MSI K8NGM2-FID 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Everything you could want on one board. Supports FX60 dual core and SATA 2 raid. I overclocked my AMD64 3200 from 2000Mhz to 2400Mhz. The board runs like a rock, I love it. Also, MSI puts better documentation into there manual. Specs: AMD 64 3200+ Corsair DDR400 XMS Platinum 1GB ATI Radeon x800 Pro 256mb WD RE 8mb 2x160 GB Raid 0 Enermax 535 W PS All from New Egg, best place on the net.

Cons: No older style game port. Also there is no optical port for sound, just a coaxial option for audio.

Overall Review: Don't put your ddr memory into dimms 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 if you are running two sticks of ddr memory. I did that and my ddr 400 showed up as ddr333, then I corrected myself by reading the manual and put the memory in dimms 1&2, then it worked as dual channel ddr400. Also when you install the raid drivers make sure you use both drivers off of the floppy disk or xp won't recognize your sata raid drive.

Pros: MSI support was quick to send me 3.13 bios after filing out online form over engineering bios. Defaults for hyperthread were set at 400, raised them to 1000 for both north and south bridge. This baby beats my MSI platinum with a 148 oppy oc'd to 2.75ghz on memory write by 100 points.

Cons: None than I can see ....

Overall Review: The memory read spead was 200 points below my oc'd oppy, but this system only has corsair value select pc3200 ram, the oc'd oppy uses pc4000. I am amazed, the other review calling it a sleeper is completely in line...

Pros: Everything "just worked". Far outperformes my old Asus A8N-E, despite its much smaller size. No chipset fans, so it's really quiet. Great onboard video chipset, I can easily run it at 1080i on my 60" DLP TV. The layout was perfect for my MicroATX case, everything fit without issues. Component video output is awesome, as is DVI and RGB output. Sound chip is decent, way better than what I've had in the past. Considering it costs about half of my A8N-E, I'm VERY happy.

Cons: Only 2 pci slots, but that was to be expected. I may remove the sound card and use the decent onboard sound instead, which would free up a PCI slot.

Overall Review: This is being used in my living room PC. I have a few operating systems installed (all Linux); SUSE 10.1, Gentoo 2006.0 and Knoppmyth R5C7 all run flawlessly, and all components "just work".

Pros: I have no problems with this board any more after tweaking the bios as stated below and adding a fan to the chipset.

Cons: - Fan for chipset heatsink is needed. - Default bois settings cause poor performance and stability issues. Requires thorough reading of this thread to fix

Overall Review: Some key points from the thread on Anandtech helped fix my problems where I was having very poor frame rates and occasional crashes in War Craft III. - If "CPU to NB Frequency" or "NB to SB Frequency" in "Advanced Chipset Features" is 400MHz (this is the default in v3.10/v3.20), the performance of onboard video will degrade. Raise them at least 800MHz. - If your memory is "performance" RAM, then you may need to raise DDR Voltage slightly for the system to run stably. Check the specifications of your memory. - In case you install NForce Storage Driver, ensure that extra SATA drive slots are disabled in the BIOS. If they are not disabled, additional drivers for the unused drives will be installed, which cause conflicts and high CPU utilization after performing an S3 resume. - Some user reported that Memtest86 errors disappeared after "USB Device Legacy Support" was disabled in BIOS > Integrated Peripherals

Pros: Well, the board was easy to setup and works very well in its default configuration. No problems or issues at all.

Cons: The problem is, its default configuration isn't that good. Like others I have the "Not for production Use" video BIOS. I can't seem to get my RAM to operate at DDR400. It always defaults to DDR333. I have high end 2x1 gig DIMMs DDR400 so this shouldn't be a problem. If I try to adjust the timings manually, it causes the system to be unstable. It always defaults to 2T command rate even with only two dimms installed. If I attempt to change to 1T, the computer won't even post. I tried the latest beta 3.13 BIOS, but this didn't seem to help.

Pros: - onboard DVI and component video - coax S/PDIF - works pretty well with Linux - XP install recognizes SATA drive without need for driver - easy to use bios

Cons: - can't get S/PDIF to work with FC5 yet but I'm a linux neophyte. - latest nVidia GeForce drivers for Linux fix a problem specific to 6150 but seem to be creating issues with outputing desired resoultion for many.

Overall Review: I isntalled this board in a Antec NSK-2400 case. It all fits fine, no issues. Using onboard video to feed an InFocus SP4805 projector via DVI. Initially tried FC5 and install went fine but haven't figured out how to get the S/PDIF output to work nor get the new GeForce drivers to output 848x480. XP install went swimmingly with everything I need (848x480 + S/PDIF) working fine. BIOS is very easy to navigate. I've swapped in and out multiple DVD drives and HDDs and have yet to alter anything in BIOS to make anything work.

Pros: Works great with Arch Linux once you find the proper drivers. My thanks to A Happy Linux User for the tip on the ALSA 1.0.11rc3 drivers. Now to get MythTV working. Integrated Audio and Video are more than good enough for me, which makes for an inexpensive setup for the AMD 64 platform in the smaller micro ATX form.

Cons: One minor con. I tried to install a ThermalRight SI 120 cpu heatsink, and a row of capaciors next to the retention bracket was in the way. I'm using the stock AMD heatsink for now. Since it is a micro ATX, it's a little cramped around the cpu area. Do your homework if you're planning on using a third party cpu heatsink.

Overall Review: A feature laden motherboard, at a decent price, delivered by a great E-merchant. What more could you ask for. Way to go NewEgg.

Pros: Excellent feature set, easy to install, worked without any trouble.

Cons: Few PCI slots, video bios not production release

Overall Review: When the video bios posts it says, "Engineering bios - not for production". Not an exceptionally encouraging message, especially as the bios updater from MSI that's upposed to fix the issue bombs, saying: Chipset not supported. However, I haven't had any problems with the machine yet, so I'm not all that worried and I'm sure they'll have it fixed soon. It was the easiest smoothest MB install of my life, I had absolutely NO issues with my upgrade (this MB + 1GB DDR400 Patriot RAM + Athlon64 X2 4400+).