Features
- DrMOS
- XpressCool
- RapidBoost
- APS
- Easy OC Switch
- All Solid Capacitors
- All Shielded Choke
- Hi-c CAP on PWM
- M-Connectors
- ATI CrossfireX
- 3-way SLI
- X-Fi Audio
- Live Update Online
- Dual Core Center
- Live Update
- X58 NorthBridge
- ICH10R Southbridge
- LGA-1366 CPU support
| Eclipse SLI Spec Sheet |
| Powered by MOBOT |
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| Part Number |
Eclipse SLI |
| Manufacturer |
MSI |
| Price Check |
Find Best Price |
| Downloads |
BIOS
Drivers
Manuals |
| Chipset |
X58 Express |
| North Bridge |
Intel X58 |
| Socket |
LGA 1366 Socket |
| Processor Types |
Core i7 |
| Number of CPUs |
1 |
| QPI |
6.4GB/second |
| Memory Type |
DDR3 |
| Memory Channels |
Triple |
| Maximum Memory |
24GB |
| External Graphics |
PCI Express x16 x3 |
| IGP |
None |
| South Bridge |
Intel ICH10R |
| Audio |
8-channel |
| IDE |
133/100/66 |
| SCSI |
None |
| SATA |
3.0 GB/s |
| RAID |
0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10 |
| LAN |
10/100/1000 4 LAN Ports |
| Firewire |
IEEE 1394a |
| USB |
USB 2.0 |
| Expansion Slots |
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| BIOS |
AMI |
| Form Factor |
ATX |
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Looking at the feature list of the MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard we can say with some certainty that it features all of the stuff that comes with the X58 chipset and more. One thing to note that with the Core i7 CPUs the memory controller has moved to the CPU like the AMD CPUs meaning that the functions of the Southbridge are limited to the other IO functionality.
MSI Logo
DrMOS stands for Driver MOSFET. It is the hardware MOSFET design designed to lower power consumption on the order of 7W in CPU PWM. DrMOS also maintains a low temperature during high load applications like 3D games. Compared to Discrete MOSFET operation MSI says the DrMOS can operate up to 16C lower. DrMOS also offers RapidBoost which delivers higher quality power with lower spike noise and a faster response meaning higher stable overclocking.
Active Phase Switching is a new feature to the MSI motherboard family. It controls the power demands of the CPU, Memory and Chipset PWM. It uses power more efficiently than passive phase switching and saves power under different loads depending on what the application requires. MSI uses all Solid Capacitors meaning that they will have a longer lifespan than those that aren't solid. This board also uses all shielded Chokes which reduces core power loss and has less EMI interference.
M-Connectors are connected to the front panel of the case and chassis. These allow the FP IO to be installed easily due to the M-Connector being labeled. The MSI Eclipse x58 board uses Hi-c CAP (Highly-conductive polymerized Capacitors. These have higher voltages, heat resistance, higher overvoltage and higher overclocking possibility. The average lifespan of these capacitors are 44,800Hrs at 85W.
MSI logo
The X58 chipset is the first Intel motherboard chipset to natively support both ATI's CrossfireX and NVIDIA's SLI multiple-graphics card solutions. The Skulltrail solution required an NVIDIA nForce 200 chip to allow two cards to be used in SLI but the X58 can do it without an NVIDIA chip on the board. MSI's board allows for three-way SLI or Crossfire, more on that in the Layout.
MSI includes a D-LED 2 device in the packaging that allows you to keep track of potential boot problems. Upon POST, the various boot sequence devices are displayed and if a problem occurs you'll know where the problem lies by the LED showing where it has stopped. This is very useful to the end-user for trouble-shooting a new computer system as sometimes a problem occurs and you are left wondering what it could be.
Layout
The first thing you'll notice about the MSI X58 Eclipse is the black color they used on the board. The CPU area is clear of obstacles with a copper heatsink covering the DrMOS MOSFETS with another copper heatsink covering both the X58 Northbridge and the ICH10R Southbridge. The board uses all Solid State capacitors meaning they will be less likely to break and leak.
Back of PCB
CPU area
CPU Socket
Copper heatsinks
The new X58 chipset supports up to Triple Channel memory and most high-end boards on the chipset will sport six DIMM slots. MSI includes six DIMM slots to allow up to 12GB of DDR3-1066MHz memory on the system. The manual states that if you want to have single or dual channel memory use the black DIMM slots. The first boot attempt I tried didn't work with the blue memory slots. As soon as I read the manual I fixed the issue.
