MSI 645 Ultra
Board Revision: 1
BIOS Version: 1.3 (6. December 2002)
The board from MSI is glaring red - you can't miss it. MSI only uses the features that are provided by the chipset (4+2 USB ports, AC97 sound, monitoring), but does not provide additional hardware such as an IDE RAID controller or support for USB 2.0. However, MSI does provide a debugging system. Similar to the one that is used by Epox, this one consists of four LEDs that show the system state.
This board runs our processors at 2002.14 MHz which is pretty close to specification (2.00 GHz). Still, it is the fastest motherboard in this review, and moreover, it's the fastest without having "cheated" with increased clock speeds, which is sometimes the case with the competition. MSI obviously did a good job.
Included in the package are a driver CD, a useful manual, one 80-wire IDE cable and a floppy cable, plus an adapter for the USB ports 3-6. In addition, there is a table that allows you to interpret the system state that is indicated by the D-LED debug system.
