Most AM2 Motherboards Not Phenom Ready

By Patrick Schmid
published

MSI K9NU Neo-V (ULi/Nvidia M1697)

Board Revision: 1.0
Installed BIOS: 1.0 (05-19-2006)
Upgraded with: 1.7 (09-06-2007)

We decided to add another low-cost motherboard to our test lineup. This one is based on the M1697 chipset, which has its origins with ULi, which was bought by Nvidia a couple years ago. Feature-wise this product is nothing special, but it's certainly capable enough to run any Athlon 64 X2 or Sempron processor. We found it good to see that MSI cared for supporting this product, although it is positioned at the lower end of the market. There have been several BIOS updates over the last months; the last one is dated September 6, 2007. Obviously, this is too early to support Phenom and it doesn't come as a surprise that the quad cores didn't work with this platform.

MSI provides a CPU compatibility page, where you can check the compatibility of your motherboard with a certain CPU.

Patrick Schmid
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • spearhead
    too many vendors boycott the upgradebility they just dont want to release a simple bios update because they want to force costumers to buy a new motherboard. it would anger me i would have bought a am2 motherboard and the vendor was such a bastard to boycott the upgrade.today those bios updates are rare too find. so far i have only few vendors who upgrade there bios. apperently ASUS support it the best so that is why i will choose ASUS above all those cheap bastards from now on
    Reply
  • will it run a am2 quad core or not?
    Reply
  • how d o get a mamuall for this motherboard0000 MSI K9NU Neo-V (ULi/Nvidia M1697)
    Reply
  • how d o get a mamuall for this motherboard0000 MSI K9NU Neo-V (ULi/Nvidia M1697)
    Reply
  • Where can i find the driver for this mother board winfast k8t890m2aa-krs2h
    Reply