Review by Kyle Kerley - September 17, 2006

FEATURES

The 570 has a slew of features, even though it's only the midrange board. Some of the following that stuck out the most to me are the HD audio in the form of the Realtek ALC883 codec. I won't be leaving my SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro anytime soon, but for people without a soundcard, this is sure to be quite adequate for most sound needs. It also complies with the Azalia 1.0 specifications.

The board is also Vista-ready in that it can support up to 8GB RAM; finally a step up from the 4GB limit seen on the nForce3 and 4 boards. While there is no pressing need now for gamers and "regular" power users to have over 2GB, people requiring lots of RAM for video editing and the like should be more than pleased with the upgrade options afforded by the K9N SLI Platinum.

MSI K9N nForce 570 SLI Platinum

The included D-bracket that fits into a PCI slot opening on the back of the case is actually a very nice feature. It has LED lights that display various codes/formations when there are problems during post. If anyone has used an EPoX board in the past or currently, it is similar to the LEDs they have right on the motherboard that display various codes when/if problems arise. MSI's implementation is nice, though a bit hard to use being that it's on the back of the case.

Another nice addition that when used begs the question of "Why the hell wasn't this done a long time ago?" is the CMOS clear button. No more annoying jumpers...just push this button for 10 seconds to ensure the CMOS has been cleared power back on to have a factory fresh BIOS ready to be tweaked again (though not so aggressively this time).

In the LAN department, NVIDIA's DualNet technology has been added, which allows for the dual gigabit Ethernet ports to act as a single 2Gb port. Plus, the FirstPacket technology allows packet prioritizing so that, in theory, one could be downloading torrents and playing an online game and not experience the total bandwidth saturation that BitTorrent normally causes.

MSI also included their Dual CoreCell technology "which focuses on the 4 'Ps' - Performance Precision, Silence Precision, Image Precision and Sound Precision." For much more detailed information, MSI's site has a very nice pictorial guide showcasing all of Dual CoreCell's features.

CPU support

• Supports 64-bit AMD® Athlon™ 64 / Athlon 64FX / Athlon 64 X2 processor (Socket AM2)
• Supports Athlon 64 CPU: 3500+, 3800+
• Supports Athlon 64 FX CPU: FX-62
• Supports Athlon 64 X2 CPU: 3800+, 4000+, 4200, 4400+, 4600+, 4800+, 5000+, 5200+

Chipset

• NVIDIA ® nForce 570 SLI Chipset
• HyperTransport link to the AMD Athlon 64/Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64 X2 CPU
• Supports 2 PCI Express x16 interface (2nd X16 slot runs at X8 speed) / 2 PCI Express x 1 connection
• Independent SATAII controllers, for six drives
• Single Fast ATA-133 IDE controller

Northbridge and back I/O panel

Main Memory

• Supports dual channel DDR2 533/667/800, using four 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs.
• Supports the memory size up to 8GB
• Supports 1.8v DDR2 SDRAM DIMM

RAM, IDE and FDD

Slots

• Two PCI Express X16 slots (supports PCI Express Bus specification 1.0a compliant)
• 2nd PCI Express X16 is compatible with PCI Express X8
• Two PCI Express X1 slots
• Three 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots, one orange slot reserves as a communication slot
• Supports 3.3v/5v PCI Bus Interface

On-Board IDE/SATA

• An IDE controller on the nVIDIA nForce 570SLI chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes
• Can connect up to 2 IDE devices
• NV RAID supports 6 SATA II ports (SATA1-6). Transfer rates up to 300MB/s.
• NV RAID (software)
• Supports up to 6 SATA devices
• RAID 0 or 1, 0+1, 5 JBOD

BIOS

• The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
• Supports boot from LAN, USB Device 1.1 & 2.0 and SATA HDD

Audio

• Chip integrated by Realtek ALC883
• Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
• Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec

LAN

• Dual 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by nForce 570 SLI

IEEE1394

• VIA 6307 chipset
• Supports up to 2x 1394 ports with transfer rates up to 400Mbps

On-Board Peripherals

• 1 floppy port supports 1 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
• 1 serial port
• 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
• 1 audio jack (5-in-1), coaxial/fiber SPDIF out
• 10 USB 2.0 ports (rear x 4 / front x 6)
• 2 RJ45 LAN jacks
• 1 D-Bracket 2 pinheader
• 2 IEEE 1394a connectors (rear x1 / front x 1)
• 1 CD-in pinheader
• 1 IrDA pinheader

Dimensions

• 11.96"L x 9.61"W ATX formfactor

Mounting

• 9 mounting holes

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