INTRODUCTION
MSI is one of the giants in the PC hardware industry. They have been around for as long as I can remember. Motherboards are one of the cornerstones of their business, but the company has branched out into many different areas in recent years, and as you may know, MSI is now one of the leading providers of laptops.
Today I am going to review a very interesting motherboard from MSI, the NF750-G55. Here are the specs:
MSI NF750-G55
AMD® Phenom(TM) II/Athlon(TM)II/Phenom(TM) processor support with AM3 package.
NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI single chipset
Hyper Transport Bus HyperTransport 3.0 supports speeds up to 5200 MT/s
Memory or Dual Supports DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600 (OC)
– 4 DDR3 DIMMs (240-pin/1.5V)
– Supports up to 16GB.
Slots or 2 PCI Express x16 slots with x16 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)
o When 2 PCI Express x16 slots are all installed, 16 PCIE x lanes will be arranged from x16/x0 to x8/x8.
or 2 PCI Express x1 slots
o 1 PCI slot, compatible with 3.3V/5V PCI bus interface.
Integrated IDE or an NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI IDE port
– 66/100/133 Extreme Support DMA mode
– Supports PIO operation mode, Bus Masters
– You can connect up to two IDE devices
Integrated SATA ports or 5 NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI SATA II ports
or 1 eSATA II port via NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI
– Supports storage and data transfers up to 3 Gb/s
RAID 1-5 function Support SATA II RAID 0 1 0+1 /5 or JBOD mode by NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI
Audio or Chipset integrated by Realtek® ALC889
– Flexible 8-channel audio with jack detection
– Complies with Azalia 1.0 specifications
LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet from Realtek 45CL
Internal I/O Connectors – ATX 24-pin to power connector
– ATX 4-pin 12V CPU to power connector
– CPU connectors x 1 / System x 3 FAN
– CD input connector
– Clear CMOS to bypass
– Power button
– Chassis intrusion switch connector
– Front panel audio connector
– Front panel connector
– Serial port connector
– 3 x USB 2.0 additional connector compatible with 6 ports
– 1 x Floppy drive connector
– 5 Serial ATA II connectors
– 1 IDE ATA133 connector
– 1 x SPDIF output to header
– 1 x TPM modulates to headend
– 1 OC switch
Back panel I/O ports: 1 PS/2 keyboard
– 1 PS/2 mouse
– 1 6-in-1 audio jack
– 6 USB 2.0 ports
– 1 RJ45 LAN connector
– 1 eSATA port
– 1 DVI-D port
– 1 port for graphics card
– 1 HDMI port
Other Features MSI Active Phase Switching
MSI Easy OC Switch
MSI Live Update Online
MSI 4 Live Update
NVIDIA Hybrid(TM)SLI
True Audio Blu-ray
From the specifications of the NF750-G55, it’s easy to conclude that MSI has worked hard to produce something a bit more with this board. The board offers support for SLI, Hybrid SLI and has some interesting proprietary technologies from MSI, such as the “Easy OC Switch”. In this review I won’t be testing the SLI functionality as it’s been done before, instead I’ll focus on the integrated GeForce 8200 chip and see what it can produce in terms of performance.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The NF750-G55 comes in a standard-sized, rather sober-looking cardboard box. In it, MSI emphasizes the support of the latest AMD processors, support for SLI and Hybrid SLI and some of the additional features like True Blu-ray Audio, APS and Easy OC Switch.
Accessories included are: a manual; a quick start installation guide; a drivers and utilities CD; I/O back panel board; SATA and IDE cables and a SATA power converter cable.
MSI NF750-G55 IN DETAIL
Although the MSI NF750-G55 is standard ATX, it is a bit narrower than most other ATX boards.
There are 4 memory slots supporting up to 16 GB of DDR3 (up to 1600 MHz). To clarify a bit here, the chipset officially only supports up to 1333 MHz, but it is possible to run the memories at 1600 MHz by making a small change to the multiplier in the BIOS.
The only heat sink on the motherboard is the heat sink located on the nForce 750a SLI circuit.
The CPU cooler is attached with screws, which I think is great as it allows you to really control how tight the cooler is, much better than with plastic anchor systems. The 4-pin connector for the CPU is located in the middle of the board.
MSI’s Active Phase Switching (APS) is located to the right of the ATX 12V connector. This system is responsible for the automatic regulation in real time of the power supplied to the CPU. The power level is actually illustrated with 4 LEDs, which is a nice added feature.
The board has two PCI-E x16 ports and 1 PCI port. As you can see; the PCI-E ports are separated by a fairly large distance. If you use a dual slot card in the second PCI-E port, you will not be able to use the PCI port at all. It would have been better to place the PCI port before the first PCI-E x16 port.
