MSI (MicroStar International) have been in the component manufacturing business for over 20 years now and are one of the leading motherboard manufacturers around. The MSI K9A2 Platinum is one such board which supports AMD's current crop of desktop processors including the Phenom and the newly released Phenom II.
Before I go ahead with the review, I would like to send a big thank you to Pinnacle Micro for supplying SwarmTech with the MSI motherboard and trusting us enough to give a fair and neutral view of our findings. I would also like to thank my wife for putting up with my ridiculously late nights during testing and my corresponding lack of sleep. Ok, enough of the thank you's..... Lets get down to business. The MSI K9A2 Platinum is based on the AMD/ATI 790FX chipset and has the slightly older SB600 southbridge. It is MSI's top of the range discrete board which supports crossfire.

CPU

. AMD Phenom/Athlon/Sempron in the Socket AM2+ package.

FSB

. HyperTransport 3.0 supporting speed up to 2600MHz.

Chipset

. AMDR 790FX and SB600 Chipset.

Main Memory

. Supports Dual DDR II 533/667/800/1066
. 4 DDRII DIMMs (240pin / 1.8V)
. Supports a maximum memory size up to 8GB.

Slots

. 2 mazarine PCI Express x16 slots (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant; supports CrossFire Technology)
. 2 light-blue PCI Express x16 slots with x8 operations (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant; supports CrossFire Technology)
. When 4 PCI Express x16 slots are all installed, the PCIE x 16 lanes will auto arrange form x16/ x0/ x16/ x0 to x8/ x8/ x8/ x8
. 1 PCI Express x1 slots
. 2 PCI slots, support 3.3V/ 5V PCI bus Interface.

On-Board IDE

. One IDE port by AMDR SB600
. Supports Ultra DMA 66/100/133 mode
. Supports PIO, Bus Master operation mode
. Can connect up to two IDE devices

On-Board SATA

. 4 SATA II (1~4) ports by AMDR SB600
. 2 SATA II (5~6) ports by PromiseR T3, support SAS ready devices, for storage devices only
. 2 eSATA ports by PromiseR T3, for storage devices only
. Supports storage and data transfers at up to 300 MB/s

RAID Function

. SATA II 1~4 support RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by AMDR SB600
. SATA II 5~6 & 2 eSATA ports support RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by PromiseR T3
. RAID setup floppy disk is optional depending on the districts. You can download the files from the website to make the setup disk.

Audio

. Chipset integrated by RealtekR ALC888/ALC888T
. Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
. Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec

LAN

. Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller 8111B
. Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and PHY in single chip
. Supports 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s and 1000Mb/s
. Compliance with PCI-Express Bus specification v1.0a

IEEE1394

. Chipset integrated by VIAR VT6308P
. Transfer rate is up to 400Mbps

Internal I/O Connectors

. ATX 24-pin power connector
. ATX 4-pin 12V CPU power connector
. ATX 4-pin VGA power connector
. CPU / System x 4 FAN connectors
. CD-in connector
. Front panel audio connector
. Front panel connector
. 3 x USB 2.0 connector support additional 6 ports
. 1 x Floppy disk drive connector
. 6 x Serial ATA II connectors
. 1 x ATA133 HD connectors
. 1 x SPDIF-out header
. 1 x IEEE1394 connector support additional 1 ports (optional)
. 1 x Serial port header (optional)
. 1 x VoIP card header (optional)
. 1 x floppy disk cable (optional)

Back Panel I/O Ports

. 1 x PS/2 keyboard
. 1 x PS/2 mouse
. 1 x Optical SPDIF out
. 1 x IEEE1394 Port (optional)
. 1 x 6 in 1 audio jack
. 4 x USB 2.0 ports
. 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
. 2 x eSATA ports

Dimension

. 30.5cm(L) x 24.5cm(W) ATX Form Factor

Mounting

. 9 mounting holes.

Includes

. IDE cable
. 2 x SATA power cable
. 4 x SATA cable
. an IDE cable
. a floppy cable
. two Crossfire bridges
. "easy connect" front panel connectors
. a backpanel I/O shield
. a firewire bracket
. a dual USB bracket

The BIOS

MSI went with a pretty plain Jane AMI BIOS. There are eight sub-menu's available from the top level menu:
. Standard CMOS Features
. Advanced BIOS Features
. Integrated Peripherals
. Power Management Setup
. PNP/PCI Configuration
. H/W Monitor
. Cell Menu
. USER SETTINGS
. Load Fail-Safe Defaults
. Load Optimized Defaults
. BIOS Setting Password
. Save & Exit Setup
. Exit Without Saving