MSI P55 GD65. The right mix of sexy looks and features to get all but the most hardcore overclocker really engaged.
15 January 2010. Author: mas_sas
Board Features
There's only a twin USB PCI bracket too, when the board has six pin-outs available, however with eight already on the rear I/O it's not like we're missing out too much. Included is only four SATA cables, for the available seven ports, and none of them have 90 degree connectors. There's even some molex to SATA power adapters if your PSU is really, really old.
In addition there are the usual driver discs and manuals for the separate bits, but most notable is the OC Genie guide which is actually quite an interesting read if you are thinking of overclocking as it offers some general advice and settings to try, even if we don't agree with it 100 per cent.
The general layout is also very good, albeit like so many, not perfect. I'm sure you can clearly spot the lone blue SATA port placed inside the other six that are aligned facing towards the edge. Above this there's the IDE port still, a floppy port (again, why?), the ATX socket and MSI's V-Check Points.
This blue plastic rectangle with six square holes houses pins that offer voltage check points, so you can take a multimeter to them and get a real-time readout, without having to rely on often inaccurate software or BIOS readings. In actual fact, we found the reading to be within 0.04V of what CPU-Z stated, although a multimeter would offer a much faster and more accurate vDroop when the CPU and memory loaded. The pins offer all the important readouts: VTT, DDR, CPU and PCH voltage.
Click to enlarge
All the other pin-outs and connectors are easy to get to, placed around the edges of the board, although using the onboard base clock buttons inside a case might be a little tricky, but these are designed for benchtop testers anyway.
Quite absurdly, despite including the new OC Genie and base clock buttons in addition to the power button, MSI forgot to include the reset and clear CMOS buttons: two of the most useful. Instead we have to rely on a jumper for the clear CMOS. I can't help but feel in some instances MSI's design team got carried away with dropping on new things and forgot to use design notes from 2008, instead of 2003.
On the 2009 end of things, MSI's latest "OC Genie" is, in many ways, equivalent to Asus' RoG chips that aid overclocking. MSI told us its job is a hardware solution to help with normal overclocking, but mostly it's to do with the OC Genie button at the bottom of the board. With a single press, it automatically runs the system through a series of tests to overvolt and overclock the CPU and memory.
The whole process takes only a few seconds and is quicker than Asus' equivalent BIOS switch that does much the same thing, and unlike "auto overclocking" of the past, we found this actually works a little better giving us an overclock of 3.3GHz from a 2.66GHz Core i5-750. Not bad, but considering we can hit over 4GHz with this chip and the average enthusiast should be wanting to hit at least 3.6 to 3.7GHz, we could wish for a little more.
Click to enlarge
Both x16 PCI-Express 2.0 slots for graphics are obviously marked in blue, and match the usual single x16 or dual x8s other boards feature. The three spaces between them offers plenty of breathing room for hot cards, or super sized coolers, and the two PCI, two x1 PCI-Exress and single, open ended x4 slot allow for plenty of upgrade potential too.
Click to enlarge
The southbridge heatsink is smaller than Asus' but it doesn't matter much because the surface area is greater, and the fins are free to vent, not to mention the fact it's also placed between the graphics card slots for slightly better ventilation. Around the CPU area the heatsinks are more meaty and have a thicker 8mm "SuperPipe" (as MSI brands) to shift heat between them. The DrMOS MOSFETs are also included for the CPU as well, in a 6+1 setup for CPU and Uncore respectively.
Each DrMOS contains up and down MOSFETs and driver IC in a single package - each can typically handle the power requirements as well as any 12 to 16-phase design from Asus or Gigabyte. Only EVGA uses the same as MSI (although do not brand it DrMOS) and typically uses more because of the greater lean towards the extreme overclocking end of the market.
While MSI is not alone in including the PS2 mouse option, again we wonder why. Surely no one uses this now, where as least PS2 keyboard is good for BIOS compatibility. Finally the total coverage of sound outputs is most welcome, as is the healthy mix of connector types too.
Click to enlarge
The BIOS layout is very good and doesn't differ from previous MSI boards a whole lot. Under the usual Cell Menu is where we find all the goodies, with all the necessary voltage adjustments: CPU Core, VTT, PLL, PCH, memory and even memory reference voltages, of which they are also pretty acute too. There are no clock skews which the Asus board features, although those will only be really needed by the most hardcore overclockers so we're really talking GD80 territory.
