MSI P35 Neo2-FR: Platinum performance for under $100
by Gary Key on December 5, 2007 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Thoughts
MSI surprised us with the overall performance of the P35 Neo2-FR motherboard. We figured they would neuter the performance of the board so as not to cannibalize sales of the P35 Platinum series. Turns out, we were incorrect. Sure, the Platinum board has FireWire, S/PDIF Optical out, and a conversation generating roller coaster cooling system, but it also costs about $40 more. The performance between the two boards is almost identical making this purchasing decision easy in our opinion unless you need FireWire capabilities. If so, MSI offers the Neo2-FIR for about $10 more.
Our expectations of products in the sub $100 market for Intel have changed considerably over the past couple of months. We are testing the abit IP35-V, DFI Blood IronP35-T2RL, and Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L currently and have been especially impressed with the level of performance you can get at the $100 level. In fact, we would venture to say at this point, that the price to performance ratios of these boards could very well make their more expensive relatives obsolete, provided the feature lists match your needs.
We think MSI's decision to utilize the P35 Platinum board design as the basis for the Neo2 series is an excellent idea from both a manufacturing and marketing viewpoint. In our opinion, MSI actually improved the product family by changing the heatpipe system from the Platinum version. Gone is the roller coaster adventure series and in its place MSI installed a standard if visually conservative heatpipe system that not only has better aesthetics, but also cools just as well in our test conditions.
We do miss the FireWire support, but it is available on the FIR series; the problem with that is that we only found the FIR at a couple of resellers. Overall, this board performs very well but it does have a few quirks (Ed: what board doesn't?) when overclocking and utilizing the 4:5 memory ratios with 4GB installed. We were not always pleased with the board's two-step recovery from failed BIOS settings and the included utilities are just not up to par with abit's µGuru technology. However, MSI did a wonderful job with this board considering the cost targets required to compete in this market sector.
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Overall, this board certainly has more positives than negatives. Its negatives are generally minor and BIOS tuning will likely solve the few performance problems we encountered during overclocking. To be honest, it's the product quality, MSI's support, and price to performance advantages this board offers that really win us over. If MSI offered better utilities, the ability to control each fan header properly, and a BIOS fully tuned for 4GB overclocking then we would give the board our Gold award. As it stands, MSI has reset our expectations in this market space. Will any of the products from abit, DFI, and Gigabyte in this price bracket surpass MSI's offering? We will answer that question shortly.
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DigitalFreak - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
I sincerely hope that the USB port block on the back is supported by more than just that tiny riser. That thing looks like it would break off if you looked at it funny.Griswold - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
Nothing to worry about, unless some clumsy fool or 8 year old child rams the USB plug in.superkdogg - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
Reading the introduction about the surprising performance of the new MSI board got my ears up, but then I read the article and it was more of the same.Every motherboard performs virtually the same these days at stock speeds. The only things that differentiate anything is overclocking/bios, reliability, layout, price, extra features (if you need them), and personal brand preference.
Motherboard 'reviews' could pretty much be replaced by a table that tells a consumer about those things above. Benchmarking showing that everything is +/- 2% from the median just eats up space.
j@cko - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
LOL. I totally agree with ya. Motherboard review nowadays is more about reliability and overclockability, I think.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
The problem is, if we were to eliminate all of the benchmarking, how do we really know if a board is reliable? If you haven't noticed, 90% or something of the text on the benchmark pages is filler - the graphs pretty much say everything you need to know. Anyway, doing motherboard reviews can be a thankless endeavor, but we still think it's necessary. We're not quite at the "necessary evil" stage either. :)brian_riendeau - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
Its quite easy really to show the effectiveness of a mobo design without wasting 5 pages on graphs that show no difference between 10 models of motherboards.Test the motherboards in harsh environments. No one really cares if their board is 1% faster than another board, however they will care if their whole system crashes repeatedly if their AC goes out and the room temp gets up to 90F.
drebo - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
Death of the P35 Neo-F, one of the best mid-range boards ever made. For $85 you get a superb P35 board, but they're not making it anymore. Moving to this board, you lose Parallel and Serial ports, which for many general home users are very important.Intel doesn't make a P35 board with parallel or serial, and ASUS's P5K board is about $40 more expensive. I really wish a tier 1 manufacturer would come out with another good board. The last couple generations it's been MSI, with the P965 Neo3-F and then the P35 Neo-F. Looks as though there won't be a P35 Neo2-F, unfortunately. They're making a hybrid DDR2/DDR3 board instead, which neuters any kind of RAM upgrades for the end users because you can only use one or the other, not both, and neither in a dual-channel configuration.
Oh well. Maybe ASUS will drop the price of their P5K board.
Ratinator - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
[quote]Moving to this board, you lose Parallel and Serial ports, which for many general home users are very important. [/quote]Did you mean not very important?
drebo - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
No, I didn't. You'd be surprised how many people at home have serial mice they don't want to replace (old trackballs that they're too stubborn to get rid of) and parallel printers. A lot of people in the business world need them, too. They need parallel for printers and serial to run machines off of, or for their PDAs, or for other reasons.There needs to be a good midrange board that still supports these legacy devices, and with the P35 Neo-F going by the wayside, that board just doesn't exist anymore.
brian_riendeau - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
I am sorry to inform you of this, however not many people shopping for new motherboards for business or personal use care about serial and parallel ports. You just gotta let things go man... Anyone who really needs to use a legacy port can pickup USB port -> legacy port adapters for cheap if they really need to use old hardware. We have a whole department of people where I work still chained to serial devices, however they all have C2D and Quad core PCs now and just use USB adapters.