Unreal Tournament 2003	Source: Epic

Unreal Tournament 2003 is the sequel to 1999's multiple 'Game of the Year' award winner. It uses the very latest Unreal Engine technology - where graphics, sound and game play are taken beyond the bleeding edge. Unreal Tournament 2003 employs the use of Vertex as well as Pixel Shaders and it's recommended that you use a DirectX 8 videocard to get the most out of the game.

UT2003 - 640x480
Flyby	FPS	Ranking
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 (NF3 Ultra, 200/400)	326.5
Asus A8V (K8T800 Pro, 200/400)	328.25
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR (K8T800 Pro, 200/400)	325.21
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR (K8T800 Pro, 220/440)	346.52
Botmatch	FPS	Ranking
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 (NF3 Ultra, 200/400)	105.61
Asus A8V (K8T800 Pro, 200/400)	106.45
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR (K8T800 Pro, 200/400)	105.21
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR (K8T800 Pro, 220/440)	114.46

I'm always amazed to see Athlon64 UT2003 frame rates... My own Intel Pentium 4 system which is clocked at 4 GHz just manages to do about the same as one of these systems at stock speeds!

Conclusions on the MSI K8T Neo2-FIR

The MSI K8T Neo2-FIR that we looked at today is a great motherboard for those of you who are thinking about checking out some of the fastest 64-bit desktop processors. It's filled with features like a Promise IDE/Serial ATA RAID controller, 7.1 onboard audio, IEEE 1394a, Gigabit LAN and even a PCI 802.11g wireless network card! If that's not good enough for you the five PCI slots and 8X AGP port should be plenty to keep you happy in the future.

The layout of the MSI K8T Neo2-FIR motherboard is excellent, and stock performance of the board was equally compelling. The K8T Neo2-FIR simply flew through all the benchmarks we threw at it, often at speeds we've never seen before. In terms of overclocking the board was mediocre however. I have a feeling that the AGP/PCI locks were not functioning properly. Hopefully a simple BIOS update will can fix those problems.

Other than the overclocking let down, there's not much you can complain about this board. The MSI K8T Neo2-FIR retails for a little over $140USD which is nice and affordable, and for that price you certainly get a lot. If you need a Socket 939 Athlon64 motherboard, look no further!

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