A Neo Concept

When MSI first told us of their new Neo series of motherboards for the Canterwood platform, we were a little skeptical about its features and abilities. Moreover, they told us that we would love the board, and it would definitely rekindle our first love for the MS-6163 (Intel 440BX). We weren't very sure of their claims and definitely not too convinced as the MS-6163 was quite a hard product to beat. Imagine, at that time, MSI's MS-6163 was one of the very few Slot-1 based motherboard to allow some pretty serious overclocking. During that time, ABIT's BH6 was the favorite but its stability was always in question.

So, for a product to be as exciting as the MS-6163, it has to come with some pretty serious features for the overclockers. Today, almost every motherboard would feature tweaks to the core voltage and front side bus. So, there's really not much of excitement there anymore. The question lurking in our mind was how much more powerful would its overclocking features be. When we booted up the board, we were pleasantly surprised and it was quite the 'first love' we were talking about.

The 875P Neo series represent a huge revamp of MSI's motherboard design and layout methodologies. MSI told us that they have addressed some of the issues we've raised with regards to their past motherboard designs and have now taken them all into consideration. We were glad that MSI's picking up user's comments seriously and certainly hope that they'll continue to do so. Only through such positive feedbacks from users would their products be made more appealing to the mass consumers.

The entire package now comes in a huge sparsely designed box that contains the following items:-

The MSI 875P Neo FIS2R motherboard

Driver & software CD

MSI Super Pack CD

I/O shield

4x Serial ATA cables

1x ATA-133 rounded cable

1x Floppy drive cable

2x dual Molex-Serial ATA power cable

Three-port 1394 FireWire bracket

Two-port USB 2.0 bracket with D-LED

User's manual

Serial ATA RAID manual

Here's a look at the technical specifications of the motherboard :-

MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R Technical Specifications

Processor	Socket 478 for Intel® Pentium 4 / Celeron processors Intel® Pentium 4 Processors 2.4GHz - 3.06GHz or higher (533MHz FSB) Intel® Pentium 4 Processors 2.4GHz - 3.0GHz or higher (800MHz FSB) Supports processors at 533 / 800MHz front side bus Supports processors with Hyper-Threading technology
Chipset	Intel 875P Memory Controller Hub AGP 4x/8x slot (1.5V only) with fast write capability Supports 533/800MHz Intel NetBurst micro-architecture bus Supports up to 4GB of DDR333 or DDR400 SDRAM memory Supports single/dual channel memory configuration Supports ECC memory Intel ICH5R I/O Controller Hub Eight high-speed USB 2.0 ports 2x Serial ATA/150 ports Dual channel Ultra ATA/100 IDE bus master controller PCI bus mastering v2.3 I/O APIC Serial ATA/150 RAID 0 Supports both ACPI and legacy APM power management
Cache memory	CPU Built-in 512KB (Northwood) L2 cache for Pentium 4
System memory	4x 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM Supports up to 4GB of unbuffered and non-registered single/double-sided DDR266/333/400 SDRAM memory Supports 2.5V DDR SDRAM Supports ECC type DRAM integrity mode Supports dual channel DDR400 / DDR333 / DDR266 memory configuration
PCI IDE	2x Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE ports integrated in ICH5R (up to 4 devices) Support for PIO, Ultra DMA-33, Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE operating modes 2x Serial ATA/150 ports supported by ICH5R Up to 150MB/s transfer speeds Supports RAID 0 configuration 1x Ultra ATA-133 IDE port and 2x Serial ATA ports (supported by Promise PDC20378 controller) Supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 configuration Supports up to two ATA-133 and two SATA devices
I/O Interface	1x floppy port (360KB - 2.88MB) 2x serial port 1x parallel port (SPP/EPP/ECP) PS/2 Keyboard PS/2 Mouse 8x USB 2.0 ports (6x rear and 2x front by cable) 1x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) LAN jack (powered by Intel 82547EI) 1x IrDA connector for IR Audio connectors (Line In, Line Out and MIC In) - supported by AD1980/1985 codec 2x fan headers 3x IEEE-1394 FireWire headers (powered by VIA VT6306)
Expansion slots	5x 32-bit master PCI slots, PCI 2.3 compliant (supports 3.3V and 5V PCI bus interface) 1x AGP 4x/8x slot (0.8V/1.5V only)
Power Management	Supports ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor : 30.5cm x 24.4cm, four-layer PCB Fits into regular ATX case
BIOS	4Mbit (512KB) Flash EEPROM AMI Flash BIOS with PnP, ACPI, Resume by RTC, Resume by PME and DMI support Multi-boot on ZIP, ATAPI CD-ROM, SCSI, SATA, IDE #1, #2, #3, #4