Techaddicts.net-MSI K7N2G nForce 2 Motherboard Review

Review by: Daniel

Date:4/30/03

Provided by: MSI

MSI is well known for making motherboards that are high in quality. Today we take a look at the MSI K7N2G-ILSR, which is a motherboard that features the nVIDIA nForce 2 IGP and MCP-T Chipsets. The nForce 2 in general supports DualDDR and DDR400, and AGP8x which is a big leap from the original nForce SPP. This chipset is also the fastest currently for the AMD K7 platform. It features Hyper-Transport technology that was developed by AMD for their own chipsets. Hyper-Transport allows the data that is transferred to and from the northbridge and southbridge even faster and efficient than VIA's 533mb/s V-Link Solution in the VIA KT333 and KT400 chipsets. Let’s have a look at the K7N2G-ILSR now.

On the back of the box, we see that this board has a lot of features. Starting from the top, it features AGP8x, Serial ATA, 5.1 Channel nVidia Soundstorm integrated sound, IEEE1394 Firewire port, the MSI D-Bracket 2 with LED's for troubleshooting, Fuzzy Logic 4 which features software overclocking from within Windows, Live Update 2 is software that updates drivers and bios from the internet, and finally PC Alert 4 which is basically a software temperature and voltage monitor for Windows. These are a lot of features that come with this motherboard, and add to the value of it. Notice that I mentioned that the board features nVidia Soundstorm 5.1 channel sound. This motherboard is one of few nForce 2 motherboards that have the Soundstorm built-in. It also carries the Dolby-Digital logo, which means it's Dolby certified. This is good for users and system integrators who want to have 5.1 Dolby-Digital sound out of the box.

Included inside the box are the manual, driver CD, a promise driver disk, the manual, and some bonus software. They also give you two SerialATA cables, 2 IDE ribbon cables and an I/O plate for the back of the case. I wish MSI would give its customers an IDE to SerialATA adapter for people who do not have SerialATA hard drives yet, so they can at least get a taste of SerialATA technology. Abit has been known to bundle one adapter with some of their motherboards for the same price as the K7N2G. A domed MSI sticker is also included to put on the front of your case.

This bracket features both a powered Firewire IEEE1394 port, and an non-powered Firewire port.

This bracket that comes with the motherboard is what makes it Dolby Certified. This bracket has the optical sound out, composite sound out, rear speakers out, and finally the subwoofer channel-out.

This is MSI's D-Bracket, which features four diagnostic LED's, which make up combinations to tell the user what is wrong with the computer. For example, all 4 lights are green, which means that the system is working properly. The LED's will turn red if there is something wrong with the motherboard, from bios failures to memory controller problems. MSI states that this D-Bracket is helpful for overclockers, because it tells them if the memory is clocked too high or the CPU is clocked too high, or not enough voltage. There is also a USB 2.0 port next to the LED's, there are 5 total USB 2.0 ports on this motherboard.

The K7N2G-ILSR features the nForce 2 IGP, which means it has an Integrated Graphics Processor. The graphics processor is the NV17 based GeForce 4 MX. It doesn't tell you which GeForce 4 MX series it is, but from the benchmarks conducted, it is rather close to a GeForce 4 MX 440. Since this motherboard has integrated video, MSI includes a bracket which has Composite TV-out, and S-Video Out.

This is the MSI K7N2G-ILSR itself. You can see that the color scheme is really nice. From the red motherboard PCB to the purple and green memory slots. This motherboard will really look good in a case with a window modification. Lets go over the different components and slots on the motherboard. There is a socket 462 for an AMD Duron, Athlon, or Athlon XP. The nForce 2 supports the 333mhz FSB, and it has theoretical support for 400mhz FSB bartons. There are 5 PCI slots, and one blue ACR slot.

The yellow IDE ports allow for up to 5 IDE devices, the third IDE port only supports one IDE device to allow the 2 SATA ports to work.

Under the sleek looking northbridge fan, there is the nForce 2 IGP, which features an intergrated GeForce 4 MX that is rated at MX ~440 speeds when using an Athlon 2100+ or greater, with at least 256mb of ram. The speeds of the IGP really depend on the memory speed along with processor speed. The red slot is for the AGP video card. It supports AGP8x.

