Installation
Once
the hardware installation is complete the rest is a stroll in the park, at least
it was in my case! MSI include their now familiar setup utility which offers you
all the required software in a simple, easy to understand interface.

And
for access to the radio function from within Windows itself you get a copy of
MEGA Radio, along with another popular utility, MSI's Live Update 2 software which
lets you search for updated BIOS, chipset drivers and the like.

The
MEGA PC came with a surprising lack of technical information, so much so that
I wasn't even sure if the board would accept our 3.06 (533MHz) CPU short of popping
it in and firing up, which I did! Sandra
revealed that all was well.

SiSoft
Sandra CPU Info
And while Sandra was fired up here's
what it had to report for the motherboard.

SiSoft
Sandra Mainboard Info
The graphics drivers installed quickly
and easily but as the picture below shows you don't get a great deal to play with
where settings are concerned.

And
the MEGA Radio utility is a bit big and clunky but that's just about perfect if
you're using your TV to display it on. The features are limited pretty much to
selecting your station on either AM or FM and recording it to your hard drive
but nothing more. That's not a complaint by the way, most users who want to do
more with the audio will have their own preferred software and it's quire refreshing
to see an app that doesn't try to be all things to all people and over burden
itself with features many people will never use. If the MEGA PC was being sold
as a high spec radio then this wouldn't be good enough but as a small part of
a potentially diverse feature set the radio app is just fine in my book.

Hopefully
by now you've got a feel for what the MEGA PC is all about. Time perhaps for a
look at the kind of performance that's on offer......