MSI @ CeBIT 2005
History:
MSI was founded in August 1986 and specializes in the design and manufacturing of mainboards, videocards, add-on cards, servers/workstations, barebones systems, optical storage devices, communication devices and notebooks.
893 employees strong, MSI, or Micro Star International, is currently one of Taiwan's top three and one of the world's top five mainboard manufacturers. Currently the #1 videocard producer in the world, MSI is now striving to become one of the top 3 mainboard makers worldwide and hold their leading position in the videocard market.
MSI sells their products all around the globe, so they have established a global support network with offices in the US, mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands, UK, Japan, and in Latin America. The actual RMA service is organized by Kunshan Microteck Computer in Kunshan, China to keep it efficient and fast.
MSI, like most hardware makers, is focusing more and more on the enthusiast market after their success with the K8N Neo2 mainboard, and is present at many LAN parties and other events. They support the enthusiast and gamer communities world wide with products designed especially for them, which you will definitely find reading further
the MSI booth from outside:
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and from inside:
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MSI P4N Diamond
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Based on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset, the options should be just what we are used to from the K8N Diamond, except this board supports all 775 processors (including the upcoming dual cores) and runs with DDR2. It supports up to 8GB of DDR2 memory at 667MHz and of course has two PCIe 16x slots, but what is new here is that it doesn't need a special PCB or jumper array to enable and disable SLI operation - you can actually enable and disable SLI in the driver in Windows, which is a very nice feature.
Furthermore, it has two SATA RAID chips, 6 SATA ports (2 SATA-II and 4 SATA-I iirc), dual Gigabit LAN onboard and Creative Soundblaster Live 7.1 onboard, also a nice touch.
I hope that MSI will allow higher Vcore and Vdimm options for this board (the K8N Diamond only goes up to 1.68v and 2.85v respectively), and implement an option to trick Prescott CPUs to use the 14x multiplier.
UPDATE:
The nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board is currently still slower than the i955 board! MSI says they are still tweaking stuff and the BIOS is all new etc., but this at least gives us a hint: IF the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition will end up faster than the Intel chipset, it won't be by much.
MSI 955X Diamond
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Based on the Intel i955 chipset, this board supports all Socket 775 processors including the 3.2ghz XE dual core chip with HT (four thread handlers total!), 4 slots for DDR-II 667 and an FSB of 1066MHz. The 955X can also run with up to 8GB of DDR2 memory at 667MHz, though it only sports 1 PCIe 16x slot. Included is Intel's ICH7R Southbridge, which means dual Gigabit LAN, IDE and SATA I+II RAID iirc.
There were also samples of MSI's 945P and 945G boards, but I lost the pictures of them, they look pretty much identical to the 955X board so no tragedy there, I didn't bother to look for new pics of the boards. The 945G is using Intel's updated integrated GPU, the GMA950 instead of the GMA900. I have no info about the changes from GMA900 to 950 atm, but I doubt it will be anything spectacular :P
Again I hope MSI will implement higher voltage options and the 14x Prescott multiplier trick.
MSI K8N Master2
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Based on the nForce4 SLI (NOT nF4 Professional like Tyan et al) chipset, this board supports two Socket 940 Opteron processors including the upcoming dual core Opterons. Obvious are the two 16x PCIe slots and SLI support, and just like P4N doesn't need the extra PCB to switch the PCIe lane configuration. The board has 6 memory slots (no NUMA support, unfortunately) and features the core cell chip, which caught my eye immediately - this means it's built for us enthusiasts and should offer many tweaking and overclocking options, as MSI later confirmed.
If you run only one CPU in this board, you can use a standard ATX PSU, and even if you use two CPU's, most high end ATX psu's should do the job just fine!Furthermore, it sports the standard ATX form factor, and should fit in most any desktop case!
The K8N Master2 supports up to 12GB of registered ECC DDR memory, but MSI told me it will also work with standard DDR. The engineer explained to me there are some difficulties overclocking two CPUs on a board, but the company is wokring on it and will try to implement as many overclocking and tweaking options as possible.
This board also features SATA II slots, RAID (0,1,0+1) and dual Gigabit onboard LAN. The pricing is going to be very low according to MSI, much lower than Tyan's dual opteron boards (400-500$).
