MSI P35 Neo2-FR: Platinum performance for under $100
by Gary Key on December 5, 2007 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
MSI P35 Neo2-FR Specifications
| MSI P35 Neo2-FR | |
| Market Segment | Budget Performance - $88.99 after Rebate |
| CPU Interface | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Pentium EE, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad |
| Chipset | Intel P35 MCH and Intel ICH9R |
| Bus Speeds | Auto, 133 ~ 600 in 1MHz increments |
| DDR2 Memory Speed | Auto,1:1, 1:1.2, 1:2, 1:1.25, 1:1.6, 1:1.5 |
| PCIe Speeds | Auto, 100MHz~200MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| CPU Voltage | Auto, Base CPU - +0.7875V in 0.0125V increments |
| SB Voltage | 1.05V, 1.15V |
| SB I/O Voltage | 1.50V ~1.80V in .05V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, 6x-50x in 1X increments if CPU is unlocked, downwards unlocked, Core 2 Duo/Quad/Extreme |
| DDR2 DRAM Voltage | Auto, 1.80V ~ 2.60V in .05V or .10V increments |
| DRAM Timing Control | Enabled SPD, Disabled, 9 DRAM Timing Options |
| NB Voltage | Auto, 1.250V ~ 1.650V in .025V increments |
| VTT Voltage | Auto, 1.175V ~ 1.550V in .025V increments |
| Memory Slots | Four 240-pin DDR2
DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 2 - PCIe X16
(1x16, 1x4 electrical for CrossFire or Multi-GPU) 2 - PCIe x1 2 - PCI Slot 2.2 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 4 SATA 3Gbps Ports
- ICH9R (RAID 0,1, 10, 5) 2 eSATA 3Gbps Port - ICH9R 1 SATA 3Gbps Port - Marvell 88SE6111 |
| Onboard IDE | 1 ATA133/100/66 Port (2 drives) - Marvell 88SE6111 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 12 USB 2.0 Ports -
6 I/O Panel - 6 via Headers 2 Firewire 400 Ports by VIA VT6308 - Requires FIR board |
| Onboard LAN | Realtek RTL8111B PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controller |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC888T - 8-channel HD audio codec |
| Power Connectors | ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EATX 12V, 4-pin Molex connector |
| I/O Panel | 1 x PS/2
Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 2 x eSATA 1 x IEEE 1394a - Requires FIR board 1 x Audio Panel 1 x RJ45 6x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| BIOS Revision | v1.6 |
| Board Revision | v1.0 |
MSI designed the P35 Neo2-FR for the enthusiast user on a budget. The BIOS options available are extensive for a board in this price category and place an emphasis on overclocking. MSI provides the standard laundry list of board options such as the Marvell 88SE6111 for eSATA and IDE support, optional IEEE 1394 support from VIA on the FIR board, decent onboard audio support from the Realtek ALC888T, 12 USB ports, Intel Matrix RAID, and Gigabit LAN support from the ubiquitous Realtek RTL8111B chipset.
The board offers a very good mix of expansion slots. Utilizing a CrossFire setup will create the physical loss of a PCI and PCI Express slot with dual-slot cards, but we still recommend utilizing the 975X or X38 chipsets for CrossFire operation. We ran a few early tests with a QX9650 Yorkfield CPU and the board operated fine. MSI has not finished fully tuning the BIOS for Yorkfield, but they should in the near future. Speaking of the BIOS, its design has not changed from the P35 Platinum, nor have the options - something we dearly wish that MSI would address in their next product release. It's not that bad, but the layout could be better and additional auto settings would be welcome in the memory timing section.
MSI includes several Windows utility programs, with Dual Core Center and Live Update being the two major applications. Just like the majority of utility programs from most manufacturers, they are somewhat interesting to look at for a few minutes, but we quickly removed them from our system to utilize third party programs for tuning and measurements. We also had a problem updating our BIOS from 1.3 to 1.6 with the Live Update program. The BIOS update completed normally and our system rebooted as planned. However, it would not POST correctly after several on/off episodes. Thinking the board might be dead, we decided to try a couple of options before contacting MSI. We switched out our processor to the E2160 and the board booted fine. We set the BIOS to defaults, shutdown, inserted the Q6600, and it started right back up.
Attempting to replicate the problem, we tried the Live Update procedure on an MSI P35 Platinum board when upgrading from the engineering BIOS to an early public release. We did not have a problem there, but we did when upgrading to the latest BIOS. This time, we set the FSB jumpers on the board to 200 and it went straight through the POST routine. The only thing we can think of is that the FSB rates are not being set correctly after the flash routine. However, we did not have a single problem flashing with the DOS utility.
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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.