Asrock AM2V890-VSTA & MSI K9A Platinum Motherboards

A Closer Look: The MSI K9A Platinum Bios

One look at the options in the MSI bios will give you the feeling that this bios was

The Cell menu is where most enthusiasts will spend their time, as it includes most of the options that are used fro tweaking the board to its fullest potential.

FSB goes from 200 all the way to 400, which is more than enough for most anyone.

At first look, it seems as if the vcore is limited to 1.35 on the MSI as well, but that is only one of the two settings to adjust for vcore.

The other adjustment gives you percentages to add to the vcore that you have set. If I have calculated it correctly, at 1.35v and using the 23.3% overvolting adjustment, you can have up to 1.66v for your CPU, which is more than I was actually confortable using in my overclocking using a water cooler, but then again, I like my CPU too much to kill it yet!

DDR dividers are the typical settings that you will find on any AM2 board. Ranging from 400 to 800DDR.

It was also nice to see vdimm options that went up to 2.3v. This should be fine for the DDR2 modules that we have now.

Under the advanced DRAM config page, we have some timings that can be adjusted to sqeeze every ounce of performance possible out of the board.

The only other page that is worth looking at is the health page fo the board. It has some good information, but I found it to be just a little lacking as it does not have vdimm readings or chipset voltage readings. You can use 3rd party monitoring programs, but it is certainly helpful to be able to see some of these things before you install windows.