Introduction

Love them or hate them, VIA need credit for sustaining AMD's Athlon processors since the death of the AMD761 chipset and I can't believe it doesn't rile them that after a bit of a shaky start NVIDIA have been able to step in and snatch so much business from under their noses in such a spectacular fashion. nForce2 was an unrivaled success that has wooed the enthusiast and mainstream sector alike with its impressive dual channel memory performance and its rock solid reliability. Chipset drivers were, and to some extent still are, a bit of an Achilles heal but they're perfectly adequate and they're certainly improving.

Although the original nForce2 could happily support a 200MHz memory bus it didn't officially come with verified support for a 200MHz FSB, not surprising since the 200MHz Bartons hadn't been introduced at that stage of the game. Many of them would actually let you get away with cranking up your FSB to 200MHz and run quite happily but one or two were a bit touchy and didn't want to play ball. NVIDIA's answer was swift, they introduced a chipset that was designed to support a 200MHz in addition to 166MHz, 133MHz and 100MHz. It was to be known as the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset.

The motherboard we have on test today features the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and comes from electronics giants MSI. The K7N2 Delta-ILSR is MSI's premium nForce Ultra board and comes with a mouthwatering array of features. Let's have a wander through the specs:

Specification

CPU Supports Socket A for AMD® Athlon™/Athlon™ XP/Duron™ processors @FSB 200/266/333/400 Supports 600MHz up to Athlon™ XP 3000+ processor or higher Chipset nVIDIA® nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Supports DDR200/266/333/400 Supports external AGP 4X/8X nVIDIA® nForce2 MCP-T Chipset AC97 Interface supporting up to two concurrent codecs Ultra ATA133 for the fastest hard disk throughput USB 2.0 EHCI/1.1 OHCI controller FireWire® and USB 2.0 for the fastest digital connectivity Audio Processing Unit(APU) encodes audio in Dolby® Digital 5.1 format for full surround sound effects FSB FSB 200/266/333/400 MHz clocks are supported Main Memory Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs Supports up to 3GB PC3200/2700/2100/1600 DDR SDRAMs Supports both 64-bit and 128-bit DDR SDRAM Note: nForce2 does NOT supports x4 memory device. 1GB can be made by other density of dram chip such as x 8, x16. SLOTS One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 1.5V 4x/8x slot Five 32-bit PCI bus slots (support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface) One ACR (Advanced Communication Riser) slot 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. On-Board IDE An IDE controller on the MCP-T chipset provides IDE HDD/CDROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes Can connect up to four IDE devices Serial ATA Interface Support 2 serial ATA plus 1 ATA133 RAID O or 1 is supported RAID function works w/ATA133+SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D In-Chip IEEE1394 nVIDIA MCP-T IEEE1394 controller Support up to two ports via external bracket Network Chipset integrated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet/Fast Ethernet Audio Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio Dolby Digital 5.1 format On-Board Peripherals 1 floppy port that supports two FDD with 360KB, 720KB,1.44MB and 2.88MB 1 serial port 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode 3 audio ports in vertical 2 IEEE1394 connectors 6 USB ports (Rear * 4/ Front * 2) 1 RJ-45 jack Dimension 30.5 cm(L) x 23 cm(W) ATX Form Factor Accessories D Bracket 2 S Bracket IEEE 1394 Round Cable

A Closer Look