MSI 890GXM-G65 review

MSI has crammed plenty of features on to this AM3 microATX motherboard, including USB3 and a full complement of five SATA III ports. The BIOS supports the latest hexacore AMD Phenom II processors as well as providing a full complement of overclocking options, including the ability to save your own BIOS profiles.

There are two PCI-E x16 slots – they’ll both run at 8x if you have two cards in them, though. There’s also one PCI and one PCI-E x1 slot, although the latter will be blocked if you install a large graphics card. That means you’ll probably be limited to using the PCI or second PCI-E x16 slots for any extra expansion cards you want. Four memory slots can take up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM running at a maximum speed of 2133MHz.

The integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 only managed a frame rate of 3.5fps in Call of Duty 4, so it’s clearly not up to 3D gaming. However, it’s well equipped for either dual-monitor or home cinema use, with VGA and DVI outputs as well as an HDMI port capable outputting full HD video and full lossless 24bit/192kHz Blu-ray quality audio. There are also six 3.5mm stereo outputs for the built-in Realtek ALC889, which the driver can configure for 5.1 surround sound audio with a mic input or 7.1 surround sound without. There’s also an optical S/PDIF output if you need a digital audio connection to your speakers.

The backplane also provides six USB ports, including two USB3 ports. A PS/2 port means that you won’t necessarily have to use of your precious USB ports for a keyboard or mouse. There’s also an eSATA port. Performance in our tests was good, with an Overall score of 120. If you’re after a fast, flexible and easy-to-overclock microATX motherboard of any AM3 processor, this is one of the best you’ll find.