8.3 out of 10

MSI K9A2 Platinum

Information found in: from 61 sources in 16 countries.

Best Price: $159

  • User Score (122)
    8.4 8.4 from 122 reviewers
  • Expert Score (6)
    8.2 8.2 from 6 reviewers
  • Value for money (1)
    9.0 9.0 from 1 reviewer

Freak Rank

  • Buzz Index: 5/5
  • Activity: 5/5

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One of the newest boards to use AMD’s 790FX chipset for the Spider platform, the MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard is a high end board for AMD multicore Phenom processors. With 42 PCI Express lanes, lower power consumption, and support for four way graphics, the K9A2 Platinum is one of the top boards from MSI.

System Specs

The 790FX chipset was released in late 2007 to complete AMD’s new Spider platform. The MSI K9A2 Platinum uses the 790FX to provide a 1066/1333 bus with up to 5200 MT/s (5.2 billion operations per second) using HyperTransport 3.0 technology. There are four DDR2 800/1066 dual channel slots allowing up to eight GB of RAM. Of course, the MSI K9A2 Platinum sports a AM2 socket for the Phenom processors, but it also provides backward compatibility for AM2 Athlons and Athlon 64s. The board uses MSI’s “Circu-pipe” dual pipe cooler to cool the north and southbridge as well as the power circuitry. The board requires a 24 pin power connector.

Expansion Slots

One of the first things that jumps out is the four PCI Express x16 graphics slots. There are also two standard PCI slots and a PCI Express x1 slot. There are six onboard SATA connectors supporting RAID 0/1/0+1 along with single PATA and floppy connectors.

Onboard Ports

The MSI K9A2 Platinum has four USB 2.0 ports, with support for two more on the front panel, as well as a single FireWire port. An optical S/PDIF output joins an eight channel surround sound audio stack. There are two 3 Gb/s external SATA connectors and a single Gigabit Ethernet port.

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Manufacturer's Specs

  • CPU
    AMD
  • CPU
    HyperTransport 3.0 supporting speed up to 5200MT/s
  • CPU
    AMD® 790FX and SB600 Chipset
  • Main Memory
    Supports Dual DDR2 533/667/800/
  • Slots
    2 mazarine PCI Express x16 slots (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant; supports CrossFire Technology)
  • Slots
    2 PCI slots, support 3.3V/ 5V PCI bus Interface.
  • Slots
    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
  • Slots
    1 PCI Express x1 slots
  • Slots
    2 light-blue PCI Express x16 slots with x8 operations (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant; supports CrossFire Technology)
  • On-Board IDE
    One IDE port by AMD® SB600

Review Summary

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  • Equip with 2 or more PCIe x16 slots, ATI CrossFire Ready. The ultimate multi-GPU performance gaming platform. Provides 2.7x faster performance than single graphic card solution.
  • Key components …

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  1. MSI K9A2 Platinum

    Reviewer: maximum pc
    2 weeks ago
    Overall 8
    8.0
     

    If you want AMD performance without the cost, MSI’s K9A2 Platinum might be the ticket. It’s a bare-bones yet performance-oriented board for Phenom procs that boasts no fewer than four x16 physical PCI-E 2.0 slots, as well as support for eSATA and SAS drives and loads more features than you'd expect from a board of this price. Read more

  2. MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard

    Reviewer: CPU3D
    03 June 2008

    Believe it or not, I have to say there are a lot of positives and strong points about the MSI K9A2 Platinum. It's a very solid motherboard that offers a lot of features that will attract both AMD fans and moderate gamers alike. It may not be the choice of the enthusiast, but it certainly has a lot to offer. Take for example, the ability to support Crossfire X configuration via the 4 PCIe slots, as well as being able to use widely available DDR2 ram. And when it came t... Read more

  3. Reviewer: Noticias 3D
    28 April 2008

    AMD se ha ido poniendo las pilas últimamente, y esto se demuestra en la placa que hemos analizado hoy. Tenemos diferentes tipos de chipsets, casi para todos los gustos, y placas base con gráficas integradas (o no) y múltiple conectividad. MSI nos ha traído un producto bastante correcto, dentro lo que sería la gama alta. Normalmente, cuando en el modelo de una placa encontramos la palabra "platinum" es signo (aunque no siempre) de que estamos ante un producto de gama a... Read more

