MSI K8T Neo-FSR Options

[Bob The Junkie]

Introduction:

Micro-star International is a manufacturer who has been in the market a long time. They have a well known reputation for producing the very latest products on the market and releasing them before any other manufacturer. They might not have the most features, the best overclockability, or the cheapest price, but if it?s the very latest hardware that you want, before anyone else has it, MSI are the people to look to.

Since the introduction of the 754 pin AMD 64 processor to the market, many motherboards have been released, with PCI and AGP locks, PCI express support, and integrated firewalls amongst other features. This has reduced the costs of older motherboards dramatically, making them ideal for building cheap systems for users who don?t need all of the extras.

The K8T Neo-FSR is the baby brother of the K8T Neo-FIS2R motherboard for the AMD socket 754 platform. Aimed at the user who doesn?t need all of the features the more expensive board provides, the Neo-FSR provides a stable platform for socket 754 users without the price tag of some of the more feature oriented boards.

So if there are much better motherboards on the market, why would you want such an old and superseded motherboard? The answer, in case you?ve not guessed it is price. The Neo-FSR can be picked up for very little now-a-days, which when combined with a cheap graphics card, a AMD64 2800+ processor, and an stick of 512MB of RAM can make for an extremely powerful, quiet (thanks to AMD?s Cool ?n? Quiet feature) and cheap media centre, server, or second PC.


Features:

The Neo-FSR comes with the following features:

K8T800 chipset
Gigabit Ethernet LAN
2 x SATA/SATA RAID connectors on the VIA VT8237 chipset
AGP x8 support
5.1 sound support
4 x IDE drive support


Packaging:

The Neo-FSR comes in an attractive green box, which is clearly labelled as to what the product is. The width and height of the box is no larger than the motherboard itself, and the depth it just enough to contain all of the peripherals the motherboard comes with.



The first impression you get when the box is opened is how well laid out everything is contained in there. Although MSI has followed every other manufacturer?s tradition of simply putting the peripherals at the top of the box where they can move around during transit instead of securing them somehow, the peripherals do not move around a lot in the box, even when it is shaken roughly. Contained with the motherboard is everything you will need to connect your other components to the system, including:

A manual for the motherboard
A manual for the Serial ATA and Serial ATA RAID functions of the motherboard
A rounded floppy cable
A rounded Parallel ATA cable
Two Serial ATA cables
MSI?s D-bracket for on-board diagnostic support
A driver CD containing drivers and utilities for the motherboard
A floppy disk containing the drivers for Windows drive support during installation (F6 disk)
An EMI shield for the motherboard?s connectors to the case (not shown)



Beneath the peripherals is a cardboard separator which stops the motherboard from moving around in the box. This is a nice touch to the packaging as it reduces to chances of the motherboard being damaged in transit, and also improves the look of the whole package. The motherboard itself is wrapped in a static proof bag to protect it from static damage, and protected from knocks on the packaging by a thin foam layer.




Motherboard design:

When taken out of the packaging, the first thing that stands out about the board is the red PCB it is mounted on, which gives it an attractive and professional look, great if you want to mount the board in a case with a side window. Different areas of the board are separated by colour, with the memory modules using a green plastic, IDE connectors having yellow connectors, the AGP slot using a red connector, and the PCI slots using white connectors. This makes it extremely easy for a user to identify which areas of the board are used for each purpose, but some users may not like the conflicting colours, preferring a unified look instead.



The north bridge on the board is passively cooled by a heat sink, ideal for a quiet board. The south bridge is not cooled at all.

As the Neo-FSR is designed for the user who doesn?t need all of the extras of its bigger brother, the Neo-FIS2R, it only has two serial ATA connectors, which use the Via VT8237 chipset. These are mounted on the very right of the board, directly underneath the IDE and floppy connectors. However if you look very carefully you can see where the additional IDE connector, and promise controller would be mounted on the FIS2R.




Notice the four pin ATX block connector on the board, next to the north bridge. This needs to be connected to supply the extra power to the processor, without it, the system can be very unstable.

BIOS:

The Neo-FSR?s BIOS is well laid out and organised. It contains all of the standard options of intrusion protection, temperature monitoring, password protection, and S.M.A.R.T monitoring. The BIOS also contains the option to enable AMD?s Cool ?n? Quiet feature, which enables the processor to throttle back when not in use, saving energy and heat.

Overclocking features

Overclocking on the Neo-FSR is a mixed bag. On the positive side it contains the ability to adjust the speed of the Hyper Transport link, modify the CAS, TRCD, TRAS and TRCP of the RAM, set the CPU FSB between 100 and 280 MHz, and set the RAM voltage beyond 2.8 volts.

The Neo-FSR also contains MSI?s Dynamic Overclocking technology, CoreCell. This allows the BIOS to moderate the speed of the CPU?s FSB depending on the load on the CPU. The user can specify the level of Overclocking the BIOS should overclock to. This is specified in levels, ranging from ?Private? to ?General?. However the BIOS will never raise the FSB any higher than 210 MHz, so hardcore overclockers will probably be better to turn this off. A better idea would have been would be to allow the user to select the range the BIOS should overclock to, as well as the defaults.

On the negative side, the Neo-FSR has two main faults.

The first is the voltage range to the CPU the board can supply. By default the Athlon 64 processor needs 1.50 volts. The maximum voltage the Neo-FSR can supply is only 1.55 volts which may hinder overclocking attempts.

The second is the lack of AGP and PCI locks on the board. This means the only way to raise the CPU?s FSB substantially without running into problems from PCI cards or hard drives not being able to cope is to reduce the Hyper Transport link speed. This has negative effect on other components of the system. However as the Hyper Transport link is simply a multiplier, using the FSB speed, it is possible to restore the correct speed of the link, if the FSB is raised high enough.


Performance:

Unfortunately I didn?t have chance to test out the board for performance as it has to be returned in perfect non used working order. However I have previously tested the FIS2R board, which proved to be a stable and excellent overclocking board.


Conclusion:


Although it has been superseded by many motherboards now, the MSI K8T Neo-FSR motherboard is still a worthwhile investment for system builders on a budget. It offers some Overclocking potential, Cool ?n? Quiet support, RAID, and Gigabit LAN features. This makes it ideal as a second inexpensive system for processing tasks, a file server, or even a media centre PC, thanks to Cool ?n? Quiet.

16/20

[jbiel]

The high temp reading is a know issue with this board and if I recall is caused by the sensor/bios connection.
At this very moment my temp reading is 57C but I know this is false. If I reboot right now it likely would drop about 20C or it may stay the same. I would say 5 uot of 6 times the temp reads high.

Tempswise - I would be inclined to believe the lower temp - but there is any easy way to make sure - just put your hand on the heatsink. If its burning hot - then its 50c - if its moderately warm, its 20c :)

Try this and you may see that all is well.