MSI P35 Neo2-FR: Platinum performance for under $100

Gaming Performance

As usual, we test gaming performance with a variety of (nearly - we'll be updating soon!) current games. We run our benchmarks at 1280x1024 with high quality settings.

Battlefield 2

This benchmark utilized DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in-house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage; the benchmark is sensitive to GPU and to a lesser extent CPU selections.

Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes arrived last year and remains one of the best samples of the genre. The game is extremely GPU intensive and requires a hefty CPU as well. The game contains a built-in performance test that utilizes the game engine to generate several different action scenes. We find the performance test gives a good indication of how well your system will perform throughout the game. We use the DX9 codepath, as DX10 performance suffers even on the fastest current systems.

Prey

Prey offers some superb action sequences, unique weapons and characters, and is a visually stunning game at times. It still requires a very good GPU to run it with all of the eye candy turned on. We set all graphic settings to their maximum except for AA/AF and utilize a custom timedemo that takes place during one of the more action-oriented sequences.

Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander is one of the favorite real time strategy games around the office and requires both a very good CPU and GPU when playing the game at anything above 1024x768 with decent settings. We utilize the game's built-in benchmark for our results.

Gaming Summary

The Neo2-FR board's overall performance is very consistent throughout our game testing. During game play testing with Crysis, UT3, and Quake Wars, the board performed superbly. We would not hesitate to recommend this board as a stable and inexpensive choice for a gaming platform.