An exceptionally useful addition is the frequency and timing changes are directly visible in the BIOS underneath the actual values being changed, although to get an extra CPU multiplier for the i5-750, EIST needs to strangely be left to "Auto".
The memory timings are easy to see, but there's no reference settings within the timing changes - it's in another sub directory elsewhere. If you're unfamiliar with the memory timing codes, then this could prove a little more difficult to know what number goes where. In addition, there's no way to change the timings of both memory channels at once, unlike other boards we've used that allow one change for everything which is usually what we want to do.
Overclocking profiles can be saved, loaded and named from the eight available slots, but we couldn't see a way to get these profiles onto a USB key or hard drive to share like other companies are now doing. While not an important feature, it shows MSI is still playing catchup a little. MSI's M-Flash, which offers in-BIOS updating works, but on our own experiences we've found it still to be a little less reliable than the competition. Also, it's still nowhere near as obvious to understand what is going on - you get there in the end, though.
The CPU phase (DrMOS) and LED control are BIOS level selections here, meaning they don't require additional software in the OS to work. On the plus side, it means this is always working and it'll work well when overclocking too (however we'd disable it given the vDroop issue we have highlighted on the overclocking page).
Most poorly engineered products fail within the first couple of hours, or even minutes, and along with the other test results this will allow us to make a conscious decision on whether a motherboard is worth your money.
Click to enlarge
It needs extra voltage to compensate and despite enabling the vDroop compensation in the BIOS (which is a must for overclocking), we found a 0.05V drop under load when pushing either a Core i5 or i7 chip heavily. Clearly, the DrMOS MOSFETs are struggling a little.
Pushing for maxmium CPU frequency we hit a stability wall at 190MHz base clock, with a 22x multiplier and 1.45V core voltage, 1.42V VTT, 1.9V PLL and 1.12V PCH voltage. With the i7-870 this yielded 4.18GHz, but with the Core i5-750 that's more limited by multipliers, this could only reach 3.99GHz. Not a huge worry - that's still fast, but we know Lynnfield CPUs are good for 4.2 to 4.4GHz with the right cooling, voltage and motherboard. The MSI did allow the extra single increment in multiplier to 21x, from 20x, for the Core i5-750 when EIST is set to Auto, which is certainly a plus, but then again the Asus board allows two to 22x multiplier.
Aiming for maxmium base clock by dropping the multiplier we saw a much more surprising result though. When chatting to MSI's engineers in Taiwan while I was running the overclock for advice and feedback, they said they'd seen only 210MHz from an i5-750. However, we found our board kept going and hit a 217.5MHz base clock, but suffered a sharp stability drop off above this value. To reach this, we ramped the VTT to 1.48V, but lowered the CPU voltage to 1.4V in order not to cook the poor thing, despite the Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler working admirably.
Click to enlarge
As for maximum memory performance, we were actually a little let down. While the Asus cruised through 2.3GHz and couldn't quite scrape 2.4GHz with our DIMMs, we could only manage a measly 2,154MHz from 2,200MHz memory at timings higher than what it was rated to do: 9-9-9-27-2T at 1.75V. The MSI GD65 is clearly not the board for those looking to push the extremes and is instead for those more limited by the 10x multiplier in a Core i5-750 CPU. With that in mind, you'll be able to hit around 2,000MHz, on condition you can reach that magic 200MHz base clock.
We found the MSI board ran 3DMark06 for the full 24 hours, however Prime95 gave out and closed itself after 15 hours. Overall the system was still stable and usable though, so it's a very good, but partial result for MSI.
The OC Genie is very easy to use, works exactly as advertised, and generates quite a good result for us, although it could use some more aggressive settings perhaps because it's still several hundred MHz short of what we know the board and CPU can do. We realise MSI is most likely playing it safe and the people that are likely to use this simple option will no doubt be chuffed at the free performance gain for all the effort of straightening an index finger and extending an arm.
MSI's power consumption numbers again appear excellent, but we'll hold off saying more than that until we've seen other boards before we make further claims. We do commend MSI for not playing the willy waving numbers game and using a more "normal" set of power hardware to get the job done, but then again, the DrMOS hardware appears to suffer from a more substantial vDroop than the competition under heavily load when overclocked.
