abit AN52 vs. MSI K9A2 Platinum
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Date: 31.01.2008 |
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Layout and Features
We note it straight off that abit uses the same PCB to produce three models at a time: the low-end AN52-E (6-channel audio; 100 Mbit LAN), the mid-end AN52 (8-channel audio; Gigabit network), and the "luxurious" AN52S (8-channel audio; Gigabit LAN; a COM port; the more efficient cooling system Silent OTES).
Engineers at MSI also use the same PCB design for several models. To date, only the K9A2 Platinum has been announced, and it lacks some connectors (e.g., JSLIC1 - to plug in a VoIP card).
There are 2 power connectors on the abit board: the main 24-pin and additional 8-pin power connectors (both positioned over the board's edges). On the MSI product, there are three connectors: the main 24-pin, additional 4-pin, and an additional Molex (additional connectors - near the rear panel):
The low-end nForce 520 chipset features in low power consumption level, which allowed the engineers at abit to confine with a small radiator. The AMD 790FX chipset is far not the low-end, but like the previous ATI's chipsets, it offers a small power consumption. However, engineers at MSI have installed a rather powerful system for cooling the north and south bridges, as well as power converter.
Two heat pipes emerge from the south bridge, one of then linked to the radiator of the south bridge, with the other one - to the PWM radiator (and runs through the NB radiator):
Each motherboard have four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules, with the overall supported memory capacity being 8 GB.
Now a few words on the connectors to plug in fans. On each of the boards, there is a mandatory 4-pin connector to plug in a CPU cooler.
Besides that, there are three 3-pin connectors on the abit board: AUXFAN1, AUXFAN2 - over the left-hand edge of the board, SYSFAN1 - over the right-hand edge. On the MSI board, there are four 3-pin connectors: SYSFAN3 and SYSFAN2 - in the bottom-left corner, SYSFAN1- near the DIMM slots, and SYSFAN4 - near the north bridge.
On the abit board, there is one PCI Express x16 slot; on the MSI - four times as more:
16 bus lanes can be allocated to the first and the third slots, whereas the second and fourth slots are physically restricted by 8 lanes. If we enable all the slots, then 8 bus lanes will be allocated to each of the four video cards. Besides the above slots, MSI K9A2 Platinum uses two more "regular" PCI slots as well as a PCI Express x1 slot. On abit AN52, there are three PCI and two PCI Express x1 slots.
Due to the nForce 520 chipset, four SerialATA II disks can be plugged in to AN52 (with the option to arrange a RAID array), and two ParallelATA disks. The same specifications are there in the south bridge SB600 installed on K9A2 Platinum.
This quantity is definitely not enough for a high-end product, so engineers at MSI have installed an additional SerialATA RAID Promise PDC42819 controller which provided support for four more SATA II links.
In the end, this allows plugging in 10 hard disks (8 SATA + 2 PATA) to the MSI board and arranging two RAID arrays.
Then, the south bridge SB600 and the chipset nForce 520 support 10 USB2.0 ports. Both the boards offer the same configuration of ports: four on the rear panel, with 6 more plugged in with brackets (there is one bracket for two ports with only the MSI product).
Besides, MSI K9A2 Platinum supports the Firewire. For that, there is an additional controller made by VIA. That is a VT6308P chip which supports two matching ports.
Configuration of the ports: one is mounted on the rear panel, with the other one connected with a bracket (available in the package bundle).
Now a few words on the High Definition Audio subsystem. The abit board uses the ALC883 codec; the MSI - ALC888. It should be noted that the PCB design of the MSI board provides for installation of a more functional audio chip (perhaps, the Creative X-Fi), however, this model has not yet been announced.
A few words on the network support: both the boards offer a Gigabit LAN controller. On the abit board, that is a Marvell 88E8056 chip, and a RTL 8111B on the MSI board:
The board's rear panel is of the following configuration:
COM and LPT ports are completely missing on the abit board. The MSI board supports only one COM port albeit via a bracket (missing in the bundle). Engineers at MSI decided the use the vacant space for installation of the Firewire port, an optical SP-DIF output, and a couple of eSATA ports.
The boards' components layout diagram:
Among the special traits, we note only the power-on and reset buttons on the MSI board, which are positioned near the battery.
Now on to the BIOS settings.
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