MSI K9A Platinum (ATi RD580+SB600) Review Intro 1/5
Bluetooth 16 Aug 2006
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MSI K9A Platinum
ATi RD580 + SB600 is ATI's
CrossFire solution chipset for the AM2 mainboard. A few months ago, we checked
out the chipset and found it to have a good feature set comparable to the NVIDIA
flavour. One of such is that it generates less heat from the chipset and
secondly the RD580 incorporates a Xpress Route which handles Dual PCIe x16
channels instead of needing two seperate chips to handle Dual PCIe x16
lanes.
Today we take a look at
another board using this chipset - MSI's K9A Platinum.
MSI K9A Platinum is a AM2 board and supports 1GHz
Hypertransport. As its chipset supports CrossFire, it enables one to tap the
power of two to improve on gaming performance. The board supports
DDR2-533/667/800. It supports 4 Slots of DIMM and up a max of 8GB of memory.
The SB600 is an improvement and replacement of NV-ULI M1575
(which is no longer available). This new South bridge solves some of the old
bugs of SB450 and supports One IDE port with Ultra DMA 66/100/133 mode. The
on-Board SATA supporst 4 SATA II ports with data transfers at up to 300 MB/s.
The board also supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by ATI® SB600.
The board also comes with 8 ch HD Azalia audio using
Realtek ALC 883, Dual LAN jack with one PCIe based GbE and one PCI based GbE.
The board also comes with IEEE1394 supported by VIA® VT6308P.
Specs
CPU
• AMD® Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64, Athlon FX and Sempron in the Socket AM2 package.
FSB
• HyperTransport supporting speed up to 1GHz (2000MT/s)
Chipset
• ATI® CrossFire™ Xpress 3200 and SB600 Chipset
Main Memory
• Supports Dual DDR II 533/667/800
- 4 DDRII DIMMs (240pin / 1.8V)
- Supports a maximum memory size up to 8GB.
Slots
• 2 PCI Express x16 slots (Support ATI CrossFire Technology)
• 2 PCI Express x1 slots
• 2 PCI slots, support 3.3V/ 5V PCI bus Interface.
On-Board IDE
• One IDE port by ATI® SB600
- Supports Ultra DMA 66/100/133 mode
- Supports PIO, Bus Master operation mode
- Can connect up to two IDE devices
On-Board SATA
• 4 SATA II ports by ATI® SB600
- Supports storage and data transfers at up to 300 MB/s
RAID Function
- SATA II 1~4 supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by ATI® SB600
MSI Reminds You...
• The RAID setup floppy disk is optional depending on the districts. You can
download the files from the website to make the setup disk.
Audio
• Chipset integrated by Realtek® ALC883
- Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
- Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec
LAN
• Dual LAN jacks
• Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller 8111B
- Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and PHY in single chip
- Supports 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s and 1000Mb/s
- Compliance with PCI-Express Bus specification v1.0a
• Realtek PCI GbLAN controller 8110S
- Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and PHY in single chip.
- Supports 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s and 1000Mb/s.
- Compliance with PCI 2.3
IEEE1394
• Chipset integrated by VIA® VT6308P
- Transfer rate is up to 400Mbps
Internal I/O Connectors
- ATX 24-pin power connector
- ATX 4-pin 12V CPU power connector
- ATX 4-pin VGA power connector
- CPU / System / NB FAN connectors
- CD-in connector
- IrDA infrared module header
- Chassis intrusion switch connector
- Front panel audio connector
- Front panel connector
- D-Bracket2 connector
- 1 x IEEE1394 connector support additional 1 ports
- 3 x USB 2.0 connector support additional 6 ports
- 1 x Floppy disk drive connector
- 4 x Serial ATA II connectors
- 1 x ATA133 HD connectors
MSI Reminds You...
• The floppy disk cable will be optional.
Back Panel I/O Ports
- 1 x Parallel port
- 1 x Serial port (COM 1)
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard
- 1 x PS/2 mouse
- 1 x Coaxial SPDIF out
- 1 x IEEE1394 Port
- 1 x 6 in 1 audio jack (S/SPDIF out)
- 4 x USB 2.0 ports
- 2 x RJ45 LAN jack
Dimension
• 30.5cm(L) x 24.5cm(W) ATX Form Factor
Mounting
• 9 mounting holes.
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