Clearly it's closer to "just enough" to get the job done than having an excess. While the board didn't overclock as well as the (much more expensive) Asus, we don't think it was power related so much because it can be successfully compensated with more voltage, and at least more extreme overclockers have the GD80 option to look at too. We also love the V-Check Points, and the base clock buttons work very well, but if we're pedantic we would say that Asus had these on its RoG boards a few years ago. Then again, those never made it off the Asus RoG class until recently.
For the only CPU we currently recommend, the i5-750, we feel enthusiasts will be a little more limited with the GD65. It's certainly "enough", but it could be more in terms of base clock and memory performance. Having oodles of base clock with no total CPU performance is only good if you're looking to stretch your wizard's sleeve on the internet.
Up to this point, evertthing is hunky dory, but what MSI is absolutely missing is some form of BIOS backup and redundency. For a board in 2009 of this cost not to have an efficient BIOS recovery mechanism is sacrilegious. We unluckily bricked one board of the two boards we got (hey, it happens - we get every manufacturer failing at one point or other) using the inbuilt M-Flash program and found the supposed recovery technique was as effective as a chocolate teapot, and didn't even taste half as good. What have we got left? Sending it back to MSI, and if we weren't lucky enough to have them on our speed dial, we'd be thoroughly miffed.
Click to enlarge
The bottom line is that the layout is great and aesthetically it's fantastic, but we're polarised by MSI's GD65 more than any other board we've seen to date. If it didn't have these silly little oversights it would absolutely be a recommended, even if £130 is quite a lot to part with because it was no more than a good P45 board when they launched. For the most part though, the GD65 is worth it, but its current overclocking capablities might limit Core i5-750 users a little, and the BIOS recovery issue pokes us in a way that moves it away from being a definitive choice to just a strong contender on your short list in a highly competitive market.
- Support for Intel Lynnfield Core i5 and Core i7 LGA1156 CPUs
- Intel P55 PCH
- Four 1.5V DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 16GB of memory
- Two Gigabit Ethernet controllers: Realtek 8112L and 8110SC
- Two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots providing either one x16 or two x8 links
- One PCI-Express x4 slot (open ended)
- Two PCI slots
- Six P55 SATA 3Gbps ports supporting Intel Matrix RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD
- One IDE port supporting two devices, one SATA and one eSATA from JMicron JMB363
- 14 USB 2.0 ports - eight on rear I/O, six via pin-outs
- VIA VT6315N IEEE1394a Firewire supporting two ports - one via pin-outs, one on the rear I/O
- Realtek ALC889 7.1-channel High-Definition audio codec
In the box there seems to be tonnes of bits, but we don't think MSI is really striking in all the right directions. Firstly, a floppy cable? Really? In 2009?
There's only a twin USB PCI bracket too, when the board has six pin-outs available, however with eight already on the rear I/O it's not like we're missing out too much. Included is only four SATA cables, for the available seven ports, and none of them have 90 degree connectors. There's even some molex to SATA power adapters if your PSU is really, really old.
In addition there are the usual driver discs and manuals for the separate bits, but most notable is the OC Genie guide which is actually quite an interesting read if you are thinking of overclocking as it offers some general advice and settings to try, even if we don't agree with it 100 per cent.
Board Detail and Layout
The board design is something MSI has finally nailed. While inside I long for something other than than black PCBs everywhere, I cannot deny it looks fantastic, with highlights of blue and gunmetal that really just work.The general layout is also very good, albeit like so many, not perfect. I'm sure you can clearly spot the lone blue SATA port placed inside the other six that are aligned facing towards the edge. Above this there's the IDE port still, a floppy port (again, why?), the ATX socket and MSI's V-Check Points.
This blue plastic rectangle with six square holes houses pins that offer voltage check points, so you can take a multimeter to them and get a real-time readout, without having to rely on often inaccurate software or BIOS readings. In actual fact, we found the reading to be within 0.04V of what CPU-Z stated, although a multimeter would offer a much faster and more accurate vDroop when the CPU and memory loaded. The pins offer all the important readouts: VTT, DDR, CPU and PCH voltage.
Click to enlarge
All the other pin-outs and connectors are easy to get to, placed around the edges of the board, although using the onboard base clock buttons inside a case might be a little tricky, but these are designed for benchtop testers anyway.
Quite absurdly, despite including the new OC Genie and base clock buttons in addition to the power button, MSI forgot to include the reset and clear CMOS buttons: two of the most useful. Instead we have to rely on a jumper for the clear CMOS. I can't help but feel in some instances MSI's design team got carried away with dropping on new things and forgot to use design notes from 2008, instead of 2003.
