Honestly, in a world were £200 motherboards are becoming "the norm" we don't expect much from one that is just 25 per cent of the price. In fact, if you saw one in the shops experience would probably cause us to second guess it, as rarely do boards this cheap offer something worth buying.
We have to admit something we were wrong about though: cheap AMD boards with DDR3. Earlier this year they simply weren't feasible, and even until a couple of months ago the price gap between DDR2 and DDR3 was still significant, but with the significantly better boards AM3 has turned out to provide (especially from MSI after three awards between Custom PC and bit-tech), it seems that it's now actually worth the investment.
We recently included the MSI 770-C45 in a Custom PC motherboard roundup for issue 72 where it received an Approved award. With the launch of equally cheap and very capable 785G boards, we've revisited the MSI as we've come to put the review online to see if it's still worth buying or whether AMD's new chipset is now the better choice.
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Feature List
- Support for socket 938 AM3 CPUs including Phenom II and Athlon II series.
- AMD 770X northbridge
- AMD SB710 southbridge
- Four 240-pin DDR3 memory slots supporting 1,066 and 1,333MHz DIMMs, with DDR3 1600(O.C.) overclocking support for up to 16GB in total
- One PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot
- Two PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slot
- Three PCI slots
- Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel high-definition audio codec
- One Realtek RTL8111DL PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
- Six SATA 3Gbps from the SB710 supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD
- One IDE port
- Twelve USB 2.0 ports (six rear I/O, six pin-outs)
The design of the MSI is more attractive than we usually give boards of this cost credit for. The red PCB reminds us of the old school cool MSI we'd almost forgotten, and the black bits with splashes of blue are at least more interesting than the usual white. By design standards it's a thin PCB with very little cooling, but not much is necessary because the 770X and SB710 chipsets are made on the low power 55nm TSMC process. Psychologically though, we can see why some may feel the MSI is potentially "slower" without 2kg of copper spread across it, but at the same time we like the return to scantily clad cooling.
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Without compromising on quality in the low end, MSI has decked the whole thing in long life Nippon Chemicon solid aluminium capacitors and environmentally sealed ferrite chokes, but it's understandably somewhat limited by a single phase for the DDR3 memory and northbridge, as well as a minimal 4+1 phases for the CPU and CPU-NB area. The MOSFETs used are the old school type too - there's no DrMOS here simply because cost prohibits it.
At the time of writing MSI has not yet certified the board for the 140W Phenom II X4 965, limiting it to 125W CPUs, and it makes no assessment on its website as to what power limit the board can handle. Our advice is to play it safe and only use 95W CPUs in it if you're overclocking, as that will provide some thermal overhead. We've been stressing the board considerably with a Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition at 3.7GHz at 1.4-1.5V with no issue.
Board Layout
Squeezed into the bottom corner are six SATA 3Gbps ports, but none are at 90 degrees to the board although they do at least have locking clips. The IDE port is edge mounted and all the pin-outs are at the bottom of the PCB are a single colour, meaning individual identification more difficult.
Four DDR3 slots sit up the board with plenty of space between them and the top x16 PCI-Express 2.0 graphics slot; they are differentiated by black and blue colouring to denote which memory channel is which.
Overall, the layout is very tidy and the sockets are all easy to get to: in testing we found no obvious conflicts.
Peripheral slots are plentiful and include three legacy PCI, two x1 and one x16 PCI-Express 2.0 links. There's no CrossFire support here but we always encourage a single, faster card rather than two slower ones that rely more on driver profiles and extra connectors that some cheaper PSUs may not feature.
MSI has a basic package that should suffice for most people, including a Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel High-Definition sound codec as well as a single Gigabit Ethernet socket too. No Firewire is added to the board, but with the half dozen peripheral slots we mentioned above, it's very easy to add the functionality if needed.
Click to enlarge MSI is still pushing the EZ OC Switches in the middle of the board and we don't really understand why. Surely it's easier to include pre-set BIOS options that will automatically overclock in the same way, without having to fiddle around with tiny, unmarked switches in the middle of the PCB.
Click to enlarge The rear I/O features six USB 2.0, the single RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet socket, PS2 keyboard and mouse, six 3.5mm audio jacks and even an RS232 serial port to fill the gap. Does it really cost more than a useful S/PDIF socket or two more USB ports? Other than that, the rest make a bundle that is entirely sufficient for a basic-average home build.
BIOS
We have to admit, from past experience we didn't much from an MSI BIOS on board like this, but we were pleasantly surprised. The BIOS is as comprehensive as those from more expensive boards, featuring the same BIOS profile and M-Flash update utilities that are both very useful, as well as MSI's Memory-Z and CPU Spec F-button additions if needed.
The Cell Menu is fully featured and largely intuitive to use where actual real-time changes to the clock speeds can be seen as the multiplier and HT clocks are adjusted. These are really needed for AMD systems as adjusting the HT clock changes not only the CPU directly, but CPU-NB, memory and HT clock as well - all of which need to be counter adjusted as the CPU is overclocked.
The voltage coverage is very good and we have no complaints about the level of voltage adjustment finesse. Obviously don't consider the board if you're extreme cooling, or even watercooling, but given the cost of both versus the board it makes no sense in a balanced system. For air cooling the voltage options are more than adequate and enough to push our AMD processors hard.
While the memory options are AMD specific because they are CPU controlled, it was most surprising the amount of adjustments MSI has enabled access for. Not only do you have the usual extended timings, but also more elaborate memory options such as drive strengths. If you're into spending a lot of time optimising your AMD memory bandwidth, this is certainly an avenue to investigate, although admittedly beyond what most people will ever use.