DIMM Slots
PCI Express x16
Power Reset buttons
Realtek 8111C PHY
MSI chose to include three PCI Express x16 slots on the board to facilitate Triple SLI or CrossfireX solutions. The spacing on the slots means that there is room for two 2-slot video cards without difficulty but the third card may block such useful things as the onboard Power, Reset and Dr LED switches. The third card may also block the extra USB 2.0 headers and the COM1 header. These are minor obstacles as the Front Panel IO will not be blocked, meaning you are only sacrificing expansion.
FP IO headers
SATA ports
4 more SATA ports
IDE Port
The ICH10R supports up to 6 SATA ports and MSI includes six ports. Four additional SATA ports are supported by two JMicron SATA controllers bringing the total onboard to 10. One excellent feature of the X58 Eclipse is the sideways facing SATA ports. This means you can install a long two-slot video card like the HD 4870 X2 without interfering with SATA ports as some motherboards do. There's also an IDE port to allow the use of a IDE HDD or DVD drive on the system. As most devices sold today are all SATA, this is useful but not necessary.
24-pin power
USB headers
VIA chip
Firewire chip
Onboard audio has definitely taken a turn for the better on the motherboard market since the release of the High Definition Audio standard four years ago with the launch of the 925X chipset and LGA-775 CPUs. MSI has decided to go one step further by including a Creative Labs X-Fi soundcard with the motherboard. This will allow the end-user to use all of the EAX 4.0 effects that X-Fi users have in addition to the High Definition Audio compliance expected of motherboards with integrated audio today.
Fintek
CPU Header
8-pin power
IO
The rear IO on the board is quite extensive but a bit clunky looking for my tastes. There are a total of eight USB 2.0 ports on the back panel, meaning that it is unlikely the two USB headers on the board will be required for most users. There's the standard PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports, two RJ-45 jacks for the onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and two external SATA ports for external SATA devices. A singular Firewire port and a Clear CMOS button round out the rear IO. Note the absence of audio jacks as they are on the add-on card as part of the bundle.
Creative driver screenshots
Bundle
- D-LED2
- GreenPower Genie
- MSI SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Card
- Eclipse Quick Guide
- Eclipse User Guide
- MSI Quick Installation Guide
- Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIE
- GreenPower Genie User Guide
- HDD Backup User Guide
- D-LED 2 User Guide
- Windows XP Driver CD
- Windows Vista Driver CD
- Creative Labs X-Fi Driver CD
- MSI Extras CD
- 6 SATA Data cables
- Three SATA Power cables
- IDE cable
- FDD cable
- SATA Bracket with two external SATA ports and Molex power
- Two Crossfire bridges
- One SLI bridge
- M-Connectors
- Two-port USB bracket
- IO Shield
- HDMI cable
- 24-pin to 20 pin ATX Power adapter
Box
Box open
Close up of window
Motherboard in plastic tray
MSI has included everything you could possibly want in their bundle including enough SATA cables to fully utilize every port on the board, a FDD cable, a IDE cable, a HDMI cable a SLI bridge and two CrossfireX bridges. The M-Connectors are similar in concept to Q-Connectors. One thing that MSI did that is really cool is label each port on the IO shield so you can never mix up the connections.
Accessories in plastic
X-Fi card
GreenPower Genie
D-LED 2
In terms of the software bundle and manual, MSI has gone the extra mile here as well. MSI includes driver CDs for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista Operating Systems, a Driver CD for the Creative Labs X-Fi and an extra CD with HDDBackup, software that can back up your HDD. MSI also went the extra mile in terms of the included manuals with manuals for every single device on the bundle including the GreenPower Genie and D-LED 2.
Bundle Box
Manuals and Driver CDs
Hardware bundle
X-Fi IO
The Green Initiative has taken over virtually every facet of the electronics industry and saving the planet is important to everyone. The GreenPower Genie is designed to save power by measuring and controlling the power of the entire system. Plug the GreenPower Genie into the motherboard then the PSU, and then use the GreenPower Center to monitor and control the Power usage.
Driver screenshots
BIOS & Overclocking
MSI uses the American Megatrends AMIBIOS with a few modifications for their purposes. The Main Menu is split into Standard CMOS Features, Advanced BIOS Features, Integrated Peripherals, Power Management Setup, H/W Monitor, Green Power, BIOS Setting Password, Cell Men, User Settings, M-Flash, and the standard exit setup menus.