On the 2009 end of things, MSI's latest "OC Genie" is, in many ways, equivalent to Asus' RoG chips that aid overclocking. MSI told us its job is a hardware solution to help with normal overclocking, but mostly it's to do with the OC Genie button at the bottom of the board. With a single press, it automatically runs the system through a series of tests to overvolt and overclock the CPU and memory.
The whole process takes only a few seconds and is quicker than Asus' equivalent BIOS switch that does much the same thing, and unlike "auto overclocking" of the past, we found this actually works a little better giving us an overclock of 3.3GHz from a 2.66GHz Core i5-750. Not bad, but considering we can hit over 4GHz with this chip and the average enthusiast should be wanting to hit at least 3.6 to 3.7GHz, we could wish for a little more.
Click to enlarge
Both x16 PCI-Express 2.0 slots for graphics are obviously marked in blue, and match the usual single x16 or dual x8s other boards feature. The three spaces between them offers plenty of breathing room for hot cards, or super sized coolers, and the two PCI, two x1 PCI-Exress and single, open ended x4 slot allow for plenty of upgrade potential too.
Click to enlarge
The southbridge heatsink is smaller than Asus' but it doesn't matter much because the surface area is greater, and the fins are free to vent, not to mention the fact it's also placed between the graphics card slots for slightly better ventilation. Around the CPU area the heatsinks are more meaty and have a thicker 8mm "SuperPipe" (as MSI brands) to shift heat between them. The DrMOS MOSFETs are also included for the CPU as well, in a 6+1 setup for CPU and Uncore respectively.
Each DrMOS contains up and down MOSFETs and driver IC in a single package - each can typically handle the power requirements as well as any 12 to 16-phase design from Asus or Gigabyte. Only EVGA uses the same as MSI (although do not brand it DrMOS) and typically uses more because of the greater lean towards the extreme overclocking end of the market.
Rear I/O
The rear I/O is as well featured as we've come to expect these days, including:- Eight USB 2.0
- One powered eSATA (doubling with one of the USB ports)
- Two RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet sockets
- Optical and RCA S/PDIF out
- PS2 keyboard and mouse
- One 6-pin Firewire port
- Six 3.5mm audio jacks supplying 7.1 channel audio, plus microphone and line-inputs
While MSI is not alone in including the PS2 mouse option, again we wonder why. Surely no one uses this now, where as least PS2 keyboard is good for BIOS compatibility. Finally the total coverage of sound outputs is most welcome, as is the healthy mix of connector types too.
BIOS
Click to enlarge
The BIOS layout is very good and doesn't differ from previous MSI boards a whole lot. Under the usual Cell Menu is where we find all the goodies, with all the necessary voltage adjustments: CPU Core, VTT, PLL, PCH, memory and even memory reference voltages, of which they are also pretty acute too. There are no clock skews which the Asus board features, although those will only be really needed by the most hardcore overclockers so we're really talking GD80 territory.
An exceptionally useful addition is the frequency and timing changes are directly visible in the BIOS underneath the actual values being changed, although to get an extra CPU multiplier for the i5-750, EIST needs to strangely be left to "Auto".
The memory timings are easy to see, but there's no reference settings within the timing changes - it's in another sub directory elsewhere. If you're unfamiliar with the memory timing codes, then this could prove a little more difficult to know what number goes where. In addition, there's no way to change the timings of both memory channels at once, unlike other boards we've used that allow one change for everything which is usually what we want to do.
Overclocking profiles can be saved, loaded and named from the eight available slots, but we couldn't see a way to get these profiles onto a USB key or hard drive to share like other companies are now doing. While not an important feature, it shows MSI is still playing catchup a little. MSI's M-Flash, which offers in-BIOS updating works, but on our own experiences we've found it still to be a little less reliable than the competition. Also, it's still nowhere near as obvious to understand what is going on - you get there in the end, though.
The CPU phase (DrMOS) and LED control are BIOS level selections here, meaning they don't require additional software in the OS to work. On the plus side, it means this is always working and it'll work well when overclocking too (however we'd disable it given the vDroop issue we have highlighted on the overclocking page).
