MSI 865P Neo

Big B · Dec 13, 2006

<h2>Intro</h2>
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nboard.JPG">
 
Intel has created an enemy for it's own i875, or Canterwood, chipset with the i865, or Springdale. With a number of companies enabling the PAT supposedly exclusive to the i875, many people are ending up with a Canterwood eqivalent for roughly half the price. A few other sites have good reason to believe that this PAT trick won't last forever, considering what Intel has done to products that people are getting too much extra performance from. Regardless of what happens, the Springdale chipset remains a solid pick for those wanting a solid base for their Pentium 4 setup without forking over a hefty chunk of change.
 
MSI has an intresting little board, the 865P Neo, based on the 865P chipset. It's still Springdale, but it lacks official support for the 800MHz FSB cpu's. In the manual, MSI claims 800MHz FSB support, but we'll get to that later. The other thing that's a little odd is pairing the 865P with the not-so new ICH4. The i865 can be paired with ICH5 or ICH5R, but MSI chose not to use this, and likely to keep the costs down. As you'll see shortly, this is a no frills board, so don't look here for extra goodies like SATA RAID or a high-end audio solution.
 
As usual, it's time to list the specs of this board for all the world to see.
<ul>
<li>i865P chipset
<li>ICH4
<li>1x 4x/8x AGP
<li>6x PCI
<li>Dual ATA100 controllers
<li>Socket 478
<li>2 184-Pin DIMMs
<li>C-Media AC'97 codec
<li>Realtek 8101L (optional)
<li>400/533/800MHz FSB (800 by overclocking)
</ul>

 
As shown, this is about as bare as they come, although I think LAN should be standard in this day and age, especially considering that the ICH4 already has a embedded NIC controller.

Big B · Dec 13, 2006

<h2>Layout</h2>
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nbox.JPG">
 
The box is a silvery one, and is different than the box for MSI's 865PE and 875P Neo boards, which sport a blue and orange pattern. The back of the box gives a run down of what the board offers, both standard and optional.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nacc.JPG">
 
Opening up the box, you see the included driver disc, D-Bracket 2, I/O shield, a rounded ide and floppy cable, and a generic MSI P4 case badge. The rounded cables are welcome, but if you want something a little sharper looking, then you'll want to make your own or buy them.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nantistat.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nboard.JPG">
 
At the bottom of the box is the 865P Neo motherboard wrapped in static. Two things are immediately noticable: first, the motherboard isn't a full width ATX board and only uses 6 mounting holes; second, there are only 2 DIMM slots. As this board is on the low-end of the spectrum, this makes sense.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Ndimm.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Ndimmagp1.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Ndimmagp2.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Ndimmtop1.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Ndimmtop2.JPG">
 
Having started on the DIMM slots, let me continue. The two slots are different colors to define the two channels, although with only 1 slot per channel it's not as necessary on this motherboard. While it is nice to not have to remove your AGP card to install memory, it can't be helped with a six PCI slot board. MSI did a good job with what they had to work with. Unlike some motherboards, the DIMM slots aren't dangerously close to the AGP slot when closed. There's also a little room for the DIMM clips to be opened at the top of the board, so there shouldn't be any problems installing RAM with this board installed in the average case.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Np4skt.JPG">
 
As the top half of the board is pretty jam packed, MSI has the P4 heatsink bracket rotated to make best use of the available area. While some uber large coolers could pose a problem, I don't see too many hardcore enthusiasts looking at this board, so the space works.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nnb1.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nnb2.JPG">
 
The 865P MCH is covered by a passive aluminum heatsink, and retained by a spring mechanism common on most P4 boards out there. The heatsink has a soft spacer, as the MCH is a flip-chip design like all P4 Intel chipsets. A thermal pad is used, keeping in line with the low-cost of the board.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Npwr.JPG">
 
The ATX power connector and the 12V power connector are behind the I/O panel. The main complaints with this location are it blocking airflow and that it makes accessing the power connectors a real pain. I don't have bear claws for hands, but even this location is hard to get to for me.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nbios_chip.JPG">
 
The BIOS chip is in front of the AGP slot. Unfortunately, it's soldered in, and that would mean looking at a new board instead of having just a BIOS chip sent to you. I know this is a budget board, but having a socketed BIOS would've been a much better from a worst case scenario position.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/856Niopnl.JPG">
 
The I/O panel has your two PS/2 ports, 4 USB ports, 2 serial, 1 parallel and the 3 audio jacks. This setup has become fairly popular as of late. Moving along...
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Npci.JPG">
 
As previously mentioned, the board has 6 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x/4x. Being a budget motherboard, the 6 PCI slots is a nice touch, and could be used to make a pretty roubust system off this platform.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nide.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865Nfrtpnl.JPG">
 
Down south, the IDE and floppy ports are grouped together. If you happen to use this board in a full tower case, the location of these ports leaves much to be desired. While Gigabyte has started doing this, I wasn't aware that MSI was color coding their front panel jumpers until now. These are a pain to deal with no matter what, but the color coding makes it that much less of a pain to deal with. The header for the 2 remaining USB 2.0 ports is around here as well.
 
