but I took a close look at the specs, as published by the merchant I bought it from, and it is not the same board that motherboards.org had reviewed. It doesn't have HD audio or firewire B, so I'll probably mail it back once I get it and wait on line for the MSI Diamond Plus!
 

standard141

Member
Jun 11, 2005
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im waiting cuz i dont want ac97 onboard lol and i dont wanna buy a soundcard. i really hope the vcore is better than the k8n diamond otherwise all the waiting ive done
will be for nothing
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
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I think the Asus mobo is just gorgeous (MSI uses too many flamboyant colors IMO), but if this MSI is a lot cheaper, i'm gonna get very interested, since i've been quite happy with my Neo2.
And yeah, teh Asus is just disgustingly overpriced, as is the DFI Expert :(