Testing Methods
With the exception of SiSoft Sandra and Lavalys Everest, all of our benchmarks use real applications that give you a great idea of how well a product fares when performing the tasks you're likely to want it for. We are also focusing a lot more of our time on evaluating the overclocking potential and 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 looping 3DMark06. This is to ensure that all parts of the system are stressed simultaneously over a period of time.Most poorly engineered products fail within the first couple of hours, or even minutes, and along with the other test results this will allow us to make a conscious decision on whether a motherboard is worth your money.
Click to enlarge
Test Setup:
Motherboards:
- MSI P55 GD65 (Intel P55, 1.41 BIOS)
- Asus P7P55 Deluxe (Intel P55, 0504 BIOS)
Common Components:
- Intel Core i7 870 (45nm, 8MB L3 cache, 22x133MHz; 2.93GHz, Turbo Mode and Intel power saving states left at BIOS default settings. When overclocked, these were disabled)
- Stock: Corsair 4GB DDR3 1,600MHz C8 at motherboard SPD settings, Overclocked: G.Skill Perfect Storm 2,200MHz C8, custom timings
- Zotac GeForce GTX 260! AMP
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB Toxic
- PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
- Seagate 7200.11 1TB SATA hard drive
- Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
- Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP2
- Intel inf 9.1.1.1013
- Nvidia Forceware 190.38 WHQL
- ATI Catalyst 9.7 WHQL
Overclocking
Overall overclocking performance was good for the GD65 with the latest (at the time of writing) 1.41 BIOS, however it has to be noted the board does suffer from a more considerable vDroop than we've seen on other boards.It needs extra voltage to compensate and despite enabling the vDroop compensation in the BIOS (which is a must for overclocking), we found a 0.05V drop under load when pushing either a Core i5 or i7 chip heavily. Clearly, the DrMOS MOSFETs are struggling a little.
Pushing for maxmium CPU frequency we hit a stability wall at 190MHz base clock, with a 22x multiplier and 1.45V core voltage, 1.42V VTT, 1.9V PLL and 1.12V PCH voltage. With the i7-870 this yielded 4.18GHz, but with the Core i5-750 that's more limited by multipliers, this could only reach 3.99GHz. Not a huge worry - that's still fast, but we know Lynnfield CPUs are good for 4.2 to 4.4GHz with the right cooling, voltage and motherboard. The MSI did allow the extra single increment in multiplier to 21x, from 20x, for the Core i5-750 when EIST is set to Auto, which is certainly a plus, but then again the Asus board allows two to 22x multiplier.
Aiming for maxmium base clock by dropping the multiplier we saw a much more surprising result though. When chatting to MSI's engineers in Taiwan while I was running the overclock for advice and feedback, they said they'd seen only 210MHz from an i5-750. However, we found our board kept going and hit a 217.5MHz base clock, but suffered a sharp stability drop off above this value. To reach this, we ramped the VTT to 1.48V, but lowered the CPU voltage to 1.4V in order not to cook the poor thing, despite the Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler working admirably.
Click to enlarge
As for maximum memory performance, we were actually a little let down. While the Asus cruised through 2.3GHz and couldn't quite scrape 2.4GHz with our DIMMs, we could only manage a measly 2,154MHz from 2,200MHz memory at timings higher than what it was rated to do: 9-9-9-27-2T at 1.75V. The MSI GD65 is clearly not the board for those looking to push the extremes and is instead for those more limited by the 10x multiplier in a Core i5-750 CPU. With that in mind, you'll be able to hit around 2,000MHz, on condition you can reach that magic 200MHz base clock.
Power Consumption
Power Consumption for the MSI is notably better than the Asus under load: clearly the physically less DrMOS hardware works more efficiently than Asus' T-Probe and EPU - the latter is software driven and we'd rather do without it, frankly. In comparison, the MSI DrMOS design works right out the box, it doesn't need any software so it doesn't matter what OS you use and it's several watts more power efficient in an apples to apples comparison. That's a win in our book.
Clearly we have yet to test more boards to know how it holds out against more competition, but the starting trend is clearly positive.
Lavalys Everest 5.0.1667 Memory Performance
Website: LavalysMSI's BIOS automatically set the Corsair 1,600MHz CL8 memory at 1,333MHz CL9, just like the Asus board, but its core performance is still better in all areas of raw numbers and latency. Overclocked the Asus was pushed to a 200MHz base clock, affording a higher CPU-northbridge clock and memory performance of 2,000MHz at CL8, however the MSI at 190MHz base clock and 1,900MHz CL8 memory actually generates a slightly faster result in everything bar write performance, but that's almost entirely dependent on base clock and CPU-northbridge clock so understandable.
SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2009 SP4 (15.125) Pro Business
Website: SisoftwareSisoft Sandra might say that both the boards performance almost identical at stock speeds, but the MSI obliterates the Asus when overclocked, as it also knocked several nanoseconds off the latency numbers in both cases too.
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.
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.
CPU performance is directly linked to SATA throughput to some degree, and when we test the raw performance, usually the system is generally in an idle state so the CPU clocks down. We test the boards with the most recent, retail BIOS, but "out the box" with the manufacturer's choice of settings.
Unlike the Asus board though, the MSI clearly does not compromise its SATA performance in the same way, and from the evidence above, we would say it is likely engineered to be at a higher clock for longer. However, we didn't notice this specifically and as we've seen on the previous page, this clearly does not affect the power consumption either.
MSI seems to have solved its previous, continual JMicron performance issues and yield a half decent result of approximately 162MB/sec. Its core SATA performance is close to the 220MB/sec the Intel X25-M maxes out at too, so all in all the core, raw disk performance for MSI is very good.
Unlike the Asus board though, the MSI clearly does not compromise its SATA performance in the same way, and from the evidence above, we would say it is likely engineered to be at a higher clock for longer. However, we didn't notice this specifically and as we've seen on the previous page, this clearly does not affect the power consumption either.
MSI seems to have solved its previous, continual JMicron performance issues and yield a half decent result of approximately 162MB/sec. Its core SATA performance is close to the 220MB/sec the Intel X25-M maxes out at too, so all in all the core, raw disk performance for MSI is very good.
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.
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.
While the MSI USB performance is slower than the Asus board by a couple of MB/sec, it's actually the Asus that's faster than we'd expect. Normally USB 2.0 tops out at 34.8-9MB/s so the MSI is typical for an Intel board.
GIMP Image Editing
Website: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)The MSI and Asus boards are evenly matched at stock speeds in image encoding, on average, and the extra base clock and core speed works for Asus' advantage when overclocked as it shaves a tidy nine seconds, or four per cent off the MSI performance.
Handbrake H.264 Encoding
Website: HandBrake
Our test uses HandBrake - an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows - to encode a high resolution MPEG-2 video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests multi-threaded CPU and memory subsystem performance.
Our test uses HandBrake - an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows - to encode a high resolution MPEG-2 video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests multi-threaded CPU and memory subsystem performance.
At stock speeds the MSI slithers ahead - it's mostly because of its memory bandwidth advantage, but the clock frequency helps the Asus board when overclocked as it claws back virtually the same advantage.
Website: 7-Zip
Multitasking Performance
Website: MPC-HCWebsite: 7-Zip
The MSI clearly strikes a whopping ten per cent advantage when overclocked, although just slightly at stock speeds compared to the Asus.
File Compression & Encryption:
Website: WinRAR
We used the Intel X25-M SSD to provide a uniform performance base between all the boards tested in file compression and decompression.
We used the Intel X25-M SSD to provide a uniform performance base between all the boards tested in file compression and decompression.
Again both boards perform almost identically when at stock speeds, but consistently the Asus is faster by five seconds or around ten per cent in the two tests.
File Decompression & Decryption:
The two RAR archives created during the compression and encryption tests were then decompressed and decrypted.
Overall we think the MSI loses out to the P7P55D Deluxe here, as it commands a slight and consistent advantage when overclocked. Clearly the SATA performance picks up when under load as we use the same Intel X25-M SSD in this test as we do to check the raw bandwidth numbers.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom time demo recorded on the Harbour map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.
For our testing, we set all the settings to High. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1,680 x 1,050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.
We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom time demo recorded on the Harbour map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.
For our testing, we set all the settings to High. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1,680 x 1,050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.
Crysis performance is back and forth between the two boards across the single and multi-GPU tests at stock speeds. Out of the three scenarios the MSI draws a lead with Nvidia cards installed, however Asus crawls back to lead in CrossFire.
Far Cry 2
Publisher: Ubisoft
Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game patched to version 1.02, and used the in-built "Action" gameplay demo set to Ultra-Very High settings under DirectX 10.
Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game patched to version 1.02, and used the in-built "Action" gameplay demo set to Ultra-Very High settings under DirectX 10.
