Computex 2000 Coverage Day 3: More Motherboards

Microstar

Microstar actually brought some pretty interesting items to the show with them, but let's start with the usual first.

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MSI showed us both their i815 and their i815E motherboards, above you see the i815E version. Nothing too special about it other than the fact that it has an ISA bridge and a single ISA slot.

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The 694 Master is intended to be a 133A version of the popular BX Master except it features no on-board Promise controller like the BX Master, not even for ATA-100 support. The board has a CNR slot in spite of the fact that the 133A chipset doesn't support CNR, MSI is using the slot for AMR support instead.

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While most of the dual Socket-370 boards we saw at Computex were Apollo Pro 133A based, the 6335 pictured above actually uses the i840 chipset which supports dual RDRAM channels. Also note the AGP Pro connector and the two 64-bit PCI slots that are present on the motherboard. The power connector next to the AGP Pro slot is necessary for AGP Pro110 operation and it doesn't hurt to have it there when running AGP Pro50 cards. Unfortunately that power connector isn't standard whereas most other motherboard manufacturers are simply using the 5/12V power connectors we normally use for hard drives.