MSI P7N Diamond, mini review.

Locky

Locky

Locky

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To the point.....

I decided to try this board, after hearing people having a few problems with other 780i chipset boards.

What can i say this is a top notch board, The bios is very quick, boot times are the fastest ive seen on any system.

Overclocking...

This bios is very easy to overclock with just the right amount of settings to use, i dont like boards with to many settings, as i think it messes things up.

This board overclocks very nice, Q6600,(week45a) Tuniq tower cooled, 4GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer, 2x OcUK value 8800GTX.

I decided to try the board at 8x333 = 3000mhz, this board did this with ease with no ajustments to any other settings, memory at 1067, 15,5,5,5.

Decided to try 1500x8 (375x8) which seems to favour nvidia based chipsets, this worked flawless aswell..

Now i jumped into the deepend at 1600x9 [400x9] 3600mhz mem at 800mhz
Remember that all 4 banks are filled so i decided to drop the mem speed a little.

This setting ran flawless aswell passing prime and 3dmark with ease,


Highest suicide shot was 500fsb, which isnt bad for a Quadcore based system

Manage to get into windows run a few 3d apps @ 4ghz. but wasnt prime stable.


What i like about this board is how cool the chipset is, imo coolest of all the Nvidia line of boards.

The onboard sound is ace having a Creative X-fi onboard.

Chipset driver install was a breeze. The install and bootup time of windows is very fast indeed.

I think MSI have a VERY good board here and easy one of the best nvidia line boards you can buy.

5 Stars!
 
Nice little review here I am currently considering this board due to the lack of stock on evga and xfx and the poor reviews I've been reading about striker II. This positive result by yourself certainly pushes me towards msi
 
Great to hear something positive about this board, i had heard some claims of having to tinker to get it stable when overclocking which is something i really hate doing but if youre saying its fairly simple then i cant ignore that.

Again, very tempted to get the MSI board, if theres no evga or xfx in stock by tomorrow afternoon then im goin straight for the MSI board with no hesitations, im sick of waiting, my parts are becoming obsolete each day it takes the other boards to appear.

Glad to see you used a tuniq tower aswell as thats what i have but wasn't sure if it would fit alongside that crazy heatsink they have on the chipset.
 
If you need any more prompting to plump for the MSI, I have decided to offer it on This Week Only for £20 +VAT off! (a massive discount for a motherboard)



This is a very special board indeed...cooler, faster and more stable than the competition so far.

Apart from the 780i northbridge, it has a nForce 570i SLI chipset as a southbridge. This means that it has two IDE controllers for those of you who still have more than two IDE devices. It has the usual Nvidia RAID and they give you a Creative X-FI Xtreme Audio sound card (usually about £30 in value) instead of some half-baked onboard sound driven by a single codec chip.

BUY NOW FOR JUST £159.99 +VAT!!
 
Heres a question though, looking at the board layout it seems the second gfx card in the second blue pcie slot will hover over the pci slot which i need for a wi-fi card.

Forgot to add, GFX boards are 8800GTS's so dual slot pcie 2.0, would prefer to hold em in 2.0 slots but mave to put one in a 2.0 slot and one in a 1.0 slot which isn't really ideal.

Do the other pcie slots work ok in SLI or do i need to find another solution for wi-fi in the machine.

Thx.
 
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Tomarru said:
Heres a question though, looking at the board layout it seems the second gfx card in the second blue pcie slot will hover over the pci slot which i need for a wi-fi card.

Do the other pcie slots work ok in SLI or do i need to find another solution for wi-fi in the machine.

Thx.
Click to expand...

prod_ff8dd25448881a0028c5a479128a6a0d.jpg

two blue and white are x16, yellow is x8. There is no reason why you would have to use both blues, you could use a blue and a white
 
Great review, thanks..Looks like a nice motherboard. I have SLi and i use a Titan amanda which needs a PCI slot, will i be able to run SLi in the blue and white slots? If not i might need to buy a new cooler :(.

How come the board had 4 pci express?
 
ScottiB said:
prod_ff8dd25448881a0028c5a479128a6a0d.jpg

two blue and white are x16, yellow is x8. There is no reason why you would have to use both blues, you could use a blue and a white
Click to expand...

How long is the SLI bridge? long enough to use slots 1 and 3?

Yeah MSI do make good boards it's just on the last three MSI boards i've had they have all lasted 3 months before I started having cold boot issues forcing me to reset the cmos everytime I switched it on.

I will never give them any of my money ever again.
 
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All 680/780's have a 570i SB, just they dont solder 2 EIDE Sockets onto the PCB, you still see 2 Channels in the Bios and Windows.

I plugged this Mobo weeks ago and others slated MSI, it does look good, retains ESATA and both reviews I posted hit 580+FSB on Duals.
 
I used one blue PCI-e at the top and 1 white PCI-e for the second card, which has plenty of space between them.

The yellow 8x pci-e would be used for future physX cards or alike.

What i also noticed that it doesnt suffer with FSB holes like other nvidia boards.

All in all its a great board IMO, and worth a look.
 
TiZoR said:
I used one blue PCI-e at the top and 1 white PCI-e for the second card, which has plenty of space between them.

The yellow 8x pci-e would be used for future physX cards or alike.

What i also noticed that it doesnt suffer with FSB holes like other nvidia boards.

All in all its a great board IMO, and worth a look.
Click to expand...

Cool, so the SLi bridge is long enough for slots 1 and 3?
 
Great review. Msi seem to have a winning board here. Need someone to chuck a QX9650 in it and see what it can do.
 
Thanks TiZoR.

I'm also very close to getting one of these, and after the disappointing reviews of yet another Asus Striker board with the Striker II your mini review makes 780i look a lot more appealing.
 
Need more input, go and see the reviews (2 reviews) I posted with a Dual core at over 580FSB (obv less on a Quad).

Lets sees normal peeps get this not a review site we cant 100% trust.
 
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