Five Press-Releases from MSI...

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
06/04/2002 | 03:10 PM

Another company has shown its activity by the beginning of the Computex 2002 show. It is MSI – the third largest mainboard manufacturer in the world. As a true member of the "Big Four", it has announced several new mainboards:

• 850 Max. This mainboard is based on the i850 chipset, supports 32-bit RIMM modules and has a non-standard ICH4 South Bridge. The mainboard has an optional support of PC2PC-Bluetooth technology and has an Ethernet 10/100 controller.
• KT4 Ultra. This mainboard is based on the KT400 chipset and supports Serial ATA. The specifications of the mainboard are as follows: form-factor – ATX, processor socket – Socket A, 3 PC3200/PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM DIMM (upto 3 Gb), 6 PCI, AGP 8x/3.0, CNR, 533 Mb/sec. V-Link, ATA-133, USB 2.0 (South Bridge – VT8235), Serial ATA – 150 (additional chip), optional 5.1 sound, Ethernet 10/100, PC2PC – Bluetooth. According to the preliminary information, the KT400 chipset can be delayed for a rather long period of time, therefore, we can only guess, when it will appear in shops.
• 648 Max. The mainboard is based on SiS648 chipset. Form-factor – ATX, processor socket – Socket478 (for Pentium 4), 533/400 MHz QP bus, 3 PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM DIMM (upto 3 Gb), 6 PCI, AGP 8x, CNR, ATA-133, USB 2.0, 5.1 sound, optional support of PC2PC- Bluetooth and Ethernet 10/100. It seems rather strange that PC3200/DDR400 support is missing in the specifications of the mainboard – SiS648 chipset must support this memory type.
• KT3 Ultra2. This is a KT333-chipset based mainboard with optional PC2PC-Bluetooth support. Specifications: form-factor – ATX, processor-socket – Socket A, 3 PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM DIMM (upto 3 Gb), 5 PCI, AGP 4x, CNR, ATA-133, USB 2.0, ATA-133 RAID, optional support of PC2PC-Bluetooth.
• The fifth press-release of the company is dedicated to the first mainboard in the world, which supports PC2PC-WLAN technology. This technology resembles PC2PC-Bluetooth with the only difference that in this case a PC can be connected to a wireless network of the IEEE802.11b standard (in case of PC2PC-Bluetooth use a connection of point-to-point type can only be made). The MSI PC2PC-WLAN package includes a "WLAN module", which can be connected to a PC, and a "WLAN-key", which is installed on the other side of the connection (it can be either a single PC, or a network). It is reported, that PC2PC-WLAN can optionally be bundled with the following mainboards: 845E Max2, 845G Max, KT3 Ultra2, KT4 Ultra and some other upcoming models.