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The Board Itself
So what parts of the nForce2 platform does MSI implement in the K7N2-L?
• Supports all Socket A AMD processors on 100, 133 or 166MHz front side busses up to Athlon XP2700+ and beyond
• Supports DDR200/266/333/400 memory standards in 64-bit or 128-bit modes
• Supports AGP4X/8X with Fast Writes
• Supports 6 memory banks using 3 DIMM modules up to 3GB in total system memory
• AGP8X slot
• 5 x PCI 2.1 32-bit 33MHz slots
• ACR slot
• 4 device IDE support using on-board ATA133 controller from MCP2-T
• Realtek ALC650 codec interface to onboard MCP2-T audio processor
• Support Dolby Digital 5.1 hardware processing
• On-board auto sensing 10/100MBit/sec Ethernet using NVIDIA MAC
• 6 USB2.0 ports, 2 on ATX backplane, 4 using rear header
• Bluetooth header
So it's a fairly standard set of features from MSI on the K7N2-L but not nearly as extravagant as some offerings. Only a single Ethernet header provided from the 2 Ethernet MAC's onboard the MCP2-T and no Firewire connectors provided although it seems a motherboard header is provided if you can supply your own ports. Despite there being no onboard video since it's an SPP solution there is only a single serial port with a space where a 2nd could go. Serial ports aren't vogue any more but it's arguable that if you aren't using the space with a D-SUB header for on board graphics, the serial port should be available.
The rest is pretty standard. 5 PCI, 6 USB2.0, Realtek interface to the audio hardware and the obligatory AGP slot and DDR SDRAM slots for you to populate with memory.
Certainly not as feature packed as say the Asus A7N8X Deluxe but MSI have made their feature selection based on target market and the price of the board and therefore a supremely full featured board doesn't matter to the target audience of the K7N2-L.
So how do they layout the board to pack those features in?
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