Now let’s check what we get from MSI KT4A Ultra-SR in terms of work with the disk subsystem. Of course, the mainboard is equipped with two Parallel ATA connectors implemented via the VT8235 South Bridge. Also there are two SerialATA connectors and one Parallel ATA aka IDE3 provided by the Promise controller. You can connect only one Parallel ATA hard disk drive to the IDE3 connector. The onboard Promise controller supports RAID 0 (stripe) and RAID 1 (mirror). You can build an array from any two HDDs (which means that you can use one Parallel ATA and one Serial ATA HDD, for instance), however, it certainly would be best to use two similar HDDs.

As for the support of different memory types, the situation here looks as follows. According to the table in the user’s manual, the mainboard supports PC2100 (DDR266) and PC2700 (DDR333) with the 200MHz FSB. When the bus frequency equals 266MHz, the mainboard can work with PC2100, PC2700 and PC3200 (DDR400). Moreover, they guarantee proper system functioning only if you use memory modules specifically approved by MSI. I can’t say anything about those memory modules, which are not recommended by MSI, but the approved Corsair XMS3200C2 worked perfectly well in our system.

The most interesting things, however, take place when the bus frequency grows up to 333MHz. In this case, you can feel safe and sound only with PC2700, because PC2100 is not supported at all, and as for PC3200, you can allegedly try it but the company doesn’t promise anything. And frankly speaking, it is very good that they do not promise anything, because we failed to make the mainboard work in this mode. I assume that the promised improvement of the memory support, which is to come in the KT600 chipset, should imply proper work of the system with PC3200 DDR SDRAM. We will continue talking about the implementation of different memory types support later in this article when we come to describing the BIOS Setup features.

Now a few words about the implementation of sound on MSI KT4A Ultra-SR board. This mainboard supports six-channel sound due to C-media CMI8738 codec. The sound quality it provides is a subjective parameter, so we won’t discuss it here. We’d better check the way this six-channel sound is output. Do you still remember about the S-Bracket? Now we are going to dwell on it a bit more.

So, as you remember there are three connectors on the back panel of the mainboard. By default these are Line-Out, Line-In and Mic. Of course, these connectors are too few to get impressive six-channel sound. So, if you want to have four- or six-channel sound output you have to sacrifice Line-Out and Mic by making them work as a sound output for the second pair of speakers and the central channel or subwoofer. This is where you will appreciate the availability of S-Bracket, which is supplied together with the mainboard: it will prevent you from resorting to such inconvenient tricks. This bracket is equipped with two mini-jacks for the central channel and the second pair of speakers, and with an optical and coaxial S/PDIF Outs, which will be helpful if your have speakers support this interface. Of course, S-Bracket should be connected to a special port on the mainboard.