MSI K9A Platinum is the latest board that uses the new ATi RD580 + SB600. In our test, we find that the performance is pretty good. With our comparison with an equivalent board based on the same chipset, the MSI K9A Platinum's BIOS can be tweak to squeeze more performance from the board. One thing we noticed ATI chipsets do not generate that much heat from the chipsets. The board runs cool without any issues during the tests.

Features wise, this board uses the SB600 is an improvement and replacement of NV-ULI M1575 (which is no longer available). This new South bridge solves some of the old bugs of SB450 and supports One IDE port with Ultra DMA 66/100/133 mode. The on-Board SATA supporst 4 SATA II ports with data transfers at up to 300 MB/s. The board also supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by ATI® SB600. The board also comes with 8 ch HD Azalia audio using Realtek ALC 883, Dual LAN jack with one PCIe based GbE and one PCI based GbE. The board also comes with IEEE1394 supported by VIA® VT6308P.

Installation is a breeze, thanks to the colour coded front panel connector. The USB connectors should have been in plain colour as it will confuse DIY users. Overclocking features are quite complete on this board. There are multipliers, voltage adjustments, CLK adjustments etc all in there. In our tests, we couldn't get it to go beyond 300MHz no matter how low the multiplier is. The BIOS does not allow me to change the HT frequency. According to what I gathered, it is set to 1GHz for normal operation and 600MHz during overclocking. In our test, we have no problems running at 295x 10 using a 4000+ processor.

In conclusion, the board is stable, runs well. The only regret is the BIOS functions. It seems to be limiting the true capability of the chipset. I hope that future bios revisions can get some of the bugs fixed.

Pricing (US/UK)

Discuss

Pros

• Dual PCIe x16
• SATA II RAID
• 7.1 HD audio

Cons

• No eSATA

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.