Specifications
Here's some propaganda from the MSI website;
CPU
• Supports Socket A for AMD® Athlon™/Athlon™ XP/Duron™
processors @FSB 100/133/166
• Supports 600MHz up to Athlon™ XP 2700 processor or higher
Chipset
• nVIDIA® nForce2 IGP Chipset
- Integrated TV encoder
- Supports DDR266/333 with internal graphic core,
DDR266/333/400 with external add-on card (what the heck is that? can't find any info)
- AGP 3.0 8x interface at 533MHz
• nVIDIA® nForce2 MCP2 or MCP2-T Chipset
- AC97 Interface supporting up to two concurrent codecs
- Ultra ATA133 for the fastest hard disk throughput
- USB 2.0 EHCI/1.1 OHCI controller
- FireWire® and USB 2.0 for the fastest digital connectivity
- Audio Processing Unit(APU) encodes audio in Dolby® Digital 5.1
format for full surround sound effects
FSB
• 100/133/166(200/266/333)MHz clocks are supported.
Main Memory
• Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs
• Support Dual channel PC3200/2700/2100/1600 DDR SDRAMs
• Supports both 64-bit and 128-bit DDR SDRAM
• Maximum memory size of 3GB
Slots
• One AGP 1.5V 4x/8x slot
• Five 32-bit PCI bus slots (support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface)
• One ACR (Advanced Communication Riser) slot
On-Board IDE
• An IDE controller on the MCP2/MCP2-T chipset provides IDE
HDD/CDROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66
• Can connect up to four IDE devices
Serial ATA Interface
• Support 2 serial ATA plus 1 ATA133
- RAID O or 1 are supported
- RAID function works w/ATA133 SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D
• Connect up to 2 Serial ATA devices and 1 ATA133 device
In-Chip TV-out
• Integrated TV-out encoder, through external bracket
In-Chip IEEE1394
• nVIDIA MCP2-T IEEE1394 controller
- Support up to two ports via external bracket
Audio
• Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio
- Dolby Digital 5.1 format (with MCP2-T option)
Network
• Chipset integrated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet/Fast Ethernet
On-Board Peripherals
On-Board Peripherals include:
- One floppy port that supports two FDD with 360KB, 720KB,
1.44MB and 2.88MB
- 1 serial port and 1 VGA port
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 3 audio ports in vertical
- 2 IEEE1394 connectors (Optional)
- 6 USB ports (Rear * 4/ Front * 2)
- 1 RJ-45 jack
BIOS
• The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects
the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board
automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface
(DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
Dimension
30.5 cm(L) x 23 cm(W) ATX Form Factor
All-in-all, pretty much identical to every other nForce2 board out there. What was unique about this
particular package was that it includes *ALL* of the add-on connectors, as a matter of fact, if you use all
of them, they take up 5 PCI slot expansion bays and offer all the connectivity you could want, and
probably MORE than 90% of you need.
As you can see, the layout is mostly standard fare, but there are some nice features and some poopy things that I'd like to point out.
First on the good list is the inclusion of a passive heatsink on the 3phase power FETs - this is one of the 1st mods that I do to almost all motherboards as it helps stabilize things when pushing the voltages. I'm not sure what to think about the inclusion though; is it because it *needs* it, or because it's a nice thing to add? I'd leaning towards the latter... The nothbrige active cooler is also fairly stout, and the clear swizzle stick fan is a nice aesthetic touch, but no BlingBlue LED? The headers for the IDE drives are also in a pretty good spot for the case it's installed in (CoolerMaster ATCS200). I don't have an opinion yet about the SATA headers only to say that they are in a weird spot and not aligned or near each other - not a good or bad thing though. The only way the ATX header could be in a worse position was if it was between the CPU socket and the northbrigde - where it is now isn't exactly horrible, but it's not as clean of a position as if it were on the outside of the DIMM slots like the newer revisions are going to. The motherboard also uses the AUX 12v connector commonly associated with P4's and could possibly help lend to the stability of the system. I did not try unhooking this connection to see if it affected stability, so it's pure speculation at this point.
The last item on my peeve list are the expansion ports/slots; While it's cool that *all* of the optional connections for the nForce2 platform are represented, the SBracket for the AC3 and rear audio connections is a pretty poor design as it doesn't fit in any expansion slot due to the size of the optical SPDIF connection.....at the very bottom of the slot. I was thinking that maybe it's just an alignment problem with the CoolerMaster, but if that was the case, PCI and AGP cards would have this problem too. Below are pics of the included expansion ports;
 
Firewire ports
 
DBracket with 4 dual-mode red/green diagnostic LED's and USB2.0/1.1 port
 
SBracket - 6.1 Audio brakeout with 1/8"minijacks for Rear and sub/center with RCA and optical S/PDIF out
composit and SVideo breakout for onboard GF4MX
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