Introduction

AMD Athlon platform since its introduction has been a major thorn in the side for Intel, but a great cash crop for companies like VIA, SiS, ULi, ATI and nVidia, who all have chipsets out to support AMD Athlon. While nVidia only started to support AMD in the Socket A days, this is because they simply didn't have the capacity to make motherboard chipsets when Slot A was around. When we look back now, we see just how far the platforms have evolved, and what chipsets now come with as standard features were only drooling thoughts back in the Slot A days.

nVidia's nForce 4 SLI x16 chipset is now the hit product for the 3D giant, and with SLI now a huge part of the gamers life, we are starting to see every motherboard company who wants to stay in business starting to use this chipset.

Just recently we took a look at the ABIT AN8 32X motherboard, comparing it to the older nForce 4 SLI chipset that used to split a single PCI-E x16 lane down to twin x8 lanes - and we saw just how much of a difference this can make.

Today we are taking a look at another of the Dual x16 based nForce 4 boards, this time from MSI and will be comparing it against the ABIT AN8 32X and the Albatron K8SLI nForce 4 SLI original chipset to see how well this motherboard stacks up against the competition.