MSI 655 Max (MS-6730)
Board revision: A0 (non-HT)
BIOS version: 1.0
Note: B0 revision with BIOS 3.0 supports HT.
MSI is neck and neck with Gigabyte in the race to include as many features as possible. The 655 is equipped with three FireWire ports, Serial ATA, and UltraATA/133 RAID. This is achieved here with a Promise controller that combines both Serial ATA and ATA/133. A Broadcom chip contains the 1 GB/s network controller, making it future-proof.
MSI has dispensed with the CNR and ACR slots in favor of six PCI slots - a good move.
The MSI board also exhibited some curious behavior. Firstly, the operating system wouldn't boot when we set the memory to CAS Latency 2 - no matter what modules or memory speed we were running at. Because of this, we carried out all benchmark tests at CL-2.5 - which is occasionally reflected in the results.
Gigabyte started it a few months ago; MSI is picking up the baton. Color-coded connectors.
Up to 150 MB/s across the bus: the Promise PDC20376 allows you to connect two Serial ATA and two UltraATA/133 drives.
