To see how this chipset fairs, we have an MSI 7093 motherboard. Although this is still an engineering sample, it is very close to the finished product that consumers will receive.

Considering this board is Micro-ATX, this should stand as an example of an OEM board rather than the fuller featured products that are found on the shelf..

Our particular board is Socket 939, which supports Athlon 64/FX/Sempron although there is nothing stopping board partners from creating a Socket 754 version with this chipset.

One advantage to not having onboard LAN is that the board partners can choose what chip to use in order to bring down costs. This board uses a Realtek 8100C chip, which is a 100Mbit PCI variety. Firewire support is included thanks to the VIA VT6307 chip, with one port on the back panel and one header left over on the board. The Realtek ALC658 audio PHY collaborates with the south bridge to give 5.1 audio. 5.1 is only available from the coaxial SPDIF output as there is only a single stereo jack for analogue output.

You will notice how small the heatsink is on the north bridge and how it is passively cooled. Despite this, it was stone cold to the touch during testing. This indicates that the power consumption is fairly minimal, something ATi are generally quite good at.

As the chipset specification suggests, we have 4 DIMM slots ready for single or dual channel operation, 8 USB ports (4 on the back panel and 2 headers left on board), a single 16x PCI-E slot, 3 PCI slots, 4 SATA ports, 2 IDE ports and 1 floppy port.

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