nForce2 Based Mainboard from MSI is Officially Unveiled

by Anton Shilov
12/03/2002 | 07:27 PM

MSI today officially unveiled its K7N2 (MS-6570) mainboard that was showcased in early June at Computex Taipei 2002 show(see this news-story). I have no idea why MSI decided to postpone its product, keeping in mind that it was almost ready about six months ago.

Here are some technical features of the product:

• Supports all Socket A Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron CPUs with 200, 266 or 333MHz FSB;
• NVIDIA nForce2 SPP chipset with NVIDIA MCP-family I/O controller;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100 and PC2700 or DDR400 memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs;
• 5 PCI, 1 ACR and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 10/100/Mbit/s Ethernet (Optional dual-Ethernet if MCP-T is used);
• 6 USB ports (if newer MCP-T is used, USB 2.0 is supported);
• Optional FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• Integrated AC'97 6-channel audio solution from Realtek (if older MCP without advanced features is used as I/O controller);
• Optional Bluetooth-module connector;
• Overclocking functions;
• Supports all the adjustment capabilities and other features all the latest mainboards from MSI can provide (PC Alert III; Fuzzy Logic 4; Live BIOS, etc);;
• ATX form-factor.

As you may see, there are no advanced features, such as RAID or Serial ATA controllers on the device. Therefore, we can expect the newcomer to be a rather inexpensive solution. MSI said no word in regards availability timeframes.