MSI K9AGM2-FIH Motherboard Review

3D Performance: Quake III

We used the demo four available on version 1.32 of Quake III to make our benchmarking with this game. We ran this demo three times at 1024x768x32 resolution and all image quality settings on their default configuration and we picked the middle value for our comparisons, i.e., we discarded the highest and the lowest values.

We didn’t use Quake 4 because with its latest patch installed (1.4.2 when this review was published) it complained that it couldn’t be run with the hardware we had – i.e., it couldn’t be run on AMD 690G.

You can check the results of our benchmarking below. All the listed video cards were installed on MSI K9AGM2-FIH.

Here MSI K9AGM2-FIH achieved the same performance level of ECS RS485M-M (ATI Radeon Xpress 1100), being 5.24% faster than ECS AMD690GM-M2 (AMD 690G) and 13.93% faster than Foxconn A690GM2MA (AMD 690G). ECS GeForce6100SM-M was 5.09% faster and Abit AN-M2 (GeForce 7025) was amazingly 27.16% faster.

The problem is that even the “worst” PCI Express video card is a lot faster than on-board video solutions: GeForce 6200 with 64-bit memory interface and TurboCache technology was 120% faster than MSI K9AGM2-FIH. This is a brutal difference. GeForce 6200 with 128-bit memory interface was 209% faster.

ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe was 6.62% faster than the reviewed motherboard when we installed our overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS.