Never having owned or used a MSI motherboard before so I had no idea what to expect when ordering this motherboard last week. Historically I have only used the MSI graphic cards before and more specifically the Lightning series of graphic cards. I still own and cherish my 275GTX Lightning and one of these days I am going to bench 3DMark2001 again with that card. But it is a motherboard that is on the bench table today.
The motherboard is securely packaged in its box. Not over the top in size and quite subdued compared to the more lurid box art that I have seen lately.
Of course what is inside is what matters so here is the MSI-P67A-GD65 motherboard and all the goodies you get in the box.
The board layout is rather good and I was very pleased to see such a clean and uncluttered socket area. For someone who is going to be using a motherboard at Sub-Zero temperatures that is a big plus.
I would imagine that any aftermarket cooler would be a dream to install on this board. The power connectors are in the normal places and with plenty of fan headers placed intelligently where they will be needed fan connectivity will not be a problem. Plus there plenty of room around the first of the Pci and Pci-e x16 slots, this is a big improvement over the Gigabyte board I have been using as the rather large cooler prevents any possible use of a sound card in the first Pci slot. And if you are going Sli you are then forced to use the on-board sound which is not ideal by any means.
MSI-P67A-GD65 meet the Dimastech bench table
It is clear that this board is aimed at the enthusiast by the well sized array of power/reset and overclock buttons which are placed out of the way bottom left corner of the motherboard. Yet ideally positioned if you are benching your system out of a case.
There is a multitude of USB connectivity that should satisfy even the most demanding of users. I counted 10 in total with 2 USB3 for good measure. As well as all the bells and whistles you would expect for a flagship board, including a clear CMOS button. I really like that option being available to me.
The full specifications and features can be found on the official web pages HERE.
Pretty much standard fare that can be found of all motherboards these days. Sure some of the stuff has different names dependent on the manufacturer so not really difficult to work out. I am simply going to focus on those that matter to me. The first is the BIOS. Basic Input/Output System and here we have a new kind of BIOS interface. The EFI or Extensible Firmware Interface which is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and the hardware of your PC's firmware. What that means is we can use the mouse to navigate and change settings in the BIOS where before changes to the BIOS were only possible with a keyboard based navigation. It is still a bit strange for me as I have been fiddling inside the BIOS with my trust keyboard for many years now but it does not take too long to adapt. For now I still prefer the old way but who knows it might grow on me. MSI have certainly got the full range of settings available to the enthusiast to fiddle with. But SandyBridge is such a forgiving CPU that you really do not need to mess with too many of the settings to get your set up just how you want it. More on that a bit later.
Now the one feature that I am most impressed with and most appreciate is the V-Check Points.
Now for the first time ever I actually agree with the marketing bumph that has been written. This feature is normally only found on a few exclusive boards that cost three times as much as this board did. Well done MSI. If you are wondering why I like this feature, it is quite simple my hobby is benching and I want to know what volts I am actually putting into my components. When you think that a set of quality benching ram is going to set you back £200 plus you do not want to kill them in error. Same with a CPU that is golden.
Time to get this board ready for some testing.
Intel i7-2600K
Corsair DDR3 2000MHz 7-7-7-24
Antec True Power Quattro 1200
1HP Rotery Single Stage -65'C
First boot was at stock just to make sure that all is working fine. No real problems at all. Had to change the ram I was originally going to use as the motherboard just did not like them at all. So out came the trusty Corsair sticks and boot to OS was accomplished.
Tonight I needed to get as much raw speed as possible because running WPrime 1.55 is all about core speed. The trick is to get the speed and to keep it stable for the whole run all in the hope of getting a good time for the MSI contest.
All good so far OS installed no problems. I like the fact that the USB hard drive is the first thing that is picked up in the boot order. Handy as I boot my OS via a USB stick.
Now to the overclocking of my CPU.
Close to my max but I just do not have time tonight to really see how far I can push it on this board. I nearly got a 5738MHz - the CPU-z was corrupted when I tried to submit.
And since I have already done a Wprime 1024 at close to this frequency I know what ball park time to expect at these kinds of clocks.
Press enter and let it run. First run and WOW this board is quick.
HWBOT
That was it done deal first time at bat.
And that was my first time with a MSI motherboard.
After two hours of playing with the board I must say I am quite pleasantly surprised. I had no problems booting into OS and running the WPrime 1024 benchmark at 57x at considerably lower voltages than what I need with my normal benching motherboard. Ram settings were left on Auto to see how the board performs and again I was quite impressed. My time was one second slower than my best which was achieved with 50MHz more core speed. And considerable more time working on the ram settings. I think I am going to be spending some time with this motherboard seeing just what it can do. And for the price of round about £135 I do not think there is a better valued enthusiast motherboard on the market right now.
The BIOS was a bit laggy but not any more so than the Hybrid bios I have been using. I did have a few little quirky things happen. Firstly I had a few issues with the reset button, most of the time it did nothing at all. But when I did finally get a BSOD it did the job perfectly so not a big deal. What did puzzle me was that I kept loosing my hard drives, regardless of what kind I used. SSD or normal platter type. At CPU core frequencies over 5.7GHz I had a good couple of times where the cursor just flashed away at the top of the screen and no OS booted. Yet the diagnostic card indicated that I was in OS. But I am sure if I spend more time exploring the BIOS I will find out what I am doing wrong here. One other thing I need to do is update the BIOS as it is still the one that came with the board.
The motherboard is a real gem of a board for 2D. I did not get a change to do any 3D benching as it was getting pretty late by the time I had finished benching WPrime. So I will have to reserve judgment on that side of things till I make time and play some more.
