Manufacturer Micro Star International
Retail Price $125

Expansion Slot : 5/2/1 
Extra's : Voltage Manupulation, extra bus speeds and built in PCI audio device

Here’s another board that has the potential to become the choice of overclockers everywhere, even though you can’t compare Micro Star International, given their history, with the likes of Abit and ASUS. Anyway, the MS-6163 stands apart from the competition because of its four voltage presets. That’s right, the MS-6163 allows you to choose between four preset voltage settings of 2.0V, 2.05V, 2.1V and 2.2V. OK, so it may not allow you to manually fine tune the voltage as the Abit boards do but something is better than nothing, isn’t it? (Yes, it is, don’t argue) Most especially if you have a Celeron 300A or a Pentium II 300 (SL2W8). Overclocking to 504MHz requires a slight voltage increment in some cases where you have to pump up 2.2V. Unfortunately, the MS-6163 doesn’t include a 1.8V preset for those of you who run your processors at this voltage. Always something to spoil an overclocker’s day. But as I said before, something is better than nothing, half a loaf is better than none, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. 
 

Anyway, that’s by no means all there is to the MS-6163. The board also supports some important bus speeds as well; 117MHz, 124MHz, 138MHz 143MHz, 149MHz and the ever-so-difficult 152MHz.  What’s more, the board also has two AGP clock ratios and a ¼ PCI clock divider that kicks in when you exceed 117MHz. Not to mention the built-in audio via the Ensonique ES1373 PCI audio controller, which is a decent audio controller and serves its purpose.

The board is a 5 PCI/ 2 ISA/1 AGP configuration; the only thing missing is the fourth DIMM socket, but that can be excused in a board like this one. The board is a jumperless model and features a utility called Plug and Play II to tweak the board, similar to Abit’s Soft Menu II.   Unlike ASUS, MSI has decided to give a thermistor free of charge along with the board. With this, the MS-6163 provides all the  hardware monitoring features seen on boards such as the ASUS P2B-F and the Abit BX6 rev 2.0.
 

Finally, we come to performance. OK, the board is no high flyer in terms of performance, but it sits comfortably within average levels. However, it is quite stable when it’s overclocked at 124MHz and 133MHz, provided you have good PC100 SDRAM. Unfortunately, the 138MHz setting was pretty unstable even with PC133 memory, but 143MHz wasn’t as bothersome as this with PC133 memory. So, finally, we get to hold this board up and say that this is a board to rival the Abit BX6 2.0.  Even the price difference is marginal. It’s stable, and it’s got the features for overclocking, with built-in sound into the bargain. This is a board to watch.