All in all, this is a solid layout. While there are a few minor annoyances, the only thing that really bugs me is the lack of a socketed BIOS chip. The DIMM slots in position to the AGP slot is about as good as you're going to get on any 6 PCI slot board. I do wish the IDE ports were placed a little higher as it'll be a stretch to a drive at the top of even a mid-tower case.

Big B · Dec 13, 2006

<h2>The BIOS</h2>
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bmain.JPG">
 
As shown by the physical BIOS chip on the motherboard, you work with an AMI BIOS. Nothing wrong with that, but usually Award BIOS's are used. MSI has used AMI BIOSes in past motherboards, and obviously sees nothing wrong with them, and quite frankly (no pun intended) neither do I. As seen, the main BIOS screen is standard fair, and isn't that intresting. The individual menus on the other hand...
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Badv.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bboot.JPG">
 
While I don't expect anything wild in BIOS's these days, the BIOS of the 856P Neo is a little tidier than most, in that you really don't come across a menu that requires you to scroll down to see the rest of the menu on screen. As seen in the advanced BIOS features, the boot order is in it's own sub-menu.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bdram.JPG">
 
Keeping in mind the budget market of this board, the DRAM timings submenu of the Advanced Chipset menu are pretty generous and should give you some leeway on tweaks.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bheal.JPG">
 
Obviously, having the ability to keep tabs on your CPU temp and different voltages is always a good thing. While nothing is outright missing, the fact that the board supports different voltages for the AGP and DIMM slots, it would have been great to see monitors for them here.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bfreq.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bfsb1.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bfsb2.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bvagp.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bvdimm.JPG">
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bvcore.JPG">
 
Here comes the good stuff in the BIOS: the overclocking stuff. Obviously, a non-OC'd stable board is what you want right off the bat, but with the P4's scaling so well, many people are getting some pretty high marks off their chips without a problem. First thing you can see is the CPU Ratio, and it is marked locked. If you have an unlocked chip, this is useful, but most people don't. Depending on your initial FSB of your CPU, you have as high as 500MHz to OC with, before being quad-pumped mind you, and in 1MHz increments. Even with the killer FSB's some Springdale/Canterwood boards are getting, a 500MHz FSB probably won't be hit in the near future...at least in stock speeds. While MSI has been pretty good in the voltage selections of the DIMM and AGP voltages, the CPU voltage tops out at 1.6V, and can be a real deal breaker in overclocking exploits. While it would be nice to see something a little higher, like 1.85V at the top, I don't really see this happening---again, based on the target market of this board. Another thing that would've been great to see is user adjustable FSB: DRAM ratios to help get the best performance out of the board, even if you don't try overclocking. The AGP and PCI busses have not been locked at 66MHz and 33MHz, respectively. This is disappointing as I can't find any evidence to show that the i865P can't support locked AGP and PCI busses. The last two things could also easily be included under the Advanced Chipset menu, but as shown earlier they're nowhere to be found.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_Bsrn.JPG">
 
MSI has a little flashier pre-POST screen showing a few features of the board. Depending on how fast your monitor wakes up, you may or may not catch it. Of course, most of you won't really care about it, since it's not really important.
 
For a budget board, this sure has a few surprises, mainly the insane 500MHz FSB option and the tidier organization of the menus. I wasn't expecting anything in the way of tweaks, but a decent selection is there. The only thing that really kills it for me is the low Vcore, which is almost a slap in the face of the FSB being available to such a high speed.

Big B · Dec 13, 2006

<h2>Test Setup</h2>
 
Yes, it's time for a few benchmarks. I know a lot of sites run a ton of benchmarks in reference to games, but I don't. I don't like scrolling through a ton of pages of benchmarks, but I don't want to see a lack of data to help gauge a product, so here's a few benchmarks to give you an idea of how this motherboard performs. While I don't have any recent Pentium 4 boards available, I will be sampling some of the benchmarks from my last motherboard review of the Gigabyte KT400 board to give some reference.
 
Benchmarks
<ul>
<li>SiSoft Sandra
<li>ID Software's Quake 3 Demo
<li>Futuremark's 3DMark 2001SE build 330
<li>Clibench
<li>ScienceMark
</ul>

 
Hardware configuration:
<ul>
<li>MSI 865P Neo
<li>Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz (Northwood B)/533MHz FSB
<li>2 x 256MB PC3200 (DDR400) Kingston ValueRAM
<li>PNY GeForce 4 Ti4600
<li>Maxtor 40GB, 5400RPM hard drive
<li>Toshiba 6x DVD-ROM
<li>Hercules Fortissimo II
<li>TI IEEE1394 Card
<li>HP NIC/Ultra SCSI PCI adadpter
<li>Antec PP352X Power Supply (350W)
</ul>

 
Software:
<ul>
<li>Windows XP Professional SP1
<li>Intel Application Accelerator 2.3
<li>Intel INF driver 5.0.2
<li>Detonator 43.03
<li>Hercules Fortissimo II driver 1.50
</ul>
 
Other info: Due to the inability to change the FSBRAM ratios, the memory was run at 333MHz. The DRAM timings were left at the shipped default, with the CAS at 2.5.
 
