The X58 Pro-E's list of integrated peripherals includes: Gigabit LAN, 8-Channel Audio, USB 2.0, Serial ATA RAID, eSATA and Firewire. As any Core i7 motherboard today, the MSI X58 Pro-E is powered by the Intel X58 chipset and also makes use of the ICH10R south bridge.
There are a number of basic features that can be found on all motherboards using the Intel X58 chipset. The X58 IOH (Input/Output Hub) otherwise known as the “north bridge” supports up to 36 PCI Express lanes. This means that multi-card configurations of 2x16 are supported, while 4x8 is also possible.
The ICH10R south bridge has about a year on the market, but it is still one of the best equipped chips available. This tiny chip gives the MSI X58 Pro-E support for 12 USB 2.0 ports, 6 PCI Express x1 lanes, Gigabit LAN, HD Audio, and 6 SATA ports with RAID capabilities.
Based on these specs, all current X58 boards will feature at least 6 SATA ports supporting RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and RAID 5.
Additionally MSI has included the JMicron 363 controller, adding support for a single Ultra DMA 66/100/133 IDE bus and two SATA ports. Only one of the two SATA ports connected to the JMicron 363 controller is used onboard. The second port is located on the I/O panel, giving the X58 Pro-E eSATA support.
Another chipset feature is the Intel High Definition Audio (Intel HD Audio). This provides eight independent DMA audio engines that support multiple audio streams with audio codecs. Driving this feature is the Realtek ALC889A codec, enabling high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output.
The X58 Pro-E supports IEEE1394a (FireWire 400) useful for bandwidth-intensive applications like digital video (DV), professional audio, and external hard drives, which often consume hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data per file. The board provides two 1394a ports due to the inclusion of the JMicron 363 FireWire controller.
The obvious and necessary USB 2.0 support is inherited from the ICH10R chipset, with a total of twelve ports, half available on the I/O panel and an additional six ports using the supplied brackets.
The X58 Pro-E features a single Realtek 8111C Gigabit LAN controller which uses the PCI Express bus for maximum throughput. Those wanting dual Gigabyte LAN controllers will need to look to the MSI X58 Platinum, though we suspect that most users will be more than happy with a single controller.
The MSI X58 Pro-E is not a flashy looking motherboard, featuring a brown PCB along with a decent cooling setup. As far as we can tell the X58 Pro-E is a slightly upgraded version of the X58 Pro, with an emphasis put on aesthetics.
The cooling used on the X58 Pro-E is far from over the top, and the low-profile north bridge heatsink which is passively cooled will not conflict with third party cooling. The north and south bridge chips are also linked via a single heatpipe.
Moving along, the six DIMM slots are positioned far enough from the primary PCI Express 16x as to avoid any kind of conflict. Even with a large graphics card installed users should be able to easily install/remove memory modules.
There was however a problem with the DIMM slots and the 24-pin ATX power connector. The ATX power connector is placed right up against the 6th DIMM slot, making it impossible to install memory modules with large heatsinks such as the G.Skill Trident series.
In total there are three PCIe 16x slots, each separated by a single PCIe 1x or PCI slot. Underneath the primary PCIe 16x slot is the board's only PCIe 1x slot, then the second and third PCIe 16x slots have traditional PCI slots below them. The third PCIe 16x slot can also act as a secondary 1x slot as needed. Beware that this single-slot separation may present an issue when going Crossfire of SLI, depending on the graphics cards you choose. Other motherboards more focused on this kind of functionality tend to leave two slots between PCIe slots.
The MSI X58 Pro-E features seven SATA ports onboard with an eighth port available on the I/O panel. The six connected to the ICH10R south bridge are mounted on a 90 degree angle in order to avoid conflict with long PCIe 16x graphics cards. The single port connected to the JMicron 363 controller is mounted in the traditional vertical fashion however.
