Monday, July 31, 2000

Introduction

The MSI MS-6337 is the first of what is sure to be a flood of i815E-based motherboards to hit our lab. The MS-6337 - also known as the 815E Pro - will thus be the first board based on Intel's new i815E chipset that we'll have the pleasure of dissecting. The principal difference between the i815E, and the i815 chipset that we analyzed as part of our review of the Azza PT-815TX resides in its ICH. While the 815 uses the ICH1 - which supports IDE ATA33, and ATA66, the i815E uses the more advanced ICH2 - which supports ATA33, ATA66, and ATA100. A second difference between the ICH1, and the ICH2 lies with the second's integrate the Intel 82559 controller, which permits for the installation of a 10/100Base-T Ethernet, or CNR (Communication Network Riser) card - the latter of which replaces the now defunct AMR (Audio Modem Riser) standard (AMR and CNR are incompatible). The final difference between the two ICHs lies in the number of supported USB ports, and AC"97 channels. The i815 supports 2 USB ports, and 4 AC"97 channels, while the i815E supports 4 USB ports, and 6 AC"97 channels. Otherwise, the i815, and i815E are identical. That said, let's take a look at the MS-6337.

The features

The MS-6337 is expandable via its 6 PCI slots, single AGP port, and CNR slot; no ISA, or AMR slots to be found here. There are also 4 168-pin DIMM sockets available, which can hold upto 512MB of PC100, or PC133 memory. It's unfortunate, though, that MSI didn't see fit to provide an ISA-PCI bridge which would allow for the installation of an ISA connector sometimes needed for a good old ISA device.

Configuration of the MSI 815E Pro (i.e.. the MS-6337), is accomplished, for the most part, from within the BIOS, as there are no on-board jumpers that directly relate to the processor. SW1, which is an ensemble of 2 jumpers, can be used to force the FSB from 66MHz to 100MHz or 133MHz, or allow the system to determine the frequency automatically. The rest of the necessary work is done within the "Frequency/Voltage Control" BIOS menu, where one can change the FSB frequency, the processor's clock multiplier, the CPU's Vcore voltage, the DRAM voltage, and some other varied settings. Among the FSB settings that are available, setting SW1 to 100Hz allows the FSB to be set to a value between 100MHz and 133MHz in 1MHz steps, and setting SW1 to 133MHz allows settings between 133MHz and 166MHz, also in 1MHz steps. Note that the available frequencies are intimately related to the CPU that is installed. For example, a CPU that is designed to a FSB of 133MHz will only be able to use an FSB running between 133MHz, and 166MHz. Still, in terms of Overclocking, a choice of 156 possible FSB settings makes the MS-6337 a definite champ.

As for configuring the Vcore voltage, it can be set between 1.65v, and 1.90v - at least in conjunction with our PIII Coppermine FC-PGA 866MHz, running on an 133MHz FSB.

Next: Additional features.