BIOS
The line between this particular MSI motherboard being aimed at either the desktop or server market, or both, is further blurred by the BIOS. Immediately on entering BIOS, you are greeted with this title.
Award's BIOS' are known for their flexibility and ease of navigation. MSI, recently, have been more and more adventurous in their pursuit of the enthusiast market by offering increasingly impressive voltage options. Sadly, as the next screengrab will show, this is not the case here.
There are no voltage options whatsoever. You're only given the option of running a set number of pre-defined FSB speeds. The default selection gives you 133FSB on the 533FSB processors. Notice that the AGP and PCI speeds are pushed out of specification if you choose any option other than 100FSB (or 133FSB). There's no AGP / PCI divider present in this particular BIOS. That's why when using MSI's own Windows-based overclocking tool, the test Radeon 9700 Pro was the first limiting factor at 146FSB.
The timings, though, are exactly what you'd expect from a desktop motherboard. I really had hoped certain voltage options would be present.
Hyper-Threading support is present but it needs to implemented on a CPU level. A nice, shiny 3.06GHz P4 would be a nice partner.
There's not too much too talk about, probably due to the lack of adjustment and locking. With other manufacturers supporting overclocking with standard desktop features, I feel this motherboard is in need of a revised BIOS if it is to be aimed at the enthusiast market. Still, as a server BIOS, it's fine. You have the usual hardware monitoring and bootup options. MSI may well release an overclocking BIOS in the near future.