Quake 3
 
Quake 3 is still a staple in benchmarking, and probably will remain so until Doom3 comes out.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_quake3.jpg">
 
The results were obtained with a 32-bit color depth. With the scores so close together, it's apparent that the Ti4600 is starting to become the bottleneck. While a 16-bit color depth can help with the speed, there's no real point when you're getting 250+ FPS at a 1024x768 resolution.
 
3DMark 2001 SE
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_3dmark2k1.jpg">
 
As it should be, there's not a massive gap between the resolutions, like we saw in Quake 3. I read the reviews like everyone else, but it's pretty cool when you see a score at home that's hitting nearly 13,000 at stock speeds. Having something like a Radeon 9800 obviously would give an even higher score, but this being a motherboard review, I'm not all that concerned.
 
SiSoft Sandra
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_sanarith.jpg">
 
In the CPU Arithmatic benchmark, the Athlon XP2000 whomps the P4 2.4B, but the Dhrystone tests have the latter gaining the upper hand by a bit.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_sanmulti.jpg">
 
The Multimedia CPU test favors the Pentium 4 here, but not by massive proportions.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_sanmem.jpg">
 
No real shocker here. The dual-channel i865P leaves the single channel KT400 board in the dust, as it should. If I had a working nForce 2 board *cough*, the comparison wouldn't be such a wash out in favor of the P4 setup.
 
Sandra isn't the most accurate benchmark, but it gives an idea as to what we might expect. I'm still getting a 2nd opinion with CliBench.
 
CliBench
 
Clibench is a bit more accurate than Sandra, and also offers some other CPU tests.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_cli1.jpg">
 
The first two tests on the list are the Whetstone and Dhrystone. Unlike Sandra, both favor the Athlon XP, but neither really leads by that much.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_cli2.jpg">
 
The Matrix operations are very P4 friendly, but the Athlon edges out on the Eight Queens test.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_cli3.jpg">
 
Here, it's opposite what Sandra's Multimedia test showed. The Athlon comes out ahead, but by no huge margin.
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_cli4.jpg">
 
Again, we see the memory bandwith of the i865P's dual-channel DDR trouncing the KT400.

Big B · Dec 13, 2006

<h2>Testing Continued</h2>
Science Mark
 
<img src="http://www.zone365.com/imagefiles/images/hardware/motherboards/msi/865pneo/865N_scimark.jpg">
 
Here we can see the H2O and Liquid Argon tests in favor of the Athlon. The Promethium seems to love the P4, however.
 
Overclocking
 
Due to the low voltage and the lack of locked PCI and AGP busses, my overclocking didn't go very far. I tried out a 150MHz FSB, but that didn't allow me to even get into Windows. It would post and boot, but unfortunately it locked up before it got to the "Windows is starting up" screen. 147MHz would post and even run through 3DMark 2001, but when I ran Prime 95 and the 3DMark 2001 demo, it 3DMark would just suddenly crash out of the demo, but Prime 95 still ran. 145MHz proved successful however, but I was curious to see how the 146MHz mark faired. Unfortunately, this also saw the benchmark crashing out at the same place in the 3DMark 2001 Demo as when I had it at 147MHz, but I wasn't surprised. While others may have better luck with this board, I would not recommend looking at this board if that's your cup of tea.

 
Conclusion
 
While I have been using AMD based machines, I have to say that I have not had a pleasurable time trying to get the nForce 2 chipset to work for me, and it was due to some extreme pickiness about the RAM. When I got this board, I just had to plug it in and flip on the power to have it work right. The 865P Neo has been a pleasure to work with from the start. While there are some complaints with the board, most aren't anything that can cause a real problem. MSI does claim unofficial 800MHz FSB support, which the board probably can do as the only difference I can tell between the i865P and the i865PE is just that. The "not-quite locked AGP/PCI" bus issue is what concerns me here. I'd also would have preferred to see a socketed BIOS chip in the event that you needed a new physical BIOS chip. The BIOS has been neatened up and is a nice touch.
 
I didn't expect this board to be an overclockers dream, and that's been proven. While it may be disappointing to see the lack of certain options, the fact is this is a budget board, and those tweaks aren't necessary for the target market. It is first and foremost stable, something I value more than overclocking. The PCB is a compact design, but is well layed out. The best way to sum it up is that it's a cheap, stable, dual-channel DDR motherboard. Unless you want to go with a lesser brand like ECS, PC Chips and the like, you're highly unlikely to find a similar motherboard for the price, which, by the way, seems to run between $80-90USD with shipping from reputable on-line dealers. If ICH5R isn't important to you and you just need to save as much as you can, look no further than the MSI 865P Neo. It's a great little board.
 
The Good
<ul>
<li>6 PCI slots
<li>Well laid out PCB
<li>Stable
<li>Cheap dual-channel DDR board

 
The Bad
<ul>
<li>AGP/PCI busses not exactly locked
<li>Low CPU voltage
<li>Soldered-in BIOS chip
</ul>
 
Final score: 4.3 out of 5.

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