A plethora of options can be found in the BIOS really -- it's a tweakers Walhalla. We hope you like this new approach to showing you BIOS features with the help of high-def footage.
The OC Dashboard control pod
Along with the bundle you will receive a OC Dashboard device that enabled you to do some quick, on-the-fly overclocking. The device also functions as Debug PORT during boot up. You guys know the POST LEDs with error codes right ? Well, during POST/Boot status this device will display the same.
Within windows however, the device allows for real-time statistics but also overclocking. You can tweak voltages on all primary parts and increase the base clock. It's a bit of a gadget granted -- but a very nice one.
The video is of poor quality as I had setup the camera improperly as I later found out -- apologies for that -- but you'll get the generic idea on how handy the OC Dashboard actually is.
Hardware and Software Used
Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.
Power Supply Unit BFG EX 1200 Watt (DXX PCIe 2.0 model)
Monitor Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600
OS related Software
Windows Vista 64-bit SP1 DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime Catalyst 9.10 8.66 for Cypress
DhryStone CPU test
We make use of a multi-threaded Dhrystone test from SiSoftware Sandra, which is basically a suite of arithmetic and string manipulating programs. Since the whole program should be really small, it fits into the processor cache. It can be used to measure two aspects, both the processor's speed as well as the optimizing capabilities of the compiler. The resulting number is the number of executions of the program suite per second.
First up, The SANDRA DhryStone and Whetstone tests. These two tests are pure unadulterated 100% CPU tests that run completely within the CPU + cache memory itself. A perfect test to see the general efficiency per core. Though one of the oldest, Dhrystone remains a simple yet extremely accurate and effective way to show you RAW CPU processing performance making it a very good indicator. The rest of the processors are in the charts just for scaling.
So then, let me first explain how and what we will be testing and comparing in this article. Due to the nature of changes in our benchmark software we'll try and add many processors per benchmark title for you to compare to.
Your main focus should be on the red bar and then compare it to the orange ones. These are all other P55 motherboards we recently tested. Compare them amongst each other -- that is your baseline P55 / Mobo / CPU combo performance. All these P55 boards have used the same processor, frequency and memory.
We also include overclocked results (top orange line) of the Trinergy board with the OC Genie enabled -- that's 4000 MHz on the processor and 1676 MHz CAS8 on the memory -- all with the push of a button.
You'll notice in the benchmarks that the Trinergy is leading in the top ranking P55 motherboards -- and overclocked it really takes off.
Whetstone
The Whetstone benchmark is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers. It was initially written in Algol 60, back in 1972. The Whetstone benchmark originally measured computing power in units of kilo-Whetstone Instructions Per Second (kWIPS). This was later changed to Millions of Whetstone Instructions Per Second (MWIPS).
The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the floating-point arithmetic performance. A similar benchmark for integer and string operations thus is the Dhrystone.
Queen CPU test
This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic "Queens problem" on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example -- with HyperThreading disabled -- the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. However, with enabled HyperThreading the picture is controversial, because due to architectural bottlenecks the Northwood core runs out of internal resources and slows down. Similarly, at the same clock speed AMD K8 class processors will be faster than AMD K7 ones due to the improved branch prediction capabilities of the K8 architecture.
CPU Queen test uses only the basic x86 instructions, it consumes less than 1 MB system memory and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core aware and thus is a multithreading CPU Benchmark with MMX, SSE2 and SSE3 optimizations.
ZLib CPU test
This integer benchmark measures combined CPU and memory subsystem performance through the public ZLib compression library Version 1.2.2
CPU ZLib test uses the basic x86 instructions, it is HyperThreading, and multi-core (CMP) aware. A very good test to measure multi-core performance among platforms.
Mandel FPU test
The Mandel FPU benchmark measures double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular "Mandelbrot" fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD and Intel processor core variant by utilizing the appropriate x86 or SSE2 instruction set extension.
Now if you come from the Commodore 64 / Amiga era like me (Peek & Poke Commands FTW dude!), you can probably remember rendering Mandelbrot graphics, a mathematical formula that much like a paradox, never ends and thus is repetitive. Back in the 1990s it took me a full day to complete one Mandelbrot image. Amazing where we are right now as the same set of calculations can be done in a split second & even real-time.
The FPU Mandel test again is HyperThreaded, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core aware. Here the improper working Turbo function really hits the test hard.
MKV x.264 Video Transcoding
Movie encodingx.264 - x.264 is a free library for encoding H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video streams. Encoding/transcoding to that format is one of the most intensive tasks a processor can perform. As such this is probably the best test in the entire review. We encode a h.264 Dolby Digital 1080P trailer of 150 MB to Matroska x.264 with 5.1 channels AC3. It's compressed in such a way you can play it back with Haali media splitter and/or FFDSHOW codecs.
