MSI G33 Motherboard

Although relatively small, this motherboard has all the ports and slots. One PCIe x16 slot just in case if integrated graphics can’t cope with your demands; one PCIe 1x slot that you can forget if you’re using a graphics card with dual slot cooler, and two always welcome PCI slots.

Backpanel ports:
1x PS/2 keyboard
1x PS/2 mouse
2x eSATA II
1x Gb LAN
1x Firewire
6x USB 2.0
7.1 Audio analog
x VGA

Although G33 Chipset enables DVI and HDMI, most manufacturers like MSI offer only VGA out. Six USB 2.0 ports placed on the back panel will always come in handy. Compared to MSI P35 Platinum version, the back panel lacks only SPDIF digital audio out.

Board revision is 1.0 and it supports DDR2 memory. In future revisions it is possible that MSI will include DDR3 support, but for now it is not necessary as the prices of DDR3 are still sky-high, and after all this board is not aimed at performance-hungry portion of the market anyway. Therefore we see memory support for DDR2 800/667MHz memory interface. It is possible to plug in up to 8GB of memory.

ICH9R supports six SATA II ports but it lacks IDE support. The purple SATA ports are SATA masters. Too bad there are only two out of predicted four ports. Implemented Marvell 88SE6111 enables one extra internal SATA port and more importantly one IDE.

BIOS:

MSI opted for AMI BIOS. Over-clocking settings are placed in Frequency/Voltage Control menu. DDR2 memory doesn’t run at 1066MHz, while system bus runs as specified, 1333MHz with no problems.

Primary Graphics Adapter:
This is where on-board graphics settings are set. You can choose Internal, PCI-E and PCI. We used Internal (Intel GMA 3100) and PCI-E (HD 2400XT) and for integrated graphics we chose DVMT mode in Chipset Features field. In this mode, graphics accelerator doesn’t receive a fixed amount of memory; it gets maximum 256 MB and requirement-based memory usage.

BIOS features:
FSB Options: Auto, Manual
Bus Speeds: Auto, 266 to 600 in 1MHz increments
Memory Ratios: Auto, 1:1, 1:1.2, 1:1.25, 1:1.5, 1:1.60, 1:1:67, 1:2, 1:2:67
Memory Speed: Auto, Manual
PCIe Speeds: 100MHz~133MHz in 1MHz Increments
Core Voltage: Auto, 1.275V to 2.0625 in -0.0125V increments
CPU Clock Multiplier: Auto, manual if EIST disabled
Core 2 Duo: 6x-11x in 1X increments - Core 2 Duo, downwards unlocked
Core 2 Extreme: 6x-60X, downwards unlocked
DRAM Voltage: Auto, 1.80V to 2.10V in 0.05V increments, 2.10V to 3.30V in 0.10V increments
DRAM Timing Control: Auto, Manual
NB Voltage: 1.25V to 1.60V in 0.025V increments, 1.65V
SB I/O Voltage: 1.50V, 1.60V, 1.70V, 1.80V
SB Core Voltage: 1.05V, 1.15V
FSB VTT Voltage: 1.20V to 1.55V in 0.025V increment, 1.60V