MSI introduces the P35 Neo Combo to the mainstream market supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 ram.  

INTRODUCTION

We are now seeing more and more manufacturers releasing their new motherboard range using Intel's P35 "Bearlake" chipsets. Most will support DDR2, but the main feature of the Intel P35 chipset is that it is built to support DDR3 natively. However, DDR3 ram is still very expensive and not so readily available ... it's really targeted at the high-end performance market. So instead, to cater for the mainstream market, manufacturers have been releasing motherboards that will support both types of ram ... just like the Gigabyte GA-P35C DS3R, which was one of the first motherboards to do so.

At present, the performance of DDR3 ram hasn't attracted any real attention. People still using DDR2 are apparently getting more performance from DDR2 over DDR3. One of the possible reasons include the higher CAS latency of DDR3 ram. A typical DDR3-1066 would have a CAS latency of 7-7-7-20 ... compare that to DDR2-1066 which is at 5-5-5-15. We had a similar situation a few years back, when DDR2 ram first became available. Could we see another versus battle between old and new technologies?

In this review we will be taking a look at MSI's P35 Neo Combo motherboard. It utilises Intel's P35 chipset, has full support for 1333FSB, Quad Core ready and can support both DDR2 and DDR3 ram. It's aimed at the mainstream market, so there's no extra features like heat-pipe chipset cooling or SLI configuration. You only get 1 PCIe(x16) slot for graphics card, which is fine.

The motherboard has a total of 4 DIMM slots, 2 for DDR2 and 2 for DDR3. You also get 3 PCIe(x1) slots and 2 standard PCI slots for expansion. On the rear ATX panle there wasn't any SPDIF or digital/optical outputs, however there are 4 USB ports, 1 firewire and 1 gigabit ethernet port ... which is more than adequate. MSI hasn't added any of their innovative features to this motherboard ... things like Dual Core Cell, solid capacitors or eSATA connectors. I guess this motherboard is really aimed at the mainstream and NOT for the enthusiast. Still, it has enough standard features to get you going.

Now that our CPU3D review team has the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor in our labs, we'll be putting this motherboard through its paces, and compare it with other motherboards in its class. At the time of testing, we didn't have any DDR3 ram on hand to fully test the P35 Neo Combo. So instead, we used a 2Gb kit of DDR2 ram from OCZ.

OK, let's not waste anymore time, and take a closer look at the MSI P35 Neo Combo motherboard ...