I'm hoping dual CPU overclocking works out well, and standard memory support functions properly, registered memory would scare off many potential buyers.
MSI 6600GT Diamond
here are two shots of the tool, which are XtremeSystems exclusives
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Sorry for the missing pics of the card, my camera ate the ones I took and couldn't find pics anywhere on the net...
Due to others' success with "Special Edition" 6600GT cards, MSI will release a series of faster clocked cards with faster rated memory chips. Unfortunately they couldn't tell me what speeds they are shooting for, as they are still evaluating clockspeeds for the final product. They did, however, show me something else which looked very very interesting!
With their 6600GT Diamond series, MSI is going to release a new tool to overclock the cards even further, monitor the temperature of the cards, adjust the fan speed, and change Vgpu and Vmem!
Users will be able to create custom profiles if they don't like the four existing profiles. Possible settings include the fan speed at a given temp, creating profiles for gaming with higher Vgpu and Vmem, the maximum stable clocks at the fastest fan speed, and lowered fan speed and voltages for 2D desktop work or watching a movie. Switching between two profiles requires just one click in the tweaking tool.
Initially the tool will only be available for the 6600GT Diamond cards, which should be available in April according to MSI. Depending on feedback, return rates and other factors, they intend to release a 6800GT and x800PRO with the same features, and hopefully some high end cards afterwards.
UPDATE:
About 256MB 6600GT cards, all the videocard builders at CeBIT told me the same thing: not anytime soon. I'm pretty sure the PCB and the memory controller are to blame, it's hard to maintain signal integrity between the memory controller and large memory sizes on a 4-layer PCB.
Also, voltage tweaks will only work on PCIe cards, and MSI is very proud of a special solution they developed to protect their cards from overheating. If the card gets too hot for any reason, the first action is a small popup warning which is visible even in fullscreen apps/games. In extreme cases, the videocard will shut down the entire system and reset itself to default voltages, clocks and fan speed.
MSI "Mega PC"
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This is MSI's answer to the XPC and the other SFF systems, here at CeBIT they had two models, one based on the i865 chipset and one based on the i915 chipset. While the specs aren't overwhelming, the case can be taken apart very easily and quickly without a screw driver! They use a simple mechanism that locks optical drives and HDs in place, requires only one hand to operate and reliably keeps the drives in place.
The i915-based Mega PC accepts any Prescott CPU available, not bad considering the tiny case and PSU - it uses a special heatpipe cooler that also cools the chipset, though this wasn't available at CeBIT. The model has two memory slots, uses the Intel GMA900 integrated graphics and the ICH6 southbridge. Further info about the box's features was limited, though it had SATA and, important for an SFF, AGP and PCI slots supporting a dual slot AGP card or one of each. Onboard 802.11g wireless LAN (54Mbps) and Azalia 7.1 onboard sound were included.
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The second Mega PC was based on the i865 chipset, using the same case with a media PC-like front, nicely modeled after an audio or Hi-Fi system. No info about the internals unfortunately...
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MSI Passive Cooling
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Here you can see some systems from tweakers.net that MSI showed at their both. They were playing with some passive cooling solutions on MSI products and showed a 6600GT SLI system running benchmarks 24/7, with only passive cooling. The last pic on the right shows a Cube PC with an interesting heatpipe "thing" on the cpu
MSI Quality Control
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MSI also showed off a certificate of the German TÃœV, known for being very strict and using harsh testing methods, as proof how tough their product stress testing and quality control is (don't forget, they test stock speeds, not oc'ed speeds
As a result of proving their mainboard quality in dozens of tests, the TÃœV certified MSI's mainboards upping the MTBF from 19 to 25 years. Note this does NOT imply MSI gives a 25 year warranty, TÃœV simply thinks MSI boards will work 25 years without errors ... again, no overclocking here
UPDATE:
MSI will have a Pentium M mainboard based on the 915P chipset with a PCIe graphics slot, though they are not sure when.
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lol
ATI
Originally Posted by perkam
That kind of worries me... Hardcore modding community will be very dissapointed 
one more thing to add 
LOL
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