We use Handbrake software which is multi-core aware... the more processor cores it sees, the faster it can and will transcode. This software is also a perfect benchmark for CPU and memory testing.
The displayed number is the number of frames rendered per second averaged out over the encoding process. The higher the number, the faster the performance is.
Memory Read test
Obviously we also had to peek at memory bandwidth performance. Now, obviously Intel has an advantage here, triple-channel memory. This explains the tremendous amount of read performance for the Core i7 platform.
On average indeed you'll notice 8000 MB/sec for an AMD chipset with DDR3 memory at 1333 MHz (C9) and thanks to the point to point memory controller in Intel's Core i7 chips roughly 12.500-13.500 MB/sec for dual channel configurations.
Memory Write test
The same can be said for the memory write tests. Of course Intel dominates here considering we used 1333 JEDEC timed memory on both platforms. Triple channel performance on Nehalem is just frighteningly good really.
A Phenom II processor should perform roughly in-between 6500 and 7000 MB/sec, with some random performance occurrences here and there taken into account where Intel's latest offering will offer roughly 10.000 MB/sec of bandwidth.
AES data encryption
For this test we encrypt some precious data. Data encryption has become a sad necessity for responsible data managers. Cryptography is the science of secret codes, enabling the confidentiality of communication through an insecure channel. The AES algorithm uses one of three cipher key strengths: a 128-, 192-, or 256-bit encryption key (password). Each encryption key size causes the algorithm to behave slightly differently, so the increasing key sizes not only offer a larger number of bits with which you can scramble the data, but also increase the complexity of the cipher algorithm. AES encryption is applied in a lot of compressing software like WinZIP.
Transcoding over the CPU or GPU
We recently added another benchmark to the test-suite. It's MediaShow Espresso. The fun thing about this video transcoder is that it can utilize the GPU to assist it with the transcending process. However, you can also solely use the CPU, making this a very interesting benchmark and you can check out behavior of CPU transcoding AND GPU transcoding all in one test.
So above you can find the results of this new test. In this test we transcode a 200 MB AVCHD 1920x1080i media file to a 1280x720P MP4 binary (YouTube format).
We recently introduced this test. As you can see the GPU is very well suited for this process to assist. The Trinergy with Core i7 870 processor is doing really well, and once we push that OC Genie button, it really takes off.
3DMark 06 CPU test
Well, everybody loves 3DMark06, and nowadays, it's CPU limited, making it an okay application to check CPU performance. The scores that you see obviously are the CPU test itself, not overall 3DMark06 scores.
3DMark Vantage (DirectX 10)
3DMark Vantage focuses on the two areas most critical to gaming performance: the CPU and the GPU. With the emergence of multi-package and multi-core configurations on both the CPU and GPU side, the performance scale of these areas has widened, and the visual and game-play effects made possible by these configurations are accordingly wide-ranging. This makes covering the entire spectrum of 3D gaming a difficult task. 3DMark Vantage solves this problem in three ways:
1. Isolate GPU and CPU performance benchmarking into separate tests, 2. Cover several visual and game-play effects and techniques in four different tests, and 3. Introduce visual quality presets to scale the graphics test load up through the highest-end hardware.
To this end, 3DMark Vantage has two GPU tests, each with a different emphasis on various visual techniques, and two CPU tests, which cover the two most common CPU-side tasks: Physics Simulation and AI. It also has four visual quality presets (Entry, Performance, High, and Extreme) available in the Advanced and Professional versions, which increase the graphics load successively for even more visual quality. Each preset will produce a separate, official 3DMark Score, tagged with the preset in question.
The graphics load increases significantly from the lowest to the highest preset. The Performance preset is targeted for mid-range hardware with 256 MB of graphics memory. The Entry preset is targeted for integrated and low-end hardware with 128 MB of graphics memory. The higher presets require 512MB of graphics memory, and are targeted for high-end and multi-GPU systems.
3DMark Vantage also has a standalone CPU test. It's very multi-core and multi-threading aware, it was no surprise to see the Core i5 and i7 kick in real hard.
Above thus the CPU score. But we also have some performance (P) scores available.
3DMark Vantage
Performance Score
AMD 785 | Phenom II X4 965BE
14499
Jetway HI05 | 870
16236
X58 | Core i7 940
16436
MSI P55 Trinergy
16506
MSI P55 Trinergy OC Genie enabled
17392
With a new graphics card being used in the CPU test suite, we don't have much other overall 3DMark Vantage Performance scores we can compare to. But above you can see that with a Radeon HD 5870 this PC would score (P) 16.500 points.
Let's check out some actual games versus different platforms.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Hells Highway, another WWII shooter some might say. But in reality the setting of war is really just a vehicle for Gearbox to tell the storyline of a Band of Brothers which is led by you, Sergeant Matt Baker, as they deal with the madness and consequences of war. The game tells the story of Operation Market Garden in the country yours truly lives, in the Netherlands (aka Holland). It's about the besieged journey from Eindhoven to Arnhem where tremendous battles were fought.
