- Jan 20, 2004
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Well I have now had my K9A2 Platinum (Quad Crossfire board) for a week or so and it has been one of the most easiest mobo's I've worked on to get up and running. I have come from an Abit based mobo which had problems booting after flashing the video card bios (other users have noticed this on XS) however this MSI board had no such problems. Board Layout is great and can be seen Here. A low profile heatpipe solution is employed- most notably on the SB, which makes installing long video cards (9") like my 2900XT (or 8800's) easy. There are 4 Sata connectors on the board and 2 e-sata connectors all located near the edge in addition to the IDE+24v Power slots which is handy, the only thing I could say to improve on is to put the Floppy connector up the top right near the DIMM slots so the FDD cable need not stretch across the board and clutter the cables but thats a minor thing.
I am using a 5000+ Black edition (Brisbane 65nm G2 stepping) and cooling it with a Zalman 9700CNPS. I tried installing a Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme however I could not for the life of me get it to install due to the push pins provided in the provided AM2 mounting kit being quite inadequate and not long enough (or perhaps I was doing it wrong-I tried for an hour and it didn't work
). I commend Zalman for the easy installation of their 9700CNPS it literally took me 10 seconds once the heatsink was seated (I used Arctic cooling MX-2 paste) to hook the clip from the cooler onto the AM2 bracket on the motherboard (which has a provided backplate to ensure there is no warping) and I was done! Much simpler than what I have come across installing the Ultra 120E on LGA775 motherboards.
Onto the fun stuff. Firstly it must be said that this board has VERY LITTLE VDROOP I am not sure if It's MSI, the RD790 chipset or what but whatever the Vcore value set in the BIOS it is rock solid idle in windows (to be expected) and at a maximum, drops 0.008v under full load (Orthos Blend/ Small FFT) maybe I am too used to my Intel rig but that is damn good. Overclocking is still a work in progress however I am currently at 3.2ghz 200x16 1.424vcore 1.175vNB DDR800 @ 3-3-3-9 (2.25v). Load temps after 1hr Orthos blend don't peak above 40c with 20c ambient temps (It's summer here so AC is on). I still think there is a fair bit more juice I can extract from this 5000BE, next step is going 4-4-4-12 dropping multi to 14 and cranking up the HT.
CPU-Z Validation
Overall I am very impressed with MSI for making a really solid board and the way things are going, It's still a work in progress so I'll update this post as things change. If there are any other K9A2 Platinum users out there I'd like to hear your results and OC's. I plan on getting a Phenom down the track once B3 stepping hits but for now K8 is the workhorse.
Full spec sheet here
Update: Just got 2 HIS IceQ3 Turbo 3850 512's for Crossfire with this board and things went very smoothly- when running 2 cards be sure to put them in th dark blue PCI-E slots and use the crossfire bridges supplied by MSI, they are longer and the dark blue slots allow PCI-E 2.0 16x with all its 8gb/s goodness. AMD Overdrive works like a Charm with the latest 1.2 BIOS from MSI no problems there. I am currently running 250x13 3.25ghz 1.46vcore memory 1:2 928mhz @ 4-4-4-12 2.2v HT @ 1250mhz stable for 1 hr AOD stress test, will do longer when I get them time but for now its rock solid Stable in Crysis (perhaps the best stability test ).
EDIT 2: Just tried the onboard sound and WOW- my music plays better with onboard sound than with my Bluegears B-Enspire sound card (based on the Cmedia chipset). I know it's probably one of the most subjective sings you can say however *I* can clearly tell a difference, well done Realtek- the ALC888 chipset on this board is amazing.
EDIT 3: Official 1.4 BIOS out now, installed and working fine. Also, MSI have a multitude of Beta and performance BIOS's on their FTP site for use with the K9A2 Plat. After sending in a ticket to MSI's feedback program for them to add adjustable PCI-E frequency I got a response the next day which is good in my book- and they appear to have added that in a recent BETA (AMD7376ACI.103). I hope to be picking up a B3 once I can find them in stock anywhere, will report back then.
I am using a 5000+ Black edition (Brisbane 65nm G2 stepping) and cooling it with a Zalman 9700CNPS. I tried installing a Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme however I could not for the life of me get it to install due to the push pins provided in the provided AM2 mounting kit being quite inadequate and not long enough (or perhaps I was doing it wrong-I tried for an hour and it didn't work
). I commend Zalman for the easy installation of their 9700CNPS it literally took me 10 seconds once the heatsink was seated (I used Arctic cooling MX-2 paste) to hook the clip from the cooler onto the AM2 bracket on the motherboard (which has a provided backplate to ensure there is no warping) and I was done! Much simpler than what I have come across installing the Ultra 120E on LGA775 motherboards. Onto the fun stuff. Firstly it must be said that this board has VERY LITTLE VDROOP I am not sure if It's MSI, the RD790 chipset or what but whatever the Vcore value set in the BIOS it is rock solid idle in windows (to be expected) and at a maximum, drops 0.008v under full load (Orthos Blend/ Small FFT) maybe I am too used to my Intel rig but that is damn good. Overclocking is still a work in progress however I am currently at 3.2ghz 200x16 1.424vcore 1.175vNB DDR800 @ 3-3-3-9 (2.25v). Load temps after 1hr Orthos blend don't peak above 40c with 20c ambient temps (It's summer here so AC is on
). I still think there is a fair bit more juice I can extract from this 5000BE, next step is going 4-4-4-12 dropping multi to 14 and cranking up the HT. CPU-Z Validation
Overall I am very impressed with MSI for making a really solid board and the way things are going, It's still a work in progress so I'll update this post as things change. If there are any other K9A2 Platinum users out there I'd like to hear your results and OC's. I plan on getting a Phenom down the track once B3 stepping hits but for now K8 is the workhorse.
Full spec sheet here
Update: Just got 2 HIS IceQ3 Turbo 3850 512's for Crossfire with this board and things went very smoothly- when running 2 cards be sure to put them in th dark blue PCI-E slots and use the crossfire bridges supplied by MSI, they are longer and the dark blue slots allow PCI-E 2.0 16x with all its 8gb/s goodness. AMD Overdrive works like a Charm with the latest 1.2 BIOS from MSI no problems there. I am currently running 250x13 3.25ghz 1.46vcore memory 1:2 928mhz @ 4-4-4-12 2.2v HT @ 1250mhz stable for 1 hr AOD stress test, will do longer when I get them time but for now its rock solid Stable in Crysis (perhaps the best stability test
).EDIT 2: Just tried the onboard sound and WOW- my music plays better with onboard sound than with my Bluegears B-Enspire sound card (based on the Cmedia chipset). I know it's probably one of the most subjective sings you can say however *I* can clearly tell a difference, well done Realtek- the ALC888 chipset on this board is amazing.
EDIT 3: Official 1.4 BIOS out now, installed and working fine
. Also, MSI have a multitude of Beta and performance BIOS's on their FTP site for use with the K9A2 Plat. After sending in a ticket to MSI's feedback program for them to add adjustable PCI-E frequency I got a response the next day which is good in my book- and they appear to have added that in a recent BETA (AMD7376ACI.103). I hope to be picking up a B3 once I can find them in stock anywhere, will report back then.
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