_Targeted's Full Review: MSI K7D Master L (MS-6501-030) Motherboard
As it has been pointed out at Anandtech, the AMD760MPX chipset has been tested for years, partially because it's the only multiprocessor chipset for AMD and they did care about their flaghip chipset. This is something that all the new chipsets lack. Good argument to me.
The m/b supports regular DDRAM, although I had to return good (!) Kingston module that didn't make it in the board for some reason. Replacement SEC module worked just fine.
I have digged through forums at 2CPU and MSI and the "is said" below is a reference to those. I had no luck installing dual Durons but it's said to be a BIOS problem - only a very old 1.0 BIOS supported dual Durons. There is also a setting in BIOS which allows to run dual Athlon XP as if they were MP, but it's said to be doing nothing at all. Forums are full with success stories of modding XPs into MPs by closing the last of the L5 bridges, but to a degree it's a game of chance, the CPU can be broken. Anyway, with me the board works like a champ with single Duron and dual Athlons MP.
Granted, even the dual Athlon MP Thoroughbred 2G with DDR2100 can be slower than single Athlon XP Barton 3G with DDR4000 but having an SMP machine is COOL (not to mention very useful in software development).
Very appealing visual design. The m/b is on the bigger side, I had problems installing it into a regular miditower - had to actually bend aluminium 5 1/4" bay chassis a little, otherwise some capacitor won't fit. The layout is not so great. The CPU levers are close to the capacitors and are difficult to open with bare hand, and IDE connectors are placed inconveniently.
Has a bundled PCI USB 2.0 controller which is probably worth ~$20. Built-in Intel NIC also cuts off another $30 or so. Given the street price of $230 it's quite an investment. I don't think I will need PCI64 or AGP Pro any time soon though. The built it sound is noisy, so no quality MP3s unless you install external sound card.
MSI specializes in the design and manufacturing of mainboards, interface cards, and barebones. In the rapidly changing information technology industry...More at eBay
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