MicroStar 6309 Motherboard

The layout of the board is pretty
standard. It is a reasonable sturdy 4 layer design, boasting
5 PCI’s, 1 ISA, an AGP, and an AMR slot. The AMR slot is
below the AGP slot, allowing room for extra video cooling if
you so choose. The Via 694X North Bridge is very low
profile. It lacks the heat sink that the Intel counterparts
have. Also, being the most recent chipset of its class by
Via, the 694 offers support for AGP 4X. The previous 693 had
every feature but lacked 4X support. The Via 82C686A South
Bridge offers, among it’s other features, ATA-66 support
and DirectSound AC97 Audio. This audio support, of course,
means the board has on-board audio in the form of the
Creative CT5880 with all the various connections located
near it. MSI does not go overboard with capacitors as some
manufacturers do, and has them all in nonobtrustive
locations. The two drawbacks I encountered in the layout of
the board involve two connectors. (1) The CPU FAN connector
is right in between the power and the CPU socket. This can
be a little obtrusive. (2) The CMOS Clear jumper is located
way down near the battery. These two connectors are located
right up near the PCI slots, making it very tough to clear
your CMOS with any PCI cards installed.

Installation is pretty
straight-forward. The board has no jumpers for CPU speeds or
voltages. In fact, the only jumpers on the board are the
CMOS clear and the Flash BIOS enable. CPU settings are all
controlled in the BIOS. The manual does a good job of
outlining the various settings on the board and it is
readable (what do ya know!). It’s not the Abit-style
manual, which can give an entire history of computing. But,
it works. The included CD has MSI manuals on it as well, but
not the one for the 6309. You’ll have to download that one
if you want. The CD, though, pops up a window with buttons
to install the Via 4-in-1 drivers, the audio drivers, modem
drivers, etc. The rest of the CD is filled up with other
titles like PC-cillin, Acrobat Reader and other good filler
titles. Installation of the drivers off the CD was a piece
of cake.

The BIOS is made by AMI, which is
pretty similar to Award. If you’re familiar with working
in the CMOS, you’ll find no surprises with the 6309. One
change I noticed is that the CPU settings have been moved
from the Standard CMOS section to the Hardware Monitoring
section. The settings, of course, offer an AUTO setting for
the newbie, but the overclocker will be satisfied with the
range of settings available for manual setting. There are
separate settings for the CPU Frequency (bus speed),
multiplier, and voltage. The board offers a lot of control.
If you set the ClkGen Spread Spectrum to Disable, you even
get access to bus speeds up to 200 MHz! Of course, you’ll
fry everything at that speed. The board was pretty stable at
the 133 MHz speed, though.

One of the neat things about MSI boards is the
D-LED. Located right next to the serial and parallel ports,
the D-LED provides a little insight into what’s going on
with your board. The board comes with a sticker outlining
the various “codes” of the D-LED. I don’t know why
this wasn’t included in the manual itself. The LED
provides a series of red and green lights that mean
something. All 4 green lights means “all systems go”. If
your system hangs in boot, you can interpret the LED light
combination to determine what is wrong. It is a neat little
tool for diagnostic purposes.

Overall, the MSI 6309 is a nice board and doesn’t give
anyone any reason to choose a Slot 1 over the Socket 370.
The 6309 offers some nice options and is pretty stable as
long as you’re using the latest BIOS update. The D-LED is a
nice little gimmick and the layout is decent, considering to
two negatives I pointed above above. I would not hesitate to
use this board in a system of my own.