MSI 845PE Max2 Motherboard

Company: MSI
Product: 845PE Max2 MB
Street Price: ~$150 USD
Date Reviewed: January 28, 2003
Reviewed By: Jason R.
Rating: (8.5/10)

Conclusions:

The Good:
Overall this board is a great overclocker, and has a ton of onboard features. With options like USB 2.0, Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, RAID, etc., this board pretty much has it all, and just because you may not use or need one of those features today, doesn't mean you won't need it down the road. MSI has a LiveUpdate program that lets you keep your BIOS and other utility programs up to date with what they release, this is nice for people who don't want to constantly check the website to see what is new and to try and figure out what version they are currently running.

The fuzzy logic program is nice once you get used to it, unfortunately I've been forced to use it otherwise I can't get the maximum performance out of my machine. But for the novice overclocker, this program is an all-in-one overclocking / monitoring program that can help ease you into overclocking your CPU without having to deal with the complexities of the BIOS or testing stability with a 3rd party app.

The Bad:
I can't say that this board doesn't have any shortcomings, as there are a few that make me frown. The biggest thing is the memory multiplier going back to 1:1 when you set your FSB to over 150MHz in the BIOS. Every time I reboot I have to increase my FSB with the fuzzy logic program which really starts to become annoying after a while. Another thing I think would be nice would to have more memory multiplier options so that the memory speed can reach its full potential depending on what FSB you are running at. If the previous option ever gets added, having the ability to use up to 3.2v for the memory would be a necessity for some people. All these things could potentially be fixed with a BIOS update, so there could be some hope down the road.

I would personally like to thank MSI for sending this motherboard to review.

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