We measured the overall performance of this motherboard using SYSmark2004, which is a software that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.


• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e. simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

The software delivers specific results for each batch and also an overall performance result, all in a specific SYSmark2004 unit.
We selected the following motherboards to compare to MSI K8N Diamond Plus:

• Albatron K8SLI (nForce4 SLI)
• ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI)
• DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-D (nForce4 SLI)
• ECS KN1 Extreme (nForce4 Ultra)
• ECS KN1 SLI Extreme (nForce4 SLI)
• Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS (nForce4 Ultra)
• Sapphire PI-A9RX480 (ATI Xpress 200P).
• ULi AP9567A (ULi M1695 chipset reference board)
• ULi AP970A (ULi M1697 chipset reference board)

You can see the results on the chart below.

Motherboard	SYSmark 2004 - Score	%
Sapphire PI-A9RX480 (ATI Xpress 200P)	188	+0.53
Albatron K8SLI (nForce4 SLI)	188	+0.53
ECS KN1 SLI Extreme (nForce4 SLI)	188	+0.53
MSI K8N Diamond Plus (nForce4 SLI X16)	187
ULi AP970A (ULi M1697)	187	0
DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-D (nForce4 SLI)	186	-0.54
Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS (nForce4 Ultra)	185	-1.08
ULi AP9567A (ULi M1695)	184	-1.63
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI)	183	-2.19
ECS KN1 Extreme (nForce4 Ultra)	181	-3.31

On this test MSI K8N Diamond Plus achieved a performance similar to the majority of motherboards we tested, being a little bit faster than ECS KN1 Extreme (nForce4 Ultra).