3 memory slots (purple and green slots) allow for DualDDR. To utilize DualDDR, you need to have one stick of memory in the green slot, and either one or two of the purple memory slots need to be populated. nVIDIA states that you need two sticks of DDR400 to utilize the full power of DualDDR.

Also this motherboard requires the standard ATX power connector along with the P4 power connector. Having two power connectors allows maximum CPU and Memory stability.

The heatsinks placed on top of the MOSFET amplifiers, should allow greater stability and overclockability.

On the back of the motherboard, there are two PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and mouse, Four USB2.0 ports, one serial port, one parallel port, the VGA out port, one 10/100 Ethernet port, and jacks for audio out, audio in, and microphone.

This is the nForce 2 MCP-T, it is a southbridge responsible for IDE, Audio, and the 10/100 Ethernet

The Promise PDC20376 chip is responsible for one ATA/133 port, allowing up to 133mb/s to be transfered. It also controls both SerialATA ports. The SerialATA ports allow up to 150mb/s transfer rate, and the use of the SerialATA cable, which should make your case neater. SerialATA Drives are beginning to show up on the market now, and they should become the standard within a couple of years.

Here is a picture of the SerialATA connector, and the picture of the cable plugged in. Notice how much smaller it is compared to the IDE ports. Also in the second picture it shows the red wire that the SerialATA uses, even smaller than a rounded IDE cable and more flexible.

This is the K7N2G next to the fairly new Gigabyte GA-7VAXP. Notice both have stunning color PCB and nice layout. One problem that I found in the MSI K7N2G's IDE ports is that they are facing horizontally, while the GA-7VAXP IDE ports are facing vertical. I find it easier to plug in the IDE cables when they are vertical, because if you have a mid-size or bigger case, the drives will tend to be higher, requiring a longer cable. This problem is very minor, and should not be considered to be bad enough not to consider buying this board.

This is the main page of the BIOS. The MSI K7N2G utilizes the AwardBIOS, which is found in almost every motherboard. Lets have a look at the BIOS.

This is the part of the BIOS where user would commonly change the boot device priority, and change other boot options. Notice that you can turn the full screen logo during the start up of the BIOS on and off. This is convenient if you want to see the boot up procedure, like the clock speed, and the memory speed.

This is the integrated peripherals page. This controls most of the features located in the nForce 2 MCP-T. Under the Onboard Super I/O device menu, there is a simple Enable/Disable option to turn on and off the floppy drive controller.

Under the IDE Function Setup page, you can control the IDE channels, and the modes that you want each channel to work at. A minor issue that I have found is that there is no option to turn off the onboard RAID chip (Promise SATA controller.) So, even though you don't need the chip, the motherboard will still initialize the chip and load the chips BIOS. Again, this is a very minor issue.

This is the Onboard Device menu, which controls almost all the features of the nForce 2 multimedia controller. You can enable and disable the AC97 SoundStorm Audio, the Onboard USB (selecting between USB1.1 and 2.0), the firewire, and the LAN. You can also enter your own MAC Address for the 10/100 LAN and the Firewire port.

These are the advanced chipset features. This is one of the menus for overclocking and tweaking your computer. Here you can control your CPU FSB from 100 to 200mhz. MSI also included a CPU interface control, which basically lets the motherboard load the overclocked CPU parameters, so if you select a 133mhz FSB, you will get a FSB of 135.50mhz when the overclocked parameters are used. With the memory, you can select the FSB/DRAM ratio which divides the FSB and the memory FSB, for example, a 1:1 ratio will let you have the CPU FSB and RAM speeds equal (ex. 133/133) a 1:2 ratio will double the rams speeds, (133/166). Under the memory options, you can adjust the timings for the ram. Also in the menu are the AGP 8x Support enable and disable switch, the fast writes enable and disable, and the AGP Aperture Size control.