Unlike the previous more expensive motherboards that we have seen, the X58 Pro-E features a rather standard power circuitry design. The CPU uses a 5-phase power design, whereas the memory and north bridge feature a dual-phase design.
Moving around to the board's I/O panel we find almost no legacy connectivity. Apart from the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports there are no other ancient connectivity interfaces to be seen. In total there are six USB 2.0 ports, six audio jacks, a single eSATA port, Firewire port, S/PDIF port, and a single LAN port.
Inside the X58 Pro-E BIOS we find a fairly typical layout that is easy to navigate. The “Cell Menu” is where all the overclocking action takes place. Other menus of interest are the advanced chipset setup and integrated peripherals.
Once in the Cell Menu the user is ambushed with loads of tweakable settings, lots of readouts and statistical information. The first sub-menu states virtually every specification regarding the processor, which can come handy. The ability to adjust the base clock and clock multiplier is there, while you can also easily make changes to the QPI configuration.
The X58 Pro-E also offers an impressive amount of information and adjustable memory options. The “Memory-Z” sub-menu lists every last detail regarding the installed memory modules and X.M.P information. The “Advanced DRAM Configuration” menu allows to tune a number of timing options for maximum performance.
There is also a wide range of voltage options to adjust the CPU, memory, and north bridge voltages. So really, there are enough of the right options to allow for a decent overclock using any Intel Core i7 processor.
When it came time to overclock a Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor we were able to reach a 100% stable overclock of 4.0GHz. For achieving this we increased the base clock to 166MHz, leaving the clock multiplier at 24x. This boosted the DDR3 frequency to 1660MHz while the QPI frequency was slightly overclocked as well.
The CPU voltage was increased to 1.480v, which we consider to be safe enough. Also, because we were running the memory above specification, the DRAM voltage was increased to 1.64v, which is the highest recommended setting. All other BIOS settings were left as is, meaning just a few settings were altered in order to reach this impressive overclock.
Before we hung up our boots, we cracked out the Core i7 920 to see how far it would take us. Because this processor is multiplier locked at 20x, the only way to increase the frequency is to boost the base clock. We raised this from 133MHz to 190MHz, resulting in a total clock frequency of 3.80GHz, a healthy 43% overclock. Not bad for a sub-$300 Core i7 processor.
Test System & General Performance
Core i7 Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (LGA1366)
- x3 2GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill (CAS 9-9-9-20)
- MSI X58 Pro-E (Intel X58)
- ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58)
- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)
- Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300)
- ASUS GeForce GTX 285 (1GB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 182.50
Phenom Test System Specs
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 (AM3)
- x2 Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR2-1066 (CAS 5-5-5-15)
- ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe (AMD 790FX)
- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)
- Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300)
- ASUS GeForce GTX 285 (1GB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 182.50
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First in line is a quick check of SATA and LAN performance and as you can see everything appears to be in order. The PCmark Vantage hard drive performance reveals typical performance, as did the CrystalDiskMark test.
Finally the SiSoftware Sandra 2009 network performance test also shows the X58 Pro-E delivering strong performance, with a throughput of at least 77MB/s.
The MSI X58 Pro-E delivered particularly good bandwidth in SiSoftware Sandra 2009, reaching 22GB/s when paired with DDR3-1333 memory. This made the X58 Pro-E ~2GB/s faster than the ASUS P6T Deluxe in our testing. Interestingly overclocking the Core i7 processor to 4GHz using the X58 Pro-E only had a slight impact on the SiSoft memory bandwidth performance.
The EVEREST Ultimate Edition results were much the same, though here we see that the ASUS P6T Deluxe and MSI X58 Pro-E produced roughly the same write performance. The read performance did favor the X58 Pro-E by just over 1GB/s and this is likely what skewed the SiSoftware results.
The Super PI result produced by the MSI X58 Pro-E was quite good, standing on top of the Asus P6T Deluxe by a small margin. The overclocked X58 Pro-E configuration showed some impressive performance gains in Super PI.