Internal connectivity also incorporates 5 SATA 2 ports with RAID functionality, 3 USB 2.0 ports, a COM port connector, connectors for external audio; S/PDIF digital and a CD contact.
The integrated chips for sound and Ethernet connectivity are Realtek ALC889 and RTL45CL. Both chips are of high quality and are backed by excellent drivers. The Fintek chip located next to the battery is in charge of the general I/O functions of the motherboard and also allows you to control the fans with the popular SpeedFan program.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this motherboard is the “Easy OC Switch”. It consists of a pink switch as you can see in the image below. This change allows us to increase FSB by up to 35% without having to make any other changes. In principle this addition is great, but it will only work well if the processor you are using supports overclocking without the need to increase the voltage.
Back panel connectivity is excellent; See the specifications above for a complete list.
TEST EQUIPMENT INSTALLATION
For testing the MSI NF750-G55 I used the following hardware and software:
Test equipment
AMD Phenom II x2 550 VE Processor
Zalman CNPS9900A LED fan
MSI NF750-G55 motherboard
GeForce 8200 graphics card (integrated)
integrated sound card
Memory Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333Mhz 2×2GB (7-7-7-18)
Seagate ST3320620AS hard drive (SATA 2, 16MB, 7200rpm)
Zalman ZM660-XT Power Supply
Cooler Master Suitcase 690 cm PURE
operating system and software
Windows XP SP3 operating system
System Drivers BIOS V1.0
nForce 15.49
Benchmarks 3D Mark 06
PC brand 05
everest 4.5
YesSoftware Sandra Lite XII
R10 CINEMA BENCH
SuperPI 1.5 XS MOD
HD Tune 2.55
Crystal discMark 2.2
Light Mark 2008 (1280×1024)
FurMark 1.4 (1280×1024, NoMSAA)
Real tests WinRAR 3.80
Benchmark X264HD 2.0
X3: demo meeting
X3: Terran Conflict Continued Demo
Club of Officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Cry 2
Photoshop DH Benchmark
Other software CPU-Z 1.51
GPU-Z 0.3.5
VLC 1.0
Here are a couple of screenshots of the hardware I used:
In the graphics test I used a resolution of 1024×800 with the highest graphics settings.
BIOS
The BIOS of this board comes from AMI (American Megatrends Inc) and is very intuitive and easy to deal with when overclocking.
The menu that interested me the most was, of course, the cell menu, where all the really important settings are, at least if you want to overclock your system. Although the NF750-G55 can be considered a mid-range motherboard, it offers plenty of possibilities for overclocking both the CPU and memory modules.
The M-Flash program embedded in this BIOS is exclusive to MSI motherboards. It is a clever little program that allows us to update the BIOS and even backup and recover old BIOS versions.
There is also a menu called “User Settings”. It makes it possible to configure different “profiles” of the BIOS setup. This can be useful if you want to quickly load an overclocking default setting for a game session or similar.
BENCHMARKING TESTS PART 1
The CPU performance of the nForce 750a chip is within the margins I would have expected. However, memory benchmarks fell a bit short, which surprised me, as this is usually a strong area with NVIDIA chips.
BENCHMARKING TESTS PART 2
The HD’s read and write speeds were very good, which means NVIDIA fixed driver issues that caused the hard drive to perform slower than it should on older chipsets.
TESTING IN THE REAL WORLD
What caught my attention from the above results were the poor WinRAR test results. My conclusion is that it must be due to the memory problem mentioned above.
In the test of the IGP GeForce 8200 chip, I did not get any notable results in the 3D tests, so it is easy to conclude that you should not use it for gaming. However, it worked fine for HD video playback.
The power usage of this system is really low, especially when it is running in idle mode, which makes it a good choice if you are building a 24/7 system.
OVERCLOCK CAPABILITY
NVIDIA has created classic AMD overclocking chipsets in the past, including the now near-mythical nForce 2 and nForce 4 platforms. So what about the nForce 750a SLI overclocking capabilities? The following screenshots say it all:
I was able to overclock the FSB to 264 MHz(!), which was actually a bit surprising to me, I didn’t expect it to be so “overclock friendly” being a mid-range card.
I also tried to overclock the integrated graphics card (GeForce 8200). I managed to get it running stable at 601/1442 MHz for the kernel and shaders respectively.
RECOMMENDATIONS
My first experience with the NF750 chipset has been a pleasure. The MSI NF750-G55 is a very diverse motherboard. It can be used in a high-end SLI hardcore system or used as a motherboard for an HTPC project thanks to the integrated VGA output with HDMI.
Overall, MSI has managed to build a great motherboard around the nForce 750a SLI chipset. Its performance and overclockability are excellent, as is its connectivity. The integrated graphics solution is good but not as powerful as some of the integrated chips offered by AMD/ATI.
