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MSI’s DKA790GX Platinum is one of the first motherboards designed for the Phenom II processor. Its high scores in our tests, conducted with a Phenom II 940, make a convincing case for its AMD 790GX Northbridge chipset. It has an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics processor and supports the Hybrid CrossFireX standard, which lets you combine the power of your integrated graphics processor with the onboard chip. With 128MB of GDDR3 Sideport memory, the graphics processor doesn’t need to share the main RAM. The motherboard has HDMI, DVI and VGA video outputs, so you won’t have to fiddle with any awkward converters. Two PCI Express x16 slots provide room for a pair of discrete graphics cards in Crossfire configuration, although a single dual-chip card is a better choice. The pair of PCI Express x1 slots enable you to fit modern sound cards and TV tuners, and there are two PCI slots for older hardware. The board includes five SATA connectors, an eSATA port, FireWire, six USB ports and three internal USB headers. There’s an IDE port for an older hard disk and even a floppy connector.
The DKA790GX Platinum performed brilliantly and is well priced for an AMD 790 board. It’s ideal if you want to upgrade to AMD’s new processor or provide room for upgrade at a later date.