The X58 Pro-E was slower than the P6T Deluxe in the CINEBENCH R10 multi-CPU rendering test, but was able to claim the OpenGL rendering test.
We finished off the synthetic application testing phase with WinRAR measuring both single and multi-threading performance. The MSI X58 Pro-E and Asus P6T Deluxe both delivered very similar results.
The synthetic 3D performance of the MSI X58 Pro-E is spot on, matching the Asus P6T Deluxe in all three tests. While the overclocked X58 Pro-E configuration didn't show much in the way of gains in FurMark, it was considerably faster in PCmark Vantage.
When it comes to gaming the GeForce GTX 285 is the primary limitation at 2560x1600, which is why we also test at 1024x768. Using Unreal Tournament 3 for our test, all four test configurations delivered 110fps at 2560x1600. At 1024x768 the Phenom II X4 955 system rendered just 182fps, while the Asus P6T Deluxe managed 230fps and the MSI X58 Pro-E 239fps.
The Asus P6T Deluxe was a bit faster than the X58 Pro-E Deluxe in Enemy Territory Quake Wars at both the tested resolutions. Similar results were presented when testing with Far Cry 2, though one way or the other this will hardly represent a gain or loss in a real gaming scenario. What we are trying to establish here is the stability of the platform.
You may have also noticed that the Phenom II X4 955 processor is faster than the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition in Far Cry 2.
Under load the MSI X58 Pro-E consumes ~30 watts less than the Asus P6T Deluxe, which is very good though it is considerably lighter on features as well.
When at idle the board used roughly 10 watts less than the P6T Deluxe. Overclocking the Core i7 processor to 4GHz threw operating efficiency out the window as you can imagine. Under load the overclocked system consumed an incredible 375 watts.
The MSI X58 Pro-E is a latecomer to the X58 party just recently becoming available on a number of online retailers. Like we mentioned before, at $200 the X58 Pro-E is one of the cheapest Core i7 motherboards you will find and thus a potential candidate to be coupled with a Core i7 920 processor.
On that same note, if you are looking for the cheapest Core i7 board possible we had to look at the standard X58 Pro. As far as we can tell the only differences between these boards are the updated audio codec, a change in the PCB color and slightly altered cooling. For about $170 the standard X58 Pro is a serious bargain, as it is not only one of the cheapest Intel X58 motherboards on the market, it is also one of the best equipped at under $200. Other competing boards in this range include the Foxconn FlamingBlade, Gigabyte EX58-UD3R-SLI, ASUS P6T SE, and DFI LP DK X58-T3eH6.
Having that said, many online reports indicate that the standard X58 Pro suffers from hot chipset temperatures, something we did not encounter with the Pro-E, not even when overclocking. So while at first glance we didn't like paying extra for what seemed to be a mere aesthetic upgrade, it looks to be a necessary step up for new buyers.
In terms of performance the MSI X58 Pro-E was able to hang with the more expensive Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard throughout our testing. Additionally, when overclocking the X58 Pro-E did not hold back, delivering a staggering 4.0GHz overclock with our Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor.
In an effort to make overclocking easy, the X58 Pro-E includes a feature called “Easy OC Switch”, though we found this to be rather pointless. What we did enjoy was the BIOS setup which holds a wealth of information, not to mention adjustable settings. MSI also provides the ability to save up to four BIOS configurations, which is another overclocking friendly feature.
For the most part the layout and design of the X58 Pro-E was good, though we did encounter a problem with the ATX power connector and DIMM slots when using memory modules with oversized heatsinks. This is not a huge issue, but something users should be aware of beforehand.
All in all, the MSI X58 Pro-E offers solid stability, a fantastic BIOS, phenomenal tuning potential and excellent performance. But most importantly it brings further value to the Core i7 platform in the way of savings compared to other strictly enthusiast-oriented options.
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