I like the price.
I like the layout.
I like the performance.
Not quite sure about the EFI bios as yet.
I like the motherboard, and that surprised me the most.
The motherboard is securely packaged in its box. Not over the top in size and quite subdued compared to the more lurid box art that I have seen lately.
Of course what is inside is what matters so here is the MSI-P67A-GD65 motherboard and all the goodies you get in the box.
The board layout is rather good and I was very pleased to see such a clean and uncluttered socket area. For someone who is going to be using a motherboard at Sub-Zero temperatures that is a big plus.
I would imagine that any aftermarket cooler would be a dream to install on this board. The power connectors are in the normal places and with plenty of fan headers placed intelligently where they will be needed fan connectivity will not be a problem. Plus there plenty of room around the first of the Pci and Pci-e x16 slots, this is a big improvement over the Gigabyte board I have been using as the rather large cooler prevents any possible use of a sound card in the first Pci slot. And if you are going Sli you are then forced to use the on-board sound which is not ideal by any means.
MSI-P67A-GD65 meet the Dimastech bench table
It is clear that this board is aimed at the enthusiast by the well sized array of power/reset and overclock buttons which are placed out of the way bottom left corner of the motherboard. Yet ideally positioned if you are benching your system out of a case.
There is a multitude of USB connectivity that should satisfy even the most demanding of users. I counted 10 in total with 2 USB3 for good measure. As well as all the bells and whistles you would expect for a flagship board, including a clear CMOS button. I really like that option being available to me.
The full specifications and features can be found on the official web pages HERE.
Pretty much standard fare that can be found of all motherboards these days. Sure some of the stuff has different names dependent on the manufacturer so not really difficult to work out. I am simply going to focus on those that matter to me. The first is the BIOS. Basic Input/Output System and here we have a new kind of BIOS interface. The EFI or Extensible Firmware Interface which is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and the hardware of your PC's firmware. What that means is we can use the mouse to navigate and change settings in the BIOS where before changes to the BIOS were only possible with a keyboard based navigation. It is still a bit strange for me as I have been fiddling inside the BIOS with my trust keyboard for many years now but it does not take too long to adapt. For now I still prefer the old way but who knows it might grow on me. MSI have certainly got the full range of settings available to the enthusiast to fiddle with. But SandyBridge is such a forgiving CPU that you really do not need to mess with too many of the settings to get your set up just how you want it. More on that a bit later.
Now the one feature that I am most impressed with and most appreciate is the V-Check Points.
Now for the first time ever I actually agree with the marketing bumph that has been written. This feature is normally only found on a few exclusive boards that cost three times as much as this board did. Well done MSI. If you are wondering why I like this feature, it is quite simple my hobby is benching and I want to know what volts I am actually putting into my components. When you think that a set of quality benching ram is going to set you back £200 plus you do not want to kill them in error. Same with a CPU that is golden.
Time to get this board ready for some testing.
Intel i7-2600K
Corsair DDR3 2000MHz 7-7-7-24
Antec True Power Quattro 1200
1HP Rotery Single Stage -65'C
First boot was at stock just to make sure that all is working fine. No real problems at all. Had to change the ram I was originally going to use as the motherboard just did not like them at all. So out came the trusty Corsair sticks and boot to OS was accomplished.
Tonight I needed to get as much raw speed as possible because running WPrime 1.55 is all about core speed. The trick is to get the speed and to keep it stable for the whole run all in the hope of getting a good time for the MSI contest.
All good so far OS installed no problems. I like the fact that the USB hard drive is the first thing that is picked up in the boot order. Handy as I boot my OS via a USB stick.
Now to the overclocking of my CPU.
Close to my max but I just do not have time tonight to really see how far I can push it on this board. I nearly got a 5738MHz - the CPU-z was corrupted when I tried to submit.
And since I have already done a Wprime 1024 at close to this frequency I know what ball park time to expect at these kinds of clocks.
Press enter and let it run. First run and WOW this board is quick.
HWBOT
That was it done deal first time at bat.
And that was my first time with a MSI motherboard.
After two hours of playing with the board I must say I am quite pleasantly surprised. I had no problems booting into OS and running the WPrime 1024 benchmark at 57x at considerably lower voltages than what I need with my normal benching motherboard. Ram settings were left on Auto to see how the board performs and again I was quite impressed. My time was one second slower than my best which was achieved with 50MHz more core speed. And considerable more time working on the ram settings. I think I am going to be spending some time with this motherboard seeing just what it can do. And for the price of round about £135 I do not think there is a better valued enthusiast motherboard on the market right now.
The BIOS was a bit laggy but not any more so than the Hybrid bios I have been using. I did have a few little quirky things happen. Firstly I had a few issues with the reset button, most of the time it did nothing at all. But when I did finally get a BSOD it did the job perfectly so not a big deal. What did puzzle me was that I kept loosing my hard drives, regardless of what kind I used. SSD or normal platter type. At CPU core frequencies over 5.7GHz I had a good couple of times where the cursor just flashed away at the top of the screen and no OS booted. Yet the diagnostic card indicated that I was in OS. But I am sure if I spend more time exploring the BIOS I will find out what I am doing wrong here. One other thing I need to do is update the BIOS as it is still the one that came with the board.
The motherboard is a real gem of a board for 2D. I did not get a change to do any 3D benching as it was getting pretty late by the time I had finished benching WPrime. So I will have to reserve judgment on that side of things till I make time and play some more.
I like the price.
I like the layout.
I like the performance.
Not quite sure about the EFI bios as yet.
I like the motherboard, and that surprised me the most.
