With AMD’s new generation of CPUs still in the pipeline, all eyes in the enthusiast community are on Intel. Their newest generation of CPUs, codenamed Sandy Bridge, promise unparalleled performance. Of course, an awesome CPU needs an equally awesome motherboard to go with it. Enter MSI. They’re determined to take the lead with this generation of CPUs, and toward that end they’ve sent us their flagship P67 board, the P67A-GD80. Make no mistake, this board is aimed squarely at the performance-hungry. With features like automatic overclocking, premium solid-state capacitors and enough I/O ports to choke a horse, this board is poised to take the market by storm. MSI’s swinging for the bleachers here, let’s see if they hit a Grand Slam or a foul ball.

We've recently trickled out previews of the upcoming motherboards based on the Intel P67 and H67 Express chipsets. There we were able to showcase the motherboards and list some of the features, but we couldn’t take a deep dive into the actual performance of the boards along with the BIOS. This was because the Sandy Bridge NDA hadn’t yet lifted, but now that we have that out of the way and everyone has read up on Intel's second generation Core architecture, we can at last reveal all about the new 6-series chipset based motherboards. So, this time around we won't just be taking a look at the motherboards, we will actually install them in our system and run all the models through our benchmarking testbed at both stock and overclocked settings.

In this roundup we are going to be examining three high-end motherboards all using the P67 Express chipset. The new P67 is an consumer based chipset that includes enthusiast grade features such as support for CrossFireX/SLI, Intel Extreme Tuning, SATA 6Gb/s and native RAID support. Of course these are only the standard options for the chipset as each of the boards in this roundup also include additional features that greatly exceed the stock specifications. Some of the enhancements include up to four USB 3.0 ports, improved cooling, the use of all high-end components and built-in overclocking tools.

The launch of the newv Intel Sandy Bridge platform has redefined what mainstream and performance computing is all about. Going forward, it is likely that all Intel CPUs will be on this platform for the next year or two and if you want to go the Intel route for the latest chipset, the Sandy Bridge+6 series chipset combination is the way to go.  The X58 and 6-core CPU platform still exists for the high-end market as it has more PCI Express lanes and higher memory bandwidth due to triple memory channels, but the Sandy Bridge+6 series chipset replaces the Clarkdale+P55 chipset and H55 chipsets.

Perhaps the biggest problem we saw with these motherboards was their price, both situated above $250, they were far from affordable. Add to that the serious price premium for DDR3 memory, and you ended up with a relatively affordable and fast Core i7 920 processor that nevertheless needed to run on an expensive platform.

Today DDR3 prices have dropped dramatically. It is now possible to purchase a 3GB triple-channel kit for as little as $50, or a 6GB kit that start at around $80. The recent drop in DDR3 pricing got us thinking about the affordability of the Core i7 platform, and we began to wonder just how cheap users could build one of these systems.

The Core i7 920 still remains the only sensible option, and at $280 it can overclock to speeds that far surpass those of the $1000 975 Extreme Edition version. Now all we need is an affordable LGA1366 motherboard that will allow us to squeeze a few more MHz out of the Core i7 processor.

MSI has quietly been preparing an army of Core i7 motherboards, now with five unique models on offer, we feel they may have what we're after. The X58 Pro-E is an interesting looking motherboard, priced at around $200 which is almost as low as X58-based motherboards will go.

The X58 Pro-E sits in the middle of the standard X58 Pro motherboard which is about $20 cheaper and the slightly more expensive X58 Platinum. Then there's the MSI X58 Eclipse which is priced more aggressively at $320 and is thus reserved for extreme users.

From where we sit, MSI doesn't seem to have skimped on any essential features with the X58 Pro-E, so let's take a closer look and see what this motherboard is all about.

A couple of months ago AMD released their initial AM3 CPUs, the 810 and 720. These processors were the first to use DDR3 on the AMD platform and while each was priced attractively they failed to live up to the performance of the DDR2 based Phenom 2 X4 940. Today AMD release the latest AM3 processor, the 955 Black Edition, the first to have a real chance of competing with the 940 in that all important enthusiast market. Combined with a high specification 790FX based motherboard and ATI GPU it creates what could be AMD’s most powerful system ever.

MSI's 770-C35 mainboards is the number one choice for scalability AMD Athlon II X2 processors. 

The all new Athlon II X2 processors have shown an immense improvement in both performance and overclocking potential from their previous generation. The entire chips' overclocking ability has benefited from the 45 nm architecture, and, with a very competitive price, the Athlon II X2 processors received the attention from overclockers everywhere as soon as they were released.

MSI punches up flagship X58 motherboard with quad SLI, CrossFireX support

(Courtesy of MSI)

The only game in town that supports Intel's i7 processors is still the X58 chipset and vendors have been coming up with creative ways to entice consumers to their latest and greatest versions that support this platform. While some lower and mid-range LGA 1366 boards are coming down in price, most companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI are keeping their flagship mobos close to the $400 mark. These high-end motherboards are usually reserved for the most hardcore and wealthy enthusiasts out there who have the cash to drop on these feature-packed components.

Today we look at MSI's latest and greatest: the MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard.