Friday, April 28, 2000

The features (continued)

Other features of the Micro-Star MS-6301 include: a 4X AGP port, an (optional) integrated AC"97 Creative Labs CT5880 sound card, an AMR slot, Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS/2 connectors, USB connectors, RX/TX connectors for infrared connectivity, start-up from the keyboard/mouse/or at a pre-set time, Suspend to RAM, and Power Failure Recovery. As well, hardware monitoring of fan speed, and of CPU temperature is also included as a standard feature on this PC99 motherboard. A thermal sensor, capable of monitoring the temperature of an element of the user's choice - such as your graphics card, is also included with the MS-6301.

Below, a photo of the Micro-Star MS-6301 provides a nice view of the board's components.

Installation

As there are several jumpers to verify during installation, the MS-6301 is not quite the breeze to install as many other truly jumperless boards. On the other hand, most of the MS-6301's jumpers are specific to its own unique functions. It can thus be said that the MS-6301 offers a particularly great range of flexibility as a result of those functions. With that in mind, maybe it's worth the extra few minutes necessary to verify a few jumpers, isn't it?

The software bundle

The installation CD includes Intel 820 patches, a hardware-monitoring utility, audio drivers, PC Cillin 98 & its latest update, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a number of utilities from MSI, and Microsoft DirectX 7.

Next: The test results.