Exactly that road, Highway 69; the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was later nicknamed: Hell's Highway.
On of the most impressive details is that the area of Operation Market garden was completely reconstructed by historical documents and images. It's uncanny to see and experience the design of 1944 Holland. Even now in 2008 you can still see striking similarities of our country. Street signs, building structures, clothing, and even the clinker bricks on the roads dispense a true authentic mood. This reviewer is Dutch, so what level would be more appropriate than one of the starting levels, in a field in the Netherlands, moving towards a large windmill ahead of us. Lots of geometry is to be found here and in fact one of the more complex scenes to render for the GPU. Yes, welcome to Holland.
Game time ! Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is an interesting title as it is using the Unreal 3 graphics engine. That engine is multi-core optimized, but that by itself doesn't move mountains.
Texture Quality HIGH
Shadow Texture Quality HIGH
Shadow Detail HIGH
Vsync OFF
We use high detail image quality settings in this game. We test in a real life situation, the way you play the game at home, and as you can see with a Radeon HD 5870 graphics card the results are a lot CPU bound, which is what we are after. You see the flat lines ... that means there's some sort of bottleneck, and in this case the game is severely CPU bottlenecked due to the extremely fast GPU. And that's great as we can check out what kind of effect a processor has on overall performance.
In this test we see the Trinergy with Core i7 870 outrank a X58 with Core i7 940. Let's fire off a GPU bound title .. Crysis WarHEAD.
Crysis WARHEAD
As in last year's game, expect to encounter dense jungle environments, barren ice fields, Korean soldiers and plenty of flying aliens. There's no denying that this is more of the same, except here it's a more tightly woven experience with a little less freedom to explore.
With a top-end PC (although Warhead has supposedly benefited from an improved game engine you'll still need a fairly beefy system), rest assured, developer Crytek has enhanced more than just the graphics engine.
Vehicles are more fun to drive, firefights are more intense and focused, and aliens do more than just float around you. More emphasis on the open-ended environments would have been welcome, but a more exciting (though shorter) campaign, a new multiplayer mode, and a whole bunch of new maps make Crysis Warhead an excellent expansion to one of last year's best shooters.
Crysis Warhead has good looks. As mentioned before, the game looks better than Crysis, and it runs better too. Our test machine that struggled a bit to run the original at high settings ran Warhead smoothly with the same settings. Yet as much as you may have heard about Crysis' technical prowess, you'll still be impressed when you feast your eyes on the swaying vegetation, surging water, and expressive animations. Outstanding graphics. Couldn't say more here.
Our image quality settings; we opt for the gamers mode. However, we select DirectX 10 mode as well to allow way more hefty shader code which will take a big toll on the GPU, yet also frame buffer utilization.
Level Ambush
Codepath DX10
Anti aliasing 2xMSAA
Ingame Quality mode Gamer
Crysis WarHEAD is a game title that likes more than 2 CPU cores AND likes faster clocked processors, it is however extremely graphics card demanding. Observe how incredibly close all processors really are in game performance. After a monitor resolution of 1280x1024 it just doesn't matter on what platform you game with this title.
Resident Evil 5 (DirectX 10)
A new addition to our benchmark suite is Resident Evil 5. Capcom's newly released game ensures you a survival horror sequel that will let you bust up some zombies on your hard drive. Resident Evil 5 PC will support DirectX 9 and 10 along with ultra-high resolutions.
The game looks fantastic and has a built in benchmark. We test at DirectX 10.0 mode with 4x AA -- all settings are maxed out including BLUR activated. If you like to reproduce the benchmark scores yourself, then please select the fixed benchmark as we opted for a fixed time demo.
Resident Evil really surprised me though as it really likes multi-core processors and especially hyper-threading ones as it seems. It is also very sensitive to memory configurations giving the X58/940 combo with triple channel memory a run for the money.
As you can see, thanks to the extremely fast Radeon HD 5870 even the fastest AMD processor to date runs into CPU limitation. The Trinergy holds up really well, but once it's overclocked + get's heaps of additional memory bandwidth; well just look at that orange line take off.
Far Cry 2
Throw your memory back to the year 2004 and the release of the innovative Far Cry on PC. Developer Crytek managed to fashion one of the most convincing and striking locales in all of gaming, and satisfied gamers with the freedom to pass through the landscape and tackle enemies in almost any way they saw fit. You surely remember Jack Carver and that things were about to get seriously messed up for you? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island but hop into a jeep and arrive at the sandy savannah surroundings of Africa. And that's a change... as much as you'll no longer run into any mutants, aliens, or any superpowers or psychic powers. Also - you are no longer Jack Carver, you assume the role of one of nine different mercenaries who are embedded in the midst of a brutal civil war which rages in an imaginary African nation.
