Thoughts, awards, where2buy, right2reply
We can't help feeling the K9A Platinum is a bit of a missed opportunity. It's a decent enough package, but for a performance board it doesn't take full advantage of the RD580's extensive tweaking options, leaving you with a much more limited range. Its performance is on par for an Athlon 64 FX-62 at stock clocks, but you won't quite be able to get so much out of this board as with, for example, ASUS' Crosshair or abit's Fatal1ty, both of which use Nvidia's Nforce 590 SLI.But the most important issue for MSI is that AMD's Athlon 64 just can't keep up with Intel's Core 2 Duo. Whereas this wouldn't be such a problem at the value end of the market, this is a bit more of a problem if you're putting together the best gaming system you can afford.
Still, the K9A Platinum does have a significant price advantage over all Core 2 Duo-compatible motherboards so far. You can pick it up for just a tad over £80. Even Foxconn's keenly priced 975X7AB can't match that, coming in at over £30 more. So perhaps if you are going to put the onus on a pair of high-end ATi graphics cards and opt for a cheaper CPU than the Athlon 64 FX-62 we used for testing, the K9A Platinum makes a little more sense. It's certainly a lot cheaper than Nvidia Nforce 590 SLI-based motherboards, like the aforementioned ASUS Crosshair, even if it doesn't have the overclocking abilities, which could save you enough for a slightly faster processor to begin with.
HEXUS Awards
MSI K9A Platinum AM2
