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- Date:
- Tuesday , April 11, 2006
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI K8N Diamond Plus
While not the first board to hit the streets using the nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset, MSI brings out their own feature rich enthusiast board to compete for your hard earned cash. Just how does the K8N Diamond Plus fair against the competition?
MSI's Utilities
The MSI K8N Diamond Plus comes with MSI's utility suite. Several programs make up the suite. Digicell, MSI Live Update 3, and Core Center. Password Keeper and Lockbox. Core center is used for monitoring of system temperatures, clock speed, and fan speed alarm thresholds. Digicell has hardware diagnostics and displays information for network cards and allows the configuration and access of MSI's proprietary features such as MegaStick and Software Access point. Audio speaker settings and the Power on Agent are also configurable here. MSI's Live Update 3 allows automatic live updates of drivers and the motherboard BIOS and has scheduling by using the MSI Live Monitor feature. Which allows scheduling of live updates and searching for those updates. Password Keeper and Lockbox can be used to store passwords for the system in encrypted form. MSI has done a great job and has really gone above and beyond most manufacturers with their utility suite.
The MSI Core Center displays information on the CPU clock speed, fan thresholds and voltages. Additionally, it is also used for overclocking from within Windows. This is very useful when compared to overclocking by BIOS alone. This allows the end user to test as they go with their overclocking saving them from a series of reboots. FSB speeds, DDR voltage, PCI-Express voltages, are all controllable from this application. To access these features, one only needs to click on the red arrows to expand the Core Center Control Panel options. When the option you wish to change is highlighted, the plus and minus buttons will adjust the value in small increments. For FSB, you also have the option to set the pre-defined overclocking profiles already stored in the motherboard BIOS. On the right hand side, fan thresholds are controlled via sliders. The defaults can be set for any category by hitting the default button. Cool 'n' Quiet is controlled by clicking on the Cool 'n' Quiet button under the Core Center logo at the top of the applet.
The MSI Digicell application has an octagonal graphic interface where various options can be configured. Links to MSI's website and the Quick Guide are present on the left, and Hardware Diagnostics are found at the top of the applet. The Comm. button shows diagnostics for the integrated network ports. This applet also is capable of launching the MSI Live Update 3 application and the Core Center applet as well. The Power Agent has power on, power off timed restart and auto login options for scheduling purposes. You can set the date and time of the events you wish to schedule.
The MSI Live Update 3 application is a web based utility offering live update features for motherboard drivers, utilities and even the installed video card. The application can detect your installed video adapter brand, and perform live updates on the drivers for that installed card. The interface is very simple and easy to use. On the left hand pane of the application are the various options for Live update configuration. Live BIOS, Live Driver, Live VGA Driver, Live Utility. Simply highlight the option for what you want to update and then click on connect to MSI Live Update Server. I used this utility to update the motherboard chipset drivers, and it worked perfectly. Unlike some other manufacturers utilities that consistently give errors or busy messages when searching for updates.
MSI's Password Keeper utility and Lockbox are also simple tools for password storage and encryption. Create your password, and then log in to begin creating passwords and filling in information you'd like to secure. Create a title for the password file you wish to create and then fill in the appropriate fields.