SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility capable of benchmarking the performance of individual components inside a PC. Each of the benchmarks below were run a total of five times with the highest and lowest scores being discarded and an average being calculated from the remaining three.
Results Analysis
No surprises here then given that overclocking a CPU will hardly effect the SATA controller.Looking at the results above, it is clear that the P55-GD80 is easily on a par with the higher spec X58 chipset.
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility capable of benchmarking the performance of individual components inside a PC. Each of the benchmarks below were run a total of five times with the highest and lowest scores being discarded and an average being calculated from the remaining three.
7-Zip is an open source Winzip-style file compression utility that has the ability to compress and decompress many file formats including its own .7z compression scheme. 7-Zip also comes complete with its own benchmarking utility for gauging the compression and decompression speed of the system that it is installed on.
Results Observations
Being heavily CPU dependant, the multimedia and encoding results showed that when the CPU is overclocked, significant gains are to be had. Given that the MSI P55-GD80 can give you instant 1GHz overclock (CPU dependant) this sort of performance increase is definitely worthwhile and should keep those new to overclocking very happy indeed.
Cinebench 10 is a benchmarking tool based on the powerful 3D software Cinema 4D. The suite uses complex renders to gauge the performance of the entire PC system in both single-core and multi-core modes. Testing was performed a total of 5 times with the highest and lowest results being omitted and an average created from the remaining result.
POV-Ray is a Persistence of Vision Raytracing tool for producing high-quality computer graphics. The freely available software suite is bundled with a benchmarking scene that uses many of POV-Ray's internal features to heavily test the abilities of the CPU in both single and multi-core modes.
3DMark is a popular synthetic gaming benchmark used by many gamers and overclockers to gauge the performance of their PC's. All 3DMark runs were performed a total of 5 times with the highest and lowest results being removed and an average calculated from the remaining result.
Results Analysis
Again, because the benchmarks run here are bias toward CPU speed, the increases the overclocked system has over the stock are quite incredible. The only benchmarks that did not show any significant increase was Futuremarks Vantage with the overclocked system scoring very little in comparison over the stock setup. Synthetic benchmarks are all good and well but how do the two systems compare when used in real world gaming scenarios?
Crysis is without doubt one of the most visually stunning and hardware-challenging games to date. By using CrysisBench - a tool developed independently of Crysis - we performed a total of 5 timedemo benchmarks using a GPU-intensive pre-recorded demo. To ensure the most accurate results, the highest and lowest benchmark scores were then removed and an average calculated from the remaining three.
Call of Duty 4 is a stunning DirectX 9.0c based game that really looks awesome and has a very full feature set. With lots of advanced lighting, smoke and water effects, the game has excellent explosions along with fast game play. Using the in-built Call Of Duty features, a 10-minute long game play demo was recorded and replayed on each of the GPU's using the /timedemo command a total of 5 times. The highest and lowest FPS results were then removed, with an average being calculated from the remaining 3 results.
Ubisoft has developed a new engine specifically for Far Cry 2, called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Parsi. The engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Running the Far Cry 2 benchmark tool the test was run 5 times with the highest and lowest scores being omitted and the average calculated from the remaining 3.
Results Analysis
While not groundbreaking, the CPU clockspeed evidently has some effect on the frames per second in every game I tested today. Most notably was Far Cry 2 which showed a good performance increase over the stock setup.
PCMark Vantage is the latest benchmarking suite from Futuremark. Differing significantly from their 3DMark suites, PCMark performs a series of benchmarks designed to recreate and benchmark scenarios of a PC being used for everyday tasks. Vantage has a Vista only requirement as it actually relies on several different components from the OS in order to run correctly.
Results Analysis
Again we see that the overall performance gains an overclocked setup can achieve when compared to a stock clocked system. The MSI P55-GD80 is certainly a high performing motherboard with some great results. While it remains to be seen how good the motherboard is when compared to other motherboards based on the same chipset I would wage that the P55-GD80 will be up there with the best of them.
Let's head over to the conclusion where I attempt to put today's testing into perspective...
Conclusion
When I first cast eyes on the MSI P55-GD80 I was astounded by the very attractive design. So much so I found it hard to believe it had arrived from the MSI stable. The design bods have worked wonders with the aesthetics of the board which is easily one of the best looking pieces of hardware on the market today. The matching blue heatsinks and peripheral slots are very fetching and with no odd purple or yellow (or indeed pink and green!) slots anywhere on the mainboard, I congratulate MSI on a job well done.
The packaging too, while not on a par with the best out there is certainly very good. I would like to have seen black/blue cabling included instead of the bog standard MSI red but I guess they have surplus stock to shift from the parts bin. What I was impressed with was the amount of included accessories.
The motherboard layout is nigh on perfect with no issues encountered at anytime during the setup. The amount of ports and connectivity is such that even if you do not wish to use this motherboard as the basis for an overclocking monster, you will be happy with the amount of expandability it offers.
The good news does not stop there though. The board has some very good overclocking ability. Achieving 4.5Ghz is no mean feat and while I will confess, this is the only board I have tried this CPU with, the overclocking seemed to be very predictable. The board gives you those little hints when it is starting to run out of steam and this makes overclocking so much more fun and much less frustrating. The recovery from overclocking was such that it only added to the pleasure of using such a well refined motherboard. Even if you are not well versed in the dark art of overclocking, MSI have made the process so much easier thanks to the OC Genie and Base clock +/- buttons on board.
My only criticism of the motherboard is the OC Genie. While it is fantastic in automatically overclocking the components, it prevents some of the more detailed options of the BIOS being available, mainly the memory divider which caused issues as it would not allow our test kit to be run at it's stock 2000MHz rather relying on the SPD settings of the memory kit. However, a quick email to MSI support confirmed that they are already aware of the issue and that the technical boffins are busy working on a new BIOS release to rectify the problem, such is the excellent motherboard support from MSI.
The board has started to appear around the £180 mark which may appear a little excessive but when you consider mid range X58 motherboards are above this price point, £178.24 (available from Novatech) is not such a bad price at all for a flagship product. I would have liked it to be a touch closer to £150 which is much more reasonable but as with most PC components, prices just seem to creep up and up and MSI cannot be held solely responsible for that.
MSI have long been known for making good motherboards but have rarely made that extra step by making an amazing motherboard. This time I think I am justified into saying that they have taken that extra step and done just that. What MSI have produced is a motherboard capable of exceeding any preconceptions and indeed exceeding anyones expectations. I certainly didn't expect to see such a well rounded product as with most products, it takes a while for the chipset to mature before we start to see some of the best motherboards on the market. However, I feel MSI have shot straight out of the blocks and are racing toward the finish line before other manufacturers have even tied their laces.
Excellent work MSI!
The Good
- Baseclock buttons
- OC Genie (Auto overclock)
- DrMOS
- Aesthetics
- Accessories
- Overclocking potential
- On board temp and phase readouts
The Mediocre
- OC Genie restrictions (memory multi)
- No colour coded accessories
- Packaging is better but dated compared to other high end products
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