MSI NF750 – G55 Motherboard Review

INTRODUCTION

MSI is one of the giants in the PC hardware industry. They have been around for as long as I can remember. Motherboards are one of the cornerstones of their business, but the company has branched out into many different areas in recent years, and as you may know, MSI is now one of the top laptop vendors.

Today I am going to review a very interesting motherboard from MSI, the NF750-G55. Here are the specifications:

MSI-NF750-G55

AMD® Phenom(TM) II/Athlon(TM)II/Phenom(TM) processor support with AM3 package.

Single NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI chipset

Hyper Transport Bus HyperTransport 3.0 supports speeds up to 5200 MT/s

Memory or Dual Supports DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600 (OC)

– 4 DDR3 DIMMs (240-pin/1.5V)

– Supports up to 16GB.

Slots o 2 PCI Express x16 slots with x16 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)

o When 2 PCI Express x16 slots are all installed, 16 PCIE x lanes will be arranged from x16/x0 to x8/x8.

or 2 PCI Express x1 slots

o 1 PCI slot, support 3.3V/5V PCI bus interface.

Integrated IDE or an NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI IDE port

– 66/100/133 Extreme Supports DMA mode

– Supports PIO mode of operation, Bus Masters

– You can connect up to two IDE devices

Integrated SATA ports or 5 NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI SATA II ports

o 1 eSATA II port per NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI

– Supports storage and data transfers up to 3 Gb/s

RAID 1-5 function Support SATA II RAID 0 1 0+1 /5 or JBOD mode by NVIDIA® nForce 750a SLI

Audio or Chipset integrated by Realtek® ALC889

– Flexible 8-channel audio with jack detection

– Meets Azalia 1.0 specifications

LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet from Realtek 45CL

Internal I/O Connectors – 24-pin ATX to Power Connector

– 4-pin 12V ATX ​​CPU to power connector

– CPU x 1 / System x 3 FAN Connectors

– CD input connector

– Clear CMOS to bypass

– Power button

– Chassis intrusion switch connector

– Front panel audio connector

– Front panel connector

– Serial port connector

– 3 x USB 2.0 additional connector compatible with 6 ports

– 1 x floppy drive connector

– 5 Serial ATA II connectors

– 1 IDE ATA133 connector

– 1 x SPDIF output to header

– 1 x TPM modulates to header

– 1 OC switch

Back panel I/O ports: 1 PS/2 keyboard

– 1 PS/2 mouse

– 1 6-in-1 audio jack

– 6 USB 2.0 ports

– 1 RJ45 LAN connector

– 1 eSATA port

– 1 DVI-D port

– 1 port for graphics card

– 1 HDMI port

Other Features MSI Active Phase Switching

MSI Easy OC Switch

MSI live update online

MSI 4 Live Update

NVIDIA Hybrid(TM)SLI

True Audio Blu-ray

From the specs of the NF750-G55, it’s easy to conclude that MSI has worked hard to produce something a bit more with this board. The board offers support for SLI, Hybrid SLI and has some interesting proprietary technologies from MSI, such as the “Easy OC Switch”. In this review I won’t be testing the SLI functionality as it has been done before, instead I will focus on the integrated GeForce 8200 chip and see what it can produce in terms of performance.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The NF750-G55 comes in a fairly plain looking cardboard box of standard size. In it, MSI emphasizes support for the latest AMD processors, support for SLI and Hybrid SLI, and some of the additional features like True Blu-ray Audio, APS, and Easy OC Switch.

The included accessories are: a manual; a quick start installation guide; a drivers and utilities CD; the I/O back panel board; SATA and IDE cables and a SATA power converter cable.

MSI NF750-G55 IN DETAIL

Although the MSI NF750-G55 is of the ATX standard, it is a bit narrower than most other ATX motherboards.

There are 4 memory slots that support up to 16GB of DDR3 (up to 1600MHz). To clarify a bit here, the chipset officially only supports up to 1333 MHz, but it is possible to run the memories at 1600 MHz by making a small change to the multiplier in the BIOS.

The only heat sink on the motherboard is the heat sink located on the nForce 750a SLI board.

The CPU cooler is attached with screws, which I think is great as it allows you to really control how tight the cooler is, much better than plastic anchoring systems. The 4-pin connector for the CPU is located in the middle of the board.

MSI’s Active Phase Switching (APS) is located to the right of the 12V ATX ​​connector. This system is in charge of the automatic regulation in real time of the power supplied to the CPU. The power level is actually illustrated by 4 LEDs, which is a nice added feature.

The board has two PCI-E x16 ports and 1 PCI port. As you can see; the PCI-E ports are separated by a fairly large distance. If you use a dual slot card in the second PCI-E port, you will not be able to use the PCI port at all. It would have been better to put the PCI port before the first PCI-E x16 port.