  4. MSI K9A2 Platinum

    Reviewer: Boot Daily
    04 March 2008
    Overall 10
    10
     

    AMD released its Phenom CPU at the end of 2007 and with it tried ushering in a new era of quad-core performance for itself in order to compete with Intel. Unfortunately for AMD, however, it wasn’t enough to muster up a good enough battle for folks to jump ship over to it so instead, AMD has started rolling back prices in an effort to make it more of a plausible solution. Read more

  5. Reviewer: Viperlair
    15 February 2008

    The MSI K9A2 Platinum is part of MSI's premium products, though their ultra high end typically carry the Diamond designation. That said, the bundle is extensive, though rather mundane. We have MSI's D-Bracket, several storage related cables, a custom IO shield and driver CDs for XP and Vista. There's a user manual and quick start guide, as well as a couple of CrossFire bridges should you wish to assemble a multi-GPU setup. Read more

  1. Made the right choice...

    Reviewer: Caboose, maximum pc
    2 weeks ago

    Looks like I made the right choice in my purchase. It was a tossup for me between the Asus and the MSI, and from your benchmarks, it looks like I picked right! One of the nice features, is the extra heatpipes and fins for RAM cooling. It's an optinal add-in, and so far I can't really tell a temperature difference, but it is nice to have and should help in the long run The only thing with the RAM heatpipes are that they need to be installed BEFORE you install the CPU, ... Read more

  2. Great Board

    Reviewer: Mark, Newegg
    3 weeks ago
    Overall 10
    10
     

    Phenom 9850 Black Ediition, 2x2gb Adata at 1066, Radeon 1950XT with 512 GDDR3, 250gb Samsung, Rosewill 750w. It works amazingly!! Read more

29 in English | 37 in all languages

  1. Need Phenom mobo recommendation

    You and I are considering the same hardware choices, 9850 with the MSI K9A2 Platinum and a 3870X2, so I'd be very interested in your choices. I've seen a few reviews on Newegg which seem to indicate that the MSI K9A2 Platinum doesn't support Phenom out of the box without a bios update. This would suck for me as I don't have an AM2. Let me k...

    forum.amdzone.com: 11 April 2008 Read more

  2. [New System Build] First System Built

    excellent hard drive choice for the ram i would choose 800mhz, instead of 1000mhz, save a little money and simply overclock what you have. stick with 2x2gb, it will be much easier to upgrade in future. the mobo is good. i would also recommand the msi k9a2 platinum. it's a pretty great overclocker. i've had a good experience with the power supply. its been running great for over 8months now. cpu? 6400 is a bit expensive plus not much room left to overclock. think about getting the amd 5000be and overclocking it. it's...

    forum.tomshardware.com: Read more

  3. AMD makes a 45 nm comeback against Intel's Penryn

    ...at 3Dmark performance but whether that translates to real life is another matter. But swapping your motherboard and cpus for the same with intel is just throwing money down the drain. If you were to do that I would get a Phenom and a motherboard like the MSI K9A2 Platinum and throw 4x 3870X2's at it. Then take a photo of it and post it here

    forum.amdzone.com: 10 March 2008 Read more

  4. Sound Problems Playing Crysis on Windows Vista Ultimate

    jr1475 Posts: 2 Registered: 3/13/08 Sound Problems Playing Crysis on Windows Vista Ultimate Posted: Mar 13, 2008 9:22 PM Reply I recently upgraded my computer to Windows Vista Ultimate. Hardware is MSI K9A2 Platinum socket AM2 with AMD Athlon64x2 6000, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, XFX Geforce 8600 GTS XXX Edition, OCZ 4mb and a ThermalTake 750watt power supply. When I play the game Crysis the sound suddenly stops. If I exit the game and restart it the sound comes back but...

    forum.radarnation.com: 13 March 2008 Read more

  5. Montherboard, with or without the goodies

    ...debated topic many months after the fact to say this:  It just depends on what you want to do, what your expectations are, and what your budget is.  At this point, early in 2008, onboard sound is a given and it can be really good.  My new motherboard (an MSI K9A2 Platinum) actually has HD sound which actually DOES sound great.   Onboard LAN is a given.  I don't even think they make boards without it anymore. The choice to be made is onboard video.  If you are on a very tight budget (and I mean VERY tight), it might be a pass...

    forum.bonafidereviews.com: 05 March 2008 Read more

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