An excellent reference manual is included with the MS-6163, it's nice to see that certain manufacturers have opted to include full manuals instead of the increasingly popular "quick reference guides" that some companies are throwing into their flagship mainboard's boxes.

Installing the MS-6163 proved to be quite easy, it's a kick to watch the four LEDs in action as the board posts and performs its diagnostic routine before CPU bootup.

No hassles, no headaches, "easy" was the word of the day concerning the MSI board's "zero to Win98 bootup" speed.

No real discernable differences in the MS-6163 versus the last ten 440BX boards we've tested in system level performance. We noticed that on ZD's WinBench99 CPUMark99 test that the board managed to hit a high score of 48.5 using a currently unreleased prototype Intel Pentium III CPU, that's the highest score we've seen recorded with that particular CPU by approximately one full point.

Not a major deal and nothing a user would see translated into a real world performance increase, but interesting nevertheless.

Other tests at the MS-6163's default 66 and 100MHz FSB speeds proved to be non-events as it passed the stability portions of WinStone99 and Prime95 without issue.