Internal connectivity also includes 5 SATA 2 ports with RAID functionality, 3 USB 2.0 ports, a COM port connector, connectors for external audio; S/PDIF digital and a CD contact.

Integrated chips for sound and Ethernet connectivity are Realtek ALC889 and RTL45CL. Both chips are of high quality and backed by excellent drivers. The Fintek chip located next to the battery is in charge of the general I/O functions of the motherboard and also allows the fans to be controlled with the popular SpeedFan program.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this motherboard is the “Easy OC Switch”. It consists of a pink switch as you can see in the image below. This change allows us to increase the FSB by up to 35% without having to make any other changes. In principle this addition is excellent, but it will only work well if the processor you are using supports overclocking without the need to increase the voltage.

Back panel connectivity is excellent; See the specifications above for a complete list.

TEST EQUIPMENT INSTALLATION

For testing the MSI NF750-G55 I used the following hardware and software:

Test equipment

AMD Phenom II x2 550VE Processor

Zalman CNPS9900A LED Fan

MSI NF750-G55 Motherboard

GeForce 8200 graphics card (integrated)

integrated sound card

Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333Mhz 2×2GB Memory (7-7-7-18)

Hard drive Seagate ST3320620AS (SATA 2, 16MB, 7200rpm)

Zalman ZM660-XT Power Supply

Cooler Master suitcase 690 cm PURE

Operating system and software

Windows XP SP3 operating system

System BIOS V1.0 Drivers

nForce 15.49

Landmarks 3D Mark 06

PC brand 05

Everest 4.5

SiSoftware Sandra Lite XII

FILM BANK R10

SuperPI 1.5 XS MOD

HDTune 2.55

Glass DiscMark 2.2

Lightmark 2008 (1280×1024)

FurMark 1.4 (1280 × 1024, NoMSAA)

Real tests WinRAR 3.80

Benchmark X264HD 2.0

X3: demo meeting

X3: Terran Conflict Continued Demo

Cry 2 Revolutionary Armed Forces Officers Club

Photoshop DH Benchmark

Other software CPU-Z 1.51

GPU-Z 0.3.5

VLC 1.0

Here are a couple of screenshots of the hardware I used:

In the graphics test I used a resolution of 1024×800 with the highest graphics settings.

BIOS

The BIOS on this board comes from AMI (American Megatrends Inc) and is very intuitive and easy to operate when overclocking.

The menu that interested me the most was, of course, the cell menu, where all the really important settings are located, at least if you want to overclock your system. Although the NF750-G55 can be considered a mid-range motherboard, it offers plenty of scope for overclocking both the CPU and memory modules.

The M-Flash program embedded in this BIOS is exclusive to MSI motherboards. It is a smart little program that allows us to update the BIOS and even backup and restore old BIOS versions.

There is also a menu called “User Settings”. It makes it possible to configure different “profiles” of the BIOS settings. This can be useful if you want to quickly load a default overclocking setting for a gaming session or the like.

BENCHMARKING TESTS PART 1

The CPU performance of the nForce 750a chip is within the margins I expected. However, the memory tests fell a bit short, which surprised me, as this is usually a strong area with NVIDIA chips.

BENCHMARKING TESTS PART 2

The HD’s read and write speeds were very good, meaning that NVIDIA resolved driver issues that caused the hard drive to run slower than it should on older chipsets.

REAL WORLD TESTS

What caught my attention from the above results was the poor results of the WinRAR test. My conclusion is that it must be due to the memory issue mentioned above.

In testing the IGP GeForce 8200 chip, I didn’t get any notable results in 3D tests, so it’s easy to conclude that you shouldn’t use it for gaming. However, it worked fine for HD video playback.

The power usage of this system is really low, especially when it is running in idle mode, which makes it a good choice if you are building a 24/7 system.

OVERCLOCK CAPABILITY

NVIDIA has created classic AMD overclocking chipsets in the past, including the now near-mythical nForce 2 and nForce 4 platforms. So what about the nForce 750a SLI’s overclocking capabilities? The following screenshots say it all:

I was able to overclock the FSB to 264 MHz (!), which was actually a bit surprising for me, I didn’t expect it to be so “overclock friendly” being a mid-range card.

I also tried to overclock the integrated graphics card (GeForce 8200). I managed to get it running stable at 601/1442 MHz for the core and shaders, respectively.

RECOMMENDATIONS

My first experience with the NF750 chipset has been a pleasure. The MSI NF750-G55 is a very diverse motherboard. It can be used in a high-end SLI hardcore system or used as a motherboard for an HTPC project thanks to the integrated VGA with HDMI output.

Overall, MSI has managed to build a great motherboard around the nForce 750a SLI chipset. Its performance and overclocking capabilities are excellent, as is its connectivity. The integrated graphics solution is good but not as powerful as some of the integrated chips offered by AMD/ATI.