In the Frequency and Voltage Control menu, you can change the AGP clock and AGP Voltage, which is helpful for overclocking the video card. There is the DRAM voltage adjust for the ram, which lets you adjust the ram voltage from 2.5Volts to 2.7Volts, which seems too little, since other motherboards lets you go to 2.8Volts. For the CPU, you can change the multiplier from 7.0x to 13.0x, the VCore can also be changed from 1.500 Volts, to 1.850 Volts. The last option which is PCI Clock Auto Detect, allows you to Enable and Disable the PCI Clock Lock, which is very helpful when overclocking, since it keeps the PCI clock at 33mhz.

This is the PC Health Status screen. Which shows the user the system temperature, cpu temperature, fan speed and voltages. You can enable and disable the warning beep for the cpu temperatures, and the threshold for the temperature beep. Notice that there is no option to adjust what temperature to turn off the CPU. The manual states that it will turn off automatically when the temps reach 110 C, which is way too high for a CPU anyways. People have also complained about the CPU and System temperatures being too high with the 1.2 bios revision, and too low with the 1.3 revision. Notice that the bios above is the 1.3 version, which displays the CPU temperature anywhere from 98F to 107F, which is a bit low, it can range +/- 15 F from the actual temperature of the CPU core. The system (case temperature) is also affected by this problem, either being too low or too high.

AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred 1700+ @ 2600+
256 MB DDR 333
Soltek 75FRN-L nforce2 MCP (not T version)
Geforce3 Ti (200/460 @ 240/560) core/memory
WD 40 Gb 7000rpm HDD
Coolermaster ATC-220 case

When the MSI K7N2G is compared to the Soltek SL-75FRN-L, MSI's CPU score is always going to be a little bit higher, due to the default FSB of 135.50mhz when the High Performance bios settings are activated. There is really no difference between the two motherboards in the CPU benchmark.

In the memory benchmarks however, the MSI is 2 mb/s slower than the Soltek motherboard. Again, this is a very minimal difference.

The MSI K7N2G scores well over the Gigabyte GA-7VAXP in 3Dmark2001SE, which is based on the VIA KT400. It appears that the MSI motherboard gives nVIDIA graphics cards a boost of about 800 more 3Dmarks. The Soltek test bed had the GeForce 3 video card, and scores well for a GeForce 3.

These are the 3DMark2001SE results comparing the nVIDIA nForce 2 IGP against the MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200. As you can see the IGP scores much lower than the GeForce 4 Ti 4200. nVidia states that the IGP is a GeForce 4 MX, which means that the graphics core is the same as the GeForce 2 (a DirectX7 generation card). Adding more RAM would increase the performance slightly due to the fact that the nForce 2 ICP uses a shared memory architecture. I would say that the performance of the IGP is equal to a GeForce 4 MX 440, which is great improvement from the original nForce IGP.

Both motherboards overclock very well, reaching 2.16ghz (180x12) which is equal to about a 2600+ on the AMD scale with the same PC2700 memory module. However, there were some instability issues with the MSI motherboard. If you overclock too high, the bios will not boot until two reset jumpers on the motherboard are reset. This can be a hassle for overclockers trying to figure out the maximum stability of their CPU and RAM. Other motherboard brands don't come with the jumpers and their owners are forced to either put in a 100mhz FSB CPU in the socket or RMA the motherboard back to where they bought it from. MSI has done a great job ensuring the jumpers are there for resetting the bios.

Overall, this motherboard provides the performance that the nForce 2 IGP chipset was designed for. At a retail price of around 130 dollars, this motherboard is not the cheapest nForce 2 based motherboard. MSI is not ripping you off with the expensive price tag though, you get everything you need in one box. With on-Board Video, Sound, 10/100 LAN, Firewire, USB2.0 and SerialATA, you wouldn't need to buy other system components if you are a first time computer builder, computer retailer or you just want to save money. All the cables are included too, for the Floppy, IDE Drives and the SerialATA ports. The K7N2G with all these features, and its moderate overclocking abilities, this motherboard is a great value.

Techaddicts Computer Reviews would like to give the MSI K7N2G-ILSR a rating of 8.5 out of 10 stars!