The MSI has the advantage over 785G boards in these areas but still lacks a very crucial feature: core unlocking. The board features ACC support and the SB710 southbridge so the facility is there to be taken advantage of. Hopefully a future BIOS update will enable it but don't hold your breath because no MSI board to date currently supports this.
Testing Methods
With the exception of SiSoft Sandra and Lavalys Everest, all of our benchmarks have been engineered to give you numbers that you are likely to find useful when actually using the products we have evaluated in the real world.
We are also focusing a lot more of our time on evaluating the stability of the motherboards (and platforms) using a stress test designed to highlight any of the potential weaknesses that the product may have. That involves a gradually increasing amount of stress starting with Prime95 torture test on all cores and expanding to a looping 3DMark06. This is to ensure that all parts of the system are stressed simultaneously over a period of time.
We believe that the consumer is never likely to subject their platform to this level of stress and we are not expecting every product to complete an entire extended stress test. However, most poorly engineered products fail within the first couple of hours, or even minutes, allowing us to make a conscious decision on whether a motherboard (or platform) is worth your money, regardless of how well it performs in our benchmarks.
Test Setup:
Motherboards:
- MSI 770-C45 (AMD 770X/SB710 1.3 BIOS)
- Asus M4A785TD-V Evo (AMD 785G/SB710 0211 BIOS)
Common Components:
- AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (3x2.8GHz)
- 4GB Corsair XMS3 PC12800 CL9
- Asus Radeon HD 4350 and Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP! for gaming tests
- PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
- Seagate 7200.11 1TB SATA hard drive
- Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1
- ATI Catalyst 9.7 WHQL
Overclocked Settings
- MSI 770-C45 (AMD 770X/SB710): 3x3.5GHz (15.5 x 225MHz HT), 2.2GHz NB, 1,500MHz DDR3 at 8-8-8-24-1T,
- Asus M4A785TD-V Evo (AMD 785G/SB710): 3x3.5GHz (15.5 x 225MHz HT), 2.25GHz NB, 1,525MHz DDR3 at 8-8-8-24-1T.
Lavalys Everest 5.0.1667 Memory Performance
Website: Lavalys
The memory performance of the MSI 770X is still slightly better than the Asus 785G board, despite both using a Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP! graphics card so no bandwidth is lost using the IGP. When overclocked, the MSI has a slightly lower latency and marginally better performance.
SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2009 SP3 Home Professional
Website: Sisoftware
The Sisoft Sandra results say much the same thing as the Everest - overclocked, the MSI is just that much better.
SATA and eSATA Performance
Website: HD Tach 3.0 We tested the SATA and eSATA performance with an Intel X25-M SSD to maximise the use of the SATA connections to show up any core differences in raw performance.
There are no problems with SATA 3Gbps performance, with the MSI edging out ever-so-slighty ahead of the Asus.
USB 2.0 Performance
Website: HD Tach 3.0 We tested the USB performance with an Intel X25-M SSD and a SATA to USB adapter to saturate the USB bus in order to look for any performance drops.
The USB 2.0 performance is consistent for the SB710 southbridge.
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Slower at stock speed but faster overclocked, and by a greater margin. The MSI board again benefits from its great BIOS.
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Overclocked again the MSI commands a three per cent advantage over the Asus, but is just a second slower at stock speeds on average.
Multitasking Performance
Website: MPC-HC Website: 7-ZipIn multitasking the Asus turns the tables slightly and is consistently faster by a few seconds at stock and when overclocked.
The gaming performance is notably better for the MSI, as it ekes out a few frames per second advantage in both average and minimum frame rate over the Asus 785G when they are both running with a Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP! graphics card.
Stability
As usual we reset the BIOS to its default values and loaded up both the Prime 95 torture test and 3DMark 06 looping to see if the board could withstand the stress to CPU, memory and PCI-Express power draw for 24 hours. Apart from a fan to cool the CPU heatsink, there were no other fans used, meaning the heatsinks (or lack of them) have to withstand very little airflow and still keep the components cool.
After a full 24 hours we came back to to find both 3DMark and Prime95 still running and the system completely responsive; an excellent result for the MSI 770-C45, despite its distinct lack of metal.
Value and Conclusion
The MSI 770-C45 has strong competition from the recently released 785G motherboards, however most of these are retailing for 20 or 30 per cent more than the 770-C45 and come in the micro-ATX format. Despite the sudden, recent favour for the smaller form factor, full ATX cases are still the norm and the extra breathing room for future expansion is always welcome if it doesn't cost more.
For the £55-60 being asked for the C45 across UK online retailers, it's really not that much money to spend on a motherboard that is stable, overclocks well and has "enough" features for most of us to survive on. It'll fit perfectly as a backbone to a family PC or cheap gaming rig if your budgets are tight. Between the GD65 (which Custom PC has reviewed) and the GD80 that is getting unanimous respect, the C45 fits a trio of great AM3 boards for MSI.
The BIOS is better than both 785G boards we've seen to date, but it lacks one crucial feature: core unlocking. On a cheaper board it's ever more important to sway people towards AMD, as Intel is still the choice for awesome overclocks from CPUs like the E5200 or 7000 series. While there's more risk buying a Phenom II X2 550 or X3 720 Black Edition that is more unlikely to unlock than either an Intel or AMD CPU successfully overclocks, the potential benefits of extra cores for free are greater.
So the solid BIOS makes up for simple hardware, and for under £60 it's one of the best value boards we've probably ever used. Grab one for some cheap, old school, overclocking fun! Awesome!
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Score Guide
MSI 770-C45
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