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- Date:
- Thursday , November 07, 2002
- Author:
- Steve Lynch
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI 648-MAX Review
Want to have your Pentium 4 riding the 333MHz bus instead of the short bus. MSI and SiS step up to the plate and deliver the 648MAX sporting AGP8X.
Board Layout (cont.):
Mainboard manufacturers like to keep the 20 pin ATX power header as close to the CPU socket as possible for the obvious reasons. Often this results in the header being placed in such a manner that the cable must be draped over the CPU fan assembly because of poor ATX header placement. The 648 MAX has smartly located the ATX power header on the right hand leading edge of the board.
The 4 pin 12v Pentium4 header is located just to the upper left hand side of the CPU, close to the upper most edge of the mainboard. This location allows the wires from the 12v line to be easily routed up and away from the socket area. Smart component placement, like that of the ATX header as well as the 12v line, aid in the overall airflow characteristics of any mainboard. Removing restrictions like hanging wires and ATX power cables make for better airflow and circulation which all leads to better cooling.
Here is a good look at the SiS648 Northbridge as well as the SiS963 Southbridge chips. The SiS648 Max is passively cooled, using a plain, nondescript green heatsink.
The small green heat sink does provide acceptable cooling for the Northbridge, but temperatures do get up there under heavy use. Since overclocking your system also cranks up the heat on the northbridge considerably, I would've at least liked to see a little active cooling on the northbridge. MSI did provide a good amount of thermal compound between the heat sink and chipset to help move that heat away from the northbridge.
Passive cooling for the MOSFETs that regulate voltage is somewhat of an odd sight. Most of us have never given a thought to cooling voltage regulators, let alone using as large a heatsink as we see here. One touch of the aluminum heatsink that is bonded to the voltage regulators while the system is operating will explain why MSI felt the need use one…they are hot. As we see Pentium 4 mainboards that are being designed to take CPUs in excess of 3GHz, this is going to become a more normal sight on retail mainboards.
The onboard LAN controller is the BGA Broadcom BCM5702 Gigabit Ethernet chip. While Gigabit Ethernet at 10/100/1000 may seem like overkill, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it as it will get more and more popular very soon.
The BCM5702 is a fully integrated 32-bit 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Media Access Control and Physical Layer Transceiver solution for high performance network applications. The BCM5702 is a highly integrated solution combining triplespeed, IEEE 802.3 compliant Media Access Controller (MAC), PCI bus interfaces, on-chip buffer memory, and integrated physical layer transceiver in a single device. The BCM5702 is fabricated in a low-voltage .13um CMOS process, providing a low-power system solution. By itself the BCM5702 provides a complete single-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC or LOM solution.
On board audio up until about a year ago was probably one of the worst possible audio choices a person could have. Today, integrated audio still isn’t winning over the hardcore audiophiles, but it sure isn’t too bad either. You get 6 channel audio from the RealTek ALC650 that supports 5.1 speakers and SPDIF / Out via the included S-Bracket. Not bad for an on board audio solution.
MSI also included the D-Bracket, a proprietary diagnostic LED system that uses trouble codes to help you figure out booting problems. Also included on the back plane of the D-Bracket are two extra USB 2.0 connectors.
Both the primary and secondary IDE headers are located out of the way in the lower right hand corner of the board. Once again, this placement just adds to the overall good layout of the 648 MAX.
The back panel of the 648 MAX is your standard fare that includes the required PS/2 ports, two serial connectors, a parallel port, audio, LAN, and a total of four USB ports.
BIOS:
The 648 MAX has an AMI Plug and Play BIOS that includes a wide variety of features. All the tweaks that overclockers have come to appreciate are present but not without a few critical drawbacks. Before I get ahead of myself, let me explain.
FSB selections can be made in 1MHz increments, all the way to 200MHz FSB. While this is nice, there are not many Northwood CPUs that will ever see that kind of FSB. A wide variety of CPU to DDR ratios are available as well. In fact, the settings for the CPU to DDR ratio are so broad that just about any combination you can dream up is preset for you. Of course standard CAS settings are set at 2.0 / 2.5 / 3.0 as well.
Settings like Normal, Fast, Turbo, and Ultra are available, but anything over the “fast” setting would cause the system to hang during boot, even at default systems speeds. DDR voltage can be set as high as 2.8v and the AGP to PCI ratio can be selected manually, which comes in handy if you are an overclocker running a high FSB. Many times at aggressive DDR timings over 333MHz we are seeing a needed 2.8v for stability.
This is where the drawbacks come into play as you can see from the screencaps. The BIOS initially gives you the impression that it supports all the features an overclocker could want, until you realize that just because they have the feature in the BIOS, it doesn’t guarantee how useful it will be. Case and point, the board does feature “CPU Voltage” adjustments....but only up to a maximum 1.625v. While this should be able to be remedied by a simple BIOS upgrade, and hopefully will, I was rather surprised at the low ceiling placed on the CPU voltage.
So, while the features are there for overclocking, any serious overclocker will be limited by the 1.65v CPU voltage maximum. I believe that even the average consumer wanting to OC his system will be needing a little more on the voltage side of things to be successful. Hopefully we will see this changed in a future BIOS revision.
Something else that was rather unusual, the BIOS only supports a maximum AGP Aperture size of 128MB instead of the normal 256MB limit. While it is not important, it did strike me as odd.