During our test of MSI's latest product, K7N2G-ILSR, we have discovered that motherboard is equipped with engineering version of video BIOS, which supports NV17 specifications, but also has various stability problems.
Although we've heard alot from some partners that the integrated graphics "processor" inside should be nVIDIA's NV18 or "GeForce4 MX with AGP 8x", as Holy Marchitecture says - the truth actually lies somewhere else.
On MSI's note, we were shocked to see that the engineering BIOS revision is installed on this retail product and that retail board has a BIOS which shows that this product is actually based on CR17 or CRUSH 17, which was the codename for ill-fated nForce620.
BIOS: AGP 8x is enabled...
Although we have a lot of engineering boards in our Lab, we have not expected to see the BIOS revision stating:
"Engineering Revision - Not for Production use"
on a retail product from a famous motherboard manufacturer.
CR17 VGA BIOS
Version 4.1F.00.07.00
Engineering Revision - Not for Production use
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 NVIDIA Corp.
P.O.S.T. clearly states it's an engineering version...on $150 product retailing in stores around the world
Test configuration
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ @2.08 GHz
Dr. Thermal TI-V7725N
MSI K7N2G-ILSR (two samples)
1 GB DDR434 CorsairMicro RAM @400MHz, CL2.0 2-5-2
40 GB Hitachi Deskstar 7.200 o/min
NEC DVD-ROM
17" ADI Microscan
420W Enhance PSU
The board itself manifested many brakeups during video playback and several software DVD players locked up during their startup phase. This particular issue was solved with installing the Detonators rev. 42.86, but the occassional sttutering continued even after new video drivers were installed. Stuttering and video playback problems were also an issue on another sample of this retail product (although it is from the same batch that was delivered to Croatian distributor).
We have also experienced various problems with USB ports (hot plugging the USB flash drivers does not work until you reboot the machine for a couple of times and change the USB OnChip device first from V1.1+2.0 to 1.1, reboot, load windows, reboot again and switch back to V1.1+2.0 again).
MSI K7N2G-ILSR info
CPU Socket: Socket 462 (A)
CPU`s: AMD Duron ~1.3 GHz, AMD Athlon 600 - 3200+
Bus: 100/133/166/200 MHz DDR
Chipset: nVIDIA nForce2 IGP + MCP-T
Bandwidth NB/SB (MB/s): 807
Graphics: nVIDIA GeForce4 MX with AGP 8x
DIMM slots: 3x DDR DIMM, 2.5-2.9V
Max. RAM: do 3 GB
Memory: PC1600/2100/2700/3200
AGP: AGP 3.0 (4x/8x)
PCI slots: 5x PCI 2.2
IDE: 3 IDE (UATA-133)
I/O: 7x USB 2.0, 2x IEEE1394, 2x PS/2, 1x COM, 1x LPT, 1x D-SUB15, 5.1ch stereo jack, S/PDIF optical/composite, TV-out (S-VHS i composite)
Audio: nVIDIA SoundStorm (Dolby Digital APU)
Network: MCP-T, 1x RJ-45, 10/100, HomePNA 1.1
UPDATE #1:
A colleague of mine just bought a computer containing MSI nForce2 IGP based board. It's the same K7N2G-ILSR and has the same problems with graphics (AGP 4x mode under AGP 3.0 specification) a.k.a. the "NV17" - but, he has also engineering revision of BIOS, which is pretty annoying, since that motherboard was his primary choice due to rest of it's features and integrated graphics should last until retail FX5800 hit the store (or NV35).
However, he did not experience any problems with USB ports, so I can conclude that USB issue was just on those two boards which we got for testing. However, I cannot exclude the possibility that some other buyer got a problematic USB controller as well - which is a solveable issue without the neccesity for upgrading to a new BIOS.
As we found, Shuttle XPC computers with nForce2 IGP are working with retail BIOS versions, and same goes for EPoX, which had engineering BIOS on it's integrated product, EP-8RGA+, but changed BIOS rev as soon as this story hit the Internet last week :-).
This review is referenced by these HW sites:
UPDATE #2:
We have just received updated BIOS revision from MSI, which can be downloaded from HERE. This revision will bring the video BIOS revision to either non-engineering revision or to masked engineering revision. The problem is that with this BIOS revision, we are not been able to see video BIOS screen anymore. We have conducted new tests with this BIOS revision, but there is one annoying fact: with new BIOS system freezes after testing in 3D Mark03 and Unreal Tournament 2003. System didn't lock up after running Quake III and Serious Sam...we do not belive it's an issue with DirectX (3D Mark, UT) and OpenGL (Q3, SSam), since board experienced only stuttering and no lockups using old BIOS, v1.1.
Regarding the integrated core revision, we've talked to nVIDIA and learned that integrated graphics core inside nForce2 IGP is actually NV17, not NV18.
In the end, there is no actual performance difference between GeForce4 MX using AGP 4x or 8x (and retail GF4MXw/AGP 8x has higher clock speed, so that there could be a performance difference between AGP 8x version and older one). Only thing we actually know is that next integrated core logic from nVIDIA will have full AGP 3.0 support, both for add-on boards and integrated core itself :-)
