X-bit labs

Review of MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R Mainboard on i875P Chipset (page 3)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 06/12/2003 | 01:21 PM ]

It’s rather a curious thing to see a codec from Analog Devices in a mainboard from MSI. Earlier, this company used only Realtek codecs in its products. But times are changing and it’s Analog Devices that offers best sound codecs of today. By some obscure reason MSI put off the newest AD1985 codec that allows dynamical switching between audio-outputs, the microphone in and line in. Still, the AD1980 chip soldered to the mainboard sounds excellent, supports six-channel speaker systems and, thanks to the bracket with a coaxial and digital output, supports SP-DIF.

The variety of external ports in MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R includes, in particular, eight USB 2.0 ones. The South Bridge (ICH5) of the i875P chipset supports this number of USB ports and they are all available. Six of them are placed at the back panel of the mainboard and the remaining two are connected via the D-Bracket.

As you see, the back panel is far from being standard here. This shouldn’t frighten you though: there is a special bracket for the back panel of the PC case coming with the mainboard.

The eight USB 2.0 ports are not the last thing to be mentioned. As i875P doesn’t support 1394(a) FireWire, this interface is implemented by means of a VIA VT6360 controller. By the way, Intel is lagging behind other manufacturers in this respect, as SiS and NVIDIA include IEEE1394 support into their chipsets already. MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R has three IEEE1394 ports (on the bracket). There are two 6-pin connectors, and one 4-pin connector.

The D-Bracket we’ve mentioned above also carries four LEDs that constitute a house diagnostics system. The key point of the system is simple: various combinations of LEDs correspond to certain phases of the POST procedure, so if there is any problem during boot-up, the user can determine the cause (by looking up in the user manual). Of course, we can’t call it a very powerful system; still, it’s better than nothing. Its functionality falls far behind fully-fledged POST controllers, but the main POST phases are all covered.

The daintiest bit comes last. The main advantage of MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R, in our opinion, is the number of hard disk drives you can connect to it. Thus, the ICH5 South Bridge supports two ATA-100 channels (for four ATA-devices) plus two Serial ATA-150 channels. The mainboard also carries an integrated IDE RAID controlled from Promise – PDC20378. It supports one ATA-133 channel for two devices and two Serial ATA-150 channels. Overall, MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R includes three Parallel ATA and four Serial ATA channels. In other words, you can connect up to ten hard disk drives to the reviewed mainboard. Wow!

You are also offered wide opportunities for building RAID arrays. The South Bridge ICH5 (its ICH5R modification, to be more exact) allows striping two Serial ATA HDDs into a Level 0 RAID array. Promise PDC20378 supports RAID 0 (stripe) and 1 (mirror) arrays.