System Stability/Compatibility

6167 Stability

One of the most common questions we're asked is how stable our Athlon systems have been. We're happy to report that during all our Athlon testing on the 6167 motherboard we haven't run into a single stability issue during testing.

That's right, no random lockups, no persistent system crashes, our Athlon setups (regardless of configuration) have performed rock-solid.

This is in stark contrast to previous processor introductions from AMD, where past AMD CPU's performed well but the motherboard itself was always at fault for the systems' instability. We feel this is largely due to the quality components MSI chose in the 6167 as well as its faithful execution of AMD's reference design. (Albeit with a few beneficial changes, 5 PCI slots being the most notable change.)

Simply put, our 6167 motherboard performed flawlessly, and we have no doubt it will for you too.

Compatibility Issues

Another popular Athlon question asked is related to component compatibility. While early Athlon systems with GeForce 256 graphics cards installed had issues, NVIDIA's 3.62 reference drivers solve all problems. We ran our reference GeForce 256 DDR board for hours of testing and never encountered any problems with any of our Athlon CPU's.

Recently, an Athlon 750MHz entered our labs for additional play…err testing, during which we encountered no problems. Likewise, we encountered no problems when testing with Voodoo3's or TNT2 video cards, leading us to believe that all major compatibility issues with the Athlon have been (to our knowledge) resolved. Expect to see our Athlon 750 review available online shortly.

Before you rush to pick up an Athlon processor and motherboard remember that a beefy power supply is recommended. This webpage on AMD's website provides a list of recommended power supplies but again, we encountered no stability-related issues during our testing. Great work MSI!