In Far Cry 2 the MSI has a consistently slightly faster average frame rate, but the Asus board gives a marginally smoother experience with a higher minimum in every situation. The differences are again minimal though.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom time demo recorded on the Harbour map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.
For our testing, we set all the settings to High. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1,680 x 1,050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.
We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom time demo recorded on the Harbour map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.
For our testing, we set all the settings to High. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1,680 x 1,050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.
Overclocked, and again the MSI leads with a single GeForce GTX 260 installed, but the Asus draws out a slight lead in both SLI and CrossFire, with both higher averages and minimums.
Far Cry 2
Publisher: Ubisoft
Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game patched to version 1.02, and used the in-built "Action" gameplay demo set to Ultra-Very High settings under DirectX 10.
Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game patched to version 1.02, and used the in-built "Action" gameplay demo set to Ultra-Very High settings under DirectX 10.
By all accounts, the MSI loases out to the Asus board which has either a faster average, minimum or both, by at least a couple of frames per second. Again its slight advantage in base-clock and CPU-NB frequency gives it the edge in multi-GPU situations.
Stability
As usual we reset the BIOS to its default values and loaded up both 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 heatsink has to withstand very little airflow and still keep cool.We found the MSI board ran 3DMark06 for the full 24 hours, however Prime95 gave out and closed itself after 15 hours. Overall the system was still stable and usable though, so it's a very good, but partial result for MSI.
Value and Conclusion
MSI has almost nailed a fantastic board, but like the X58 Eclipse we looked at last November, it's just missing a few crucial things. Core features like reset and clear CMOS buttons should absolutely be there if more exotic additions like base-clock and OC Genie buttons are. The weirdly placed seventh SATA seems like a bit of an afterthought, and would have been perfectly placed a lot higher on the board to for SATA optical drives.The OC Genie is very easy to use, works exactly as advertised, and generates quite a good result for us, although it could use some more aggressive settings perhaps because it's still several hundred MHz short of what we know the board and CPU can do. We realise MSI is most likely playing it safe and the people that are likely to use this simple option will no doubt be chuffed at the free performance gain for all the effort of straightening an index finger and extending an arm.
MSI's power consumption numbers again appear excellent, but we'll hold off saying more than that until we've seen other boards before we make further claims. We do commend MSI for not playing the willy waving numbers game and using a more "normal" set of power hardware to get the job done, but then again, the DrMOS hardware appears to suffer from a more substantial vDroop than the competition under heavily load when overclocked.
Clearly it's closer to "just enough" to get the job done than having an excess. While the board didn't overclock as well as the (much more expensive) Asus, we don't think it was power related so much because it can be successfully compensated with more voltage, and at least more extreme overclockers have the GD80 option to look at too. We also love the V-Check Points, and the base clock buttons work very well, but if we're pedantic we would say that Asus had these on its RoG boards a few years ago. Then again, those never made it off the Asus RoG class until recently.
For the only CPU we currently recommend, the i5-750, we feel enthusiasts will be a little more limited with the GD65. It's certainly "enough", but it could be more in terms of base clock and memory performance. Having oodles of base clock with no total CPU performance is only good if you're looking to stretch your wizard's sleeve on the internet.
Up to this point, evertthing is hunky dory, but what MSI is absolutely missing is some form of BIOS backup and redundency. For a board in 2009 of this cost not to have an efficient BIOS recovery mechanism is sacrilegious. We unluckily bricked one board of the two boards we got (hey, it happens - we get every manufacturer failing at one point or other) using the inbuilt M-Flash program and found the supposed recovery technique was as effective as a chocolate teapot, and didn't even taste half as good. What have we got left? Sending it back to MSI, and if we weren't lucky enough to have them on our speed dial, we'd be thoroughly miffed.
Click to enlarge
The bottom line is that the layout is great and aesthetically it's fantastic, but we're polarised by MSI's GD65 more than any other board we've seen to date. If it didn't have these silly little oversights it would absolutely be a recommended, even if £130 is quite a lot to part with because it was no more than a good P45 board when they launched. For the most part though, the GD65 is worth it, but its current overclocking capablities might limit Core i5-750 users a little, and the BIOS recovery issue pokes us in a way that moves it away from being a definitive choice to just a strong contender on your short list in a highly competitive market.
Features 8/10
Performance 7/10
Value 7/10
Overall 8/10
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