Everything that goes down is involved in a dirty little bush war in central Africa and you'll have to use a rusty AK-47 and whatever bits of scavenged land mine you can duct-tape together. Two factions struggle for supremacy: the United Front for Liberation and Labour and the Alliance for Popular Resistance, and both are known for blood and control.
Far Cry 2 I like very much. Not so much for the gameplay anymore, yet the rendered environment and how the game can react to it. We are in high-quality DX10 mode with 4x AA (anti-aliasing) and 16x AF (anisotropic filtering).
A victory for the X58 combo with Core i7 940 and the MSI Trinergy with i7 870, dead on performance. The reality here again is that after 1280x1024 the GPU starts to matter more, it will max out and as such it's not really that CPU bound anymore.
The Verdict
My goodness -- MSI improved a motherboard that already was extremely good. The P55 GD80 Trinergy is not just a small update from the initial P55 GD80. No sir, it got overhauled with a completely new PCB design and now chucked and stuffed full with core logic to further improve the feature set. I mean -- literally it's hard to find any space on the PCB.
It's a brave and balsy move from MSI really, as when you compare apples to apples and seen from a baseline point of few, the P55 motherboards all perform roughly the same in a default configuration. So the cheapest P55 board you can pick up for say roughly 100 USD. Now the motherboard you have seen today will be selling at roughly 300 USD -- and I'm just wondering .. is that really worth the money ? It's definitely a dilemma as you might as well just go for the X58 platform and a Socket 1366 Core i7 processor to get some extralovin' in the form of triple channel memory as well. Then again, very few X58 motherboards are so horribly good as this P55 motherboard. See, the Trinergy really is a near perfect motherboard.
The feature set is just astonishing, and next to tweaking and the overclocking Walhalla of features and options we get extras. Get this: 12 SATA ports (2 eSATA), the OC Genie, the passively cooled design, the sheer quality of components used, the little Quantum Wave add-on audio board bringing along EAX 5.0 and THX TruStudio PC. Then we of course get 3-way SLI capability thanks an embedded NF200 chip adding another thirty-two PCIe lanes, the V-Check points and Voltage switches and of course the handy OC Dashboard.
Next to that don't forget about the dual-Gigabit Ethernet ports, DDR3 1066/1333/1600/1800/2000/2133 (OC) capability, Coaxial and Optical SPDIFs, 10 SATA2, 2 eSATA, 1 IDE port and the eight USB 2.0 ports in the back. Face it, if this motherboard was a gorgeous girl, you'd fall in love with it -- this motherboard is properly equipped. The one thing that would have made the board perfect would have been integration of USB 3.0 and a SATA3 controller, but perhaps that is wishful thinking.
Now as you have been able to observe, the baseline performance of this P55 motherboards is just top notch, it's ranking and classed in the fastest boards we have tested. But to leave things 'default' as they are would be a real shame with this motherboard. The BIOS offers a wide variety in tweaking and overclocking. If you need to do so at an advanced level with specialized cooling, no worries, the thresholds on voltages, dividers and multipliers are really extensive. The BIOS is a true geek-fest for overclockers. The OC Dashboard might be really handy if you are overclocking with say LN2 and need to increase the base clock frequency quickly and on the fly. Though a bit of a gimmick it's a handy device alright. Of course you could overclock from within Windows with delivered OC software as well.
What we found exceptionaly good with this motherboard is that new OC Genie function. This literally is the reason why we showed you the overclocked results in all our benchmarks. You power down the PC. Then push the OC Genie button. And power on the PC. Now within a second or 15 your PC will start to post really far fetched overclocked. Our 2.93 GHz clocked Core i7 870 processor was then overclocked to 4 GHz while our memory was tweaked to it's rated 1676 MHz CAS -- very close to it's optimal XMP profile. So yeah, that's magic. I really like the OC Genie function. If you need some extra power, use it. If you like to preserve power and do daily things on your PC, leave the PC at default (as if that would be slow with a system like this).
So I'm going to round up now. The MSI P55 GD80 Trinergy motherboard is stunning in all it's ways, the really nice design, the exceptional arrangement of all components, the quality components, the functions, the wide variety of options, the overclockability, the OC Dashboard, the extra audio options -- and also the price is stunning. It's the one thing that will remain a bit of a downer. Is any P55 motherboard really worth 300 USD ? Do you really need to spend that much dough on a motherboard ? Well, in the end that's a question you guys of course will answer -- whether or not you'll be buying it.
Bottom line: I'll tell you this though, the Trinergy motherboard is as delicious as the best cake you ever ate -- with a fruity cherry on top of it. This is easily one of the best motherboards we've ever had in our lab -- I'm impressed and it deserves our hard to earn best hardware award. Congratulations to MSI for a job really well done.
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