The MSI K9N2 Diamond is a high-end, advanced motherboard which uses the NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI chipset to support 3 way SLI. The tri-SLI is transported through 3 Gen 2.0 PCI-e x16 ports ( they operate as x16, x8, x8 speeds under tri-SLI mode) and there is also 1 PCE and 2 PCI ports as well. For CPU support the K9N2 offers an AM2/AM2+ socket for use with the following CPUs; 64 bit Phenom, Athlon, Sempron, and additional support for AMD CPUs that use 140 watt power. For memory the K9N2 offers 4 DIMM slots which support DDR2 1066+ RAM modules up to a maximum of 8GB under a 64 bit operating system. The K9N2 Diamond also provides 8 channel analog audio, a dual gigabit LAN for double the speed, NV RAID (0, 1, 5 and 10), IEEE 1394, SATA2, eSATA, and ATA133. The K9N2 also comes pre-installed with MSI's premium motherboard application; MSI Live Update; MSI Dual CoreCell; MSI Dual CoreCenter, and Dynamic Over-clocking Technology. The motherboard was released September 25, 2008 and has a listed MSRP retail price around $299.
