16, Jan, 2025
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MSI P4N Diamond

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A motherboard built around Nvidia’s impressive first venture into the world of Pentium chipsets.
Already a dominant player in the Athlon | chipset game, Nvidia has finally launched an nForce chipset for the Pentium 4. This is currently the only Nvidia chipset available for the Pentium 4, and MSI has built its P4N Diamond motherboard around it.
The nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition uses the same Southbridge as the Athlon version.
However, it adds support for Nvidia’s DDR2-667 memory controller with Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Preprocessing (DASP), which optimises data flow between the CPU and RAM.
Designed to support LGA 775 Pentium 4 and Pentium D CPUs, this feature-packed board has dual x16 PCI Express slots for SLI, one x1 PCIe slot, two PCI slots, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, 7.1-channel Sound Blaster Live audio, and six SATA II ports. One FireWire and four USB 2.0 ports are also present, with room for expansion via headers.
The P4N Diamond is the first SLI motherboard of any kind to enter the APC Labs with BIOS-based SLI mode switching. Nvidia’s SLI reference design calls for a small SODIMM-style PCB that is reversed when SLI is in use — a very fiddly process. However, MSI has removed the SODIMM and software does the switching instead. This means the x16 PCIe slots are placed closer together than in other nForce4 SLI boards. It also means using top-end GeForce 6800 Ultra cards with their large heatsinks will be difficult because of space limitations.
Performance is on par with current Intel chipsets, yet when running a dual graphics card setup, the nForce4 is capable of 3D graphics performance well beyond a single card — a major point of difference between this chipset and Intel versions. Under tests performed with a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU and two GeForce 6800GT cards, the P4N scored 7,579 in 3DMarkO5, while a single GeForce 6800GT setup scored 4,750.
In using the onboard Sound Blaster Live chip, MSI has delivered an audio solution that competes with Intel’s High Definition audio and lifts the P4N Diamond above the pack. Add hassle-free support for SLI, Nvidia’s hardware firewall, plus the software overclocking suite and the P4N Diamond is one of the most comprehensive offerings for the LGA 755 Pentium 4.

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