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- Date:
- Monday , September 11, 2006
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI K9A Platinum
MSI brings to market a new ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 motherboard with Crossfire support. This board contains ATI’s new SB600 south bridge. We find out what the inclusion of this south bridge, with the already proven Radeon Xpress 3200 can do.
MSI Utilities
The K9A Platinum comes with several utilities with varying functions. They are; Core Center, MSI Live Update 3; Password Keeper; Lockbox; DMI Browser; I-Speeder; and Info View.
The MSI Core 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, memory voltages, 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. Additionally under the Core Center log is where you can set CPU fan modes and monitor the temperature of the CPU.
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.
The utility is extremely easy to use and I actually made use of it trying to get rid of the yellow exclamation point in device manager for the integrated audio. I tried updating the driver for the integrated audio using this utility. Unfortunately the new driver did not fix my issue, but I will cover that in more detail later in the review.
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.
DMI Browser allows you to browse the motherboards’ DMI information just as the name of the tool implies. There isn’t much to say here. There are only three buttons in the software. They are collapse, expand and the other button copies all the DMI information to a text file.
Info View is very simple as well. All the tool really does is showing you various motherboard related information. It uses a file tab system that should be familiar to anyone who has ever used windows. The tool is in no way interactive and only shows information in a read only fashion.
I-Speeder is a utility that is at least new to me and as is the case with most of the new utilities I saw with this board, it is very simple. The tool has two functions. The software tracks network usage and some basic network statistics such as byte counts and bit rates. It also has a network time correction function. This is very similar to changing the settings in the built in Windows clock. You can change the system time here and change to alternate internet time servers.