Battery
Standard CMOS Features has the Date, Time, the drives present, including the SATA, IDE and E-SATA devices and System Information. Each drive picked up will show the information that the BIOS detects and what details on the Hard disks the system can determine. The System Information screen shows the CPU, the Core Frequency, the BIOS Version, the Physical Memory, and the Cache sizes.
The Advanced Menu is where the Boot Sequence, CPU Feature, Chipset Feature, and Trusted Computing is enabled. Here you also set your Primary Graphics Adapter and enable quick Booting. If you want to install Windows fresh you should set the First Boot Device to CD-ROM as otherwise the system will try to boot off the HDD. I would strongly suggest using the PCI-E option on the Primary Graphics Adapter as otherwise the bandwidth would cripple a modern video card on PCI.
The majority of the overclocking and tweaking on this motherboard is done in the Cell Menu. Here there are numerous settings for the various settings. In this chart I list the various settings of the BIOS. Note that overclocking can be done either through the Dynamic Overclocking Technology (DOT) or manually on the board. DOT has a preset group of overclocking settings but it is better to overclock with manually as you have more control of the speeds.
| MSI X58 Eclipse |
| Setting |
Range |
| Base Clock |
133-400MHz in 1MHz increments |
| QPI |
4.8GT/s (Core i7 920, 940), 6.4GT/second (965EE) |
| PCIe |
100-200MHz in 1MHz increments |
| PCI |
37.3, 42MHz |
| DRAM Multiplier |
3x-8x |
| CPU Voltage |
-0.32-0.625V in 0.01 or 0.0V increments |
| QPI Voltage |
-0.32-+0.65V in 0.1-0.2v increments |
| DRAM Voltage |
1.2-2.77V in 0.01V increments |
| CPU PLL Voltage |
1-2.43V in 0.01-0.05V increments |
| IOH Voltage |
0.75-1.73V in 0.01-0.05V increments |
| ICH Voltage |
0.7-2.13V in 0.01-0.05V increments |
| DRAM Channel A-C CA ref Voltage |
0.435-1.15V in 0.005-0.025v increments |
| DRAM Channel A-C DQ ref voltage |
0.435-1.15V in 0.005-0.025v increments |
Overclocking on the board seems to be robust with up to a 4GHz Base clock possible from a default of 1333MHz (133x10). I was able to overclock the 2.67GHz Core i7 920 to 3.4GHz on the normal cooling of the reference cooler. While that is not the highest overclock I've ever seen on this platform the other overclock was on a massive cooler.
BIOS Shots
Test Setup & Performance
With a new CPU platform comes a new set of benchmarks and test hardware. The GeForce 8800GTS, while a good video card for its time is now over 2 years old. To replace it we decided to use the ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB card as that offers good performance and features and is an excellent card for the money it's selling for online today.
Test System
- Intel Core i7 920 running at 2.67GHz
- Kingston 3GB DDDR 3 KHX 16000 3GX Triple Channel
- 2 WD Raptor SATA HDDs running in RAID 0 Mode
- ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB video card running Catalyst 8.10
- CoolerMaster 1250W PSU
- Windows Vista 32-bit Business with SP1 installed
Tests
- Sysmark 2007 Preview with Patch 3
- 3DMark06 1280X1024 Default test
- 3dmark Vantage Performance test 1280x1024
- Sisoft Sandra XII Professional CPU Benchmark
- CPUBench 2003
- Crystalmark 2004
- 7Zip Benchmark tool
- x.264 benchmark
- PCMark05
- PCMark Vantage
- SpecViewPerf 10
- wPrime 95
Sandra
CPU Bench
PiFast
SysMark2007
PCMark 2005
3DMark
CrystalMark
WPrime
Specview
Conclusion
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MSI has exceeded all expectations with the MSI X58 Eclipse motherboard with a bundle like you wouldn't believe, performance that matches or beats the competition in this marketplace and overclocking ability like there's no tomorrow. The Eclipse gets a solid Editor's Choice award from me and a solid recommendation to buy this board if you are looking for a new motherboard based upon the X58 chipset this board is hard to beat. The included extras like the D-LED2, a Creative Labs X-Fi sound card and the ability to install three GTX 280s or HD 4870 cards makes this a good choice for those that want the highest performing system available on the market today.
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