MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R (875P): Our favorite thus far

Final Words

Having thoroughly testing the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R motherboard we have come to three conclusions:

1. The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R is easily the most overclocker-friendly Pentium 4 motherboard we've ever come across, both in terms of BIOS options and FSB overclocking ability. There is one other motherboard we haven't given you a full review of yet that comes pretty close to matching the 875P Neo-FIS2R in this department, but right now the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R rules the roost.

2. The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R is one of the most full-featured Pentium 4 desktop motherboard we've come across. We haven't taken at look at every single 875P motherboard so we can't say the 875P Neo-FIS2R is the most full featured P4 motherboard we've ever used, but it's darn close.

3. The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R is available now (in the U.S. mainly) and it's a bargain for such a high-end, overclocker-friendly motherboard. MSI says the ASP (Average Selling Price) for the 875P Neo-FIS2R is $210, but at the moment you can find this motherboard for as low as $199, and no higher than $206 from a handful of well known U.S. online vendors. MSI says the U.S., Asia, Europe, and other major parts of the world should be receiving much larger quantities of 875P motherboards within the next seven days.

The average desktop user or hardcore enthusiast will be completely satisfied with the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R, as it pretty much offers everything these users could want. Obviously if you're looking for a low-cost motherboard with just a few basic onboard features and maybe some accessories here and there, you won't be considering the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R but probably a cheap 865PE or SiS 655FX (the name of SiS' low-cost 800MHz FSB chipset is unknown at this time) motherboard.

We are being quite honest when we say that we can find very little wrong with this motherboard (save a few early BIOS issues that pop up with any newly introduced product). The features, price, overclocking-friendly setup and availability of this board are all exactly what we would want from our ideal desktop motherboard. In fact, MSI currently has a low-cost version of this board, though the price isn't really all that "low" at $175. This motherboard is called the MSI 875P Neo-LSR and is exactly the same as the 875P Neo-FIS2R save the onboard IEEE 1394 FireWire controller, Intel PRO/1000CT Gigabit LAN (CSA), and Promise RAID controller (only two Serial ATA connectors via the ICH5R South Bridge).

Stay tuned for several more 875P reviews to come…