- The price of the board is under $170, only slightly though (has been for as long as I recall - check Newegg).

- The 1.22 BIOS, or the performance BIOSes based on that (there are several being tested) would let you lower the multiplier (still in BETA, but then, so is the 1.21 BIOS).

- It doesn't appear that you adjusted the NB voltage at all, or at least ddn't mention it - this may be key to higher FSB speeds (others have hit 533x8 with a E6850 ES).

- Not sure if it was due to the BIOSes being used, but most other reviews have the MSI board handily out-performing both the P5N-E, as well as the Striker.

- No mention was really made of the layout advantages of the Platinum over the P5N-E, which includes an additional PCI slot, eSATA, SB cooling (the P5N-E has none), 9-hole mounting vs 6-hole (and some unsupported overhang) on the narrow P5N-E... you did mention the superior audio of the Platinum though.

...to be fair, obviously you need to report what you experience, with the available BIOS at the time of testing, but it might be nice to do a follow-up with the later BIOS and some more oc tests with NB voltage bumps.

"Although MSI P6N SLI Platinum is based on relatively expensive Nvidia nForce 650i SLI core logic set, its price exceeds 4170."

...4170 WHAT?

Average article at best. Definitely NOT up to the usual X-Bit Labs quality. The reason I say this is that a great deal of effort was put into overclocking and reporting back on those results which is great, but almost NO mention of STOCK stability. There are quite a few users out there (myself included) that want an overbuilt motherboard for long term stability that have no intention of overclocking. I would have appreciated some detailed test results of Orthos and other torture testing techniques while at stock settings to see if this motherboard is suitable for everyday use (heaving gaming included). I also would have appreciated more than some anecdotal verbiage regarding the ALC888 CODEC--the article states that the ADI CODECs are better, which may indeed be true ON PAPER but could some RightMark Analyzer tests have been run to see if MSI's implementation was decent??? With onboard CODECs *implementation* is typically the REAL determining factor in how it will sound. I have an ASUS board that uses an ADI CODEC but the implementation was terrible (EMI shielding) and it sounds like absolute crap. Perhaps I am being picky, but the article goes from discussing the hardware to overclocking results and that doesn't give a good picture of what you are spending your money on.

I am getting ready to buy this Motherboard. So it was very helpful to read this review.
Thank You
Cuggie

Nice article ;More MSI garbage ; Thank's for the heads up !

in relation to one of your opening points:

By the way, we haven’t often dealt with MSI mainboards because this manufacturer just did not offer really interesting products that could rival the leading brands in quality of manufacture and performance

MSI in my experience have produced some very high quality boards with good features. In fact I am currently on a K9N Diamond board and with this and my old K8N, I have never had a hardware problem. They have also been exceptionaly stable.

I have used two Gigabyte boards in the past, the oldest a GA5AA was fantatastic but the other I had no end of problems with it resetting itself. Gigabyte completely ignored my emails to thier support asking for help!

I have used a Chaintech board, which when it worked was great but had an annoying habit of destroying th BIOS from time to time. Chaintech were great about it. Even though the board was over a year old they sent me 8 replacement BIOS chips. Eventualy I found one that never died.

Asus, I have had two boards.
A A8NSLI which was great at first but then the onboard RAID died and about a month after the IDE Secondary channel died!

Another Asus, M32SLi Deluxe I never got working properly. Constant Delayed Write errors onto the drives. In the end I replaced the board. This I put down to poor drivers to be fair.

What I'm trying to say is,
in my experience MSI have the best quality, stability and functionailty of any motherboard I have ever used and I felt your comment at the start was unjust. You really should try giving these boards a better look at, they deserve it.

My current PC, K9N Diamond, AM2-5200 scores a nice 10916 on 3dmark2005 at its stock speed. It is stable and offers a soundblaster Audigy Soundcard, RAID, SLI and advanced overclocking features to boot!

Hooray to MSI!!!

well the worst review of this mobo seems that reviewer doesn't know anything about OC'ing

It will be interesting to see how the fatal1ty-fp-in9-sli board compares, I really hope X-bit can also review the Abit board

This review helped me to decide to buy this motherboard. It has arrived but I have not started the build yet.
Thanks
Cuggie