I'm going to go insane, MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3)

[HNR1]

You win.

Slots
2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (PCI_E2, PCI_E4)

I suppose i'll have to wait till 3.0 I'll lump the x8.

stulid The BIOS is UEFI this is why mouse control is important http://www.howtogeek.com/56958/htg-explains-how-uefi-will-replace-the-bios/

maybe better to explain http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2009/01/11/msi-click-bios-evaluating-uefi-review/1

dont you just love search.

Surveyor you know this piece of **** please enlighten me to the great working of it.http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18301382&highlight=uefi

I've used it on both my Sandy Bridge builds and I never sat there and thought "this is horrific".

hmmm i think Kyle knows a thing or two well he has since 1999 for me and he ok'd this.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/06/21/msi_p67agd80_motherboard_review/3

Kyle's Thoughts:

Dan is dead on with his thoughts about the BIOS. All the double clicking and menu FUBARs can drive you nuts. It is just hard to work with. Once you get beyond having to tweak the BIOS any more, you are looking at what is a great piece of hardware, belittled by terrible software.

While we usually don't see machines fail under our stress tests now days, the P67A-GD80 did. I came back to find a still powered-on black screen after an all night test. Rebooted into the OS without an issue and did not get a BSOD warning in the Win 7 64bit OS. I ran the Torture Test incubated on the P67A-GD80 for four more days without issue. It operated perfectly. So maybe the first failure was a "fluke," at least that is what I am writing it off to.

The P67A-GD80 did very well in the benchmarks and looked to be a bit "faster" than the pack. You will notice we did not compare it to any of the latest ASUS boards, because proper Turbo scaling is "broken" on these boards and gives us what amounts to "cheating" when it comes to benchmarks. The Turbo feature on the P67A-GD80 worked as it is supposed to under normal circumstances although when we used OC Genie, the clocking down / Speedstep function did not work.

OC Genie is the one saving grace to this board as OC Genie still operates quickly and flawlessly. A quick press of the OC Genie button and then a click of the power switch netted us a nice 4.2GHz CPU / 1600MHz Memory (9-10-10-25-1T) overclock with at 1.352 vCore. Certainly not the most you can get out of the configuration, but not meaningless to those wanting to take the easy way out.

I'm so limited i wish i'd gone with Asus, to me the bios is the heart of a system.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1617200

I don't get a mouse cursor at all and i'm running msi sli gtx 580's LE, my keyboard which is a g19 is difficult also in the bios it's like guess what you are setting, so no mouse control limited KB. HOW THE HELL DO I USE THE BIOS???????

The BIOS is quite shameful. On top of everything, MSI's online BIOS download page is non-descriptive of the changes they have made to this board. My brother, like you, actually spoke of the huge difference between ASUS' and MSI's BIOS, stating how ASUS' offering is far superior.

Another annoyance with the MSI bios is that if you click and hold the scroll bar to scroll (rather than clicking the arrows), you have to stay EXACTLY within the width of the bar itself or else it drops you off in the black hole of the BIOS screen, wondering what you just changed.

In addition, random power cycles during bootup plague the board and out of the box, the board does not allow you to get to the BIOS with a G19 keyboard unless you tinker around with the BIOS settings with ANOTHER keyboard. LAME

It was the same with a G11 KB, so no go.

I think it may be RMA time.

There's nothing wrong with MSI's UEFI BIOS.

Perhaps not as fancy looking as Asus but it does the job.

And how long do you spend using the BIOS?

Well if your a one finger click OC then not long it seems you must be, i like to use my bios like a fine wine.

 

[Surveyor]

Sorry you're still having issues with the BIOS.

The version of the MSI BIOS I've used was the original one on the MSI P67A-GD65.

I find that mouse support worked a lot better just using a basic no frills mouse.

Even if you can't get mouse support to work you can still use the keyboard using the tab and arrow keys etc. to navigate through the BIOS. Again a basic keyboard seemed to work best.

While I can see why you say the "the bios is the heart of a system" you won't be using it every day.

I spent a few minutes making changes in the BIOS prior to installing Windows. Changing the date and time, disabling anything I wouldn't be using, putting the RAM settings in manually etc.

After I'd completed the installation I spent a few more minutes in the BIOS setting up an overclock on the processor. I read up a bit on what settings were likely to work, put them in and had an instant 4.6GHz overclock. I didn't see the need for any more for 24/7 use so that's where I'm still at.

I've had this system since mid January and in that time I've probably spent less than 30minutes using the BIOS and haven't used it at all after the first few days.

 

[HNR1]

Sorry you're still having issues with the BIOS.

I'm just a ****ing idiot sometimes, with not noticing the PCi e bandwidth and trusting the software that came with the mobo. *sleep deprived* That's what having a 16 month old baby does to me.

MSI are shipping that mobo with a broken BIOS which is a bit unfair, i just scrapped the whole install and did it the old fashion way. It all seems to be fine now

So anyone buying that mobo don't use the BIOS or software that comes with it, especially live update it's evil!

 

[Nelly]

Have you tried the latest beta bios?

Click here >> http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=151130.0

The latest BETA UEFI Release for the Z68A-GD80 (G3) mainboard is currently: *E7672IMS.I31

Changelog:

E7672IMS.I20 ---> E7672IMS.I31

- Fix THX Audio issue
- Fixed GSEII the OC Genie after cpu ratio show error issue.
- Update SugarBaySNB Module and microcode to fix SNB Celeron CPU Hang up issue.
- Fixed the Bclk value show error when load default after.
- GSEII support PageUp/PageDown key for listbox.
- Fixed the M-Flash boot function fail issue.
- Add U-key function support USB3.0
- Fix Some Device Lost issue when Onboard LAN Control Disabled.
- Remove XAI mouse solution for some other usb mouse fail
- Add USB mouse hot-plug in GSEII(only support Core Source 4.6.4.0)
- Fixed can't select any control after select utility page.
- Fixed help message of control "Select one file to update BIOS" in Mflash page can't be displayed.

Please note that flashing this release occurs entirely at your own risk! >>Use the MSI HQ Forum USB flasher<<, Method II for best results.