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 pulled out all the stops in designing P55-GD80. This motherboards sports the new P55 chipset supporting the Lynnfield Core i5 and Core i7 processors. From its sharp looks to its bullet proof design, this board looks about ready to take its X58 based brethren head on.

Introduction

MSI is a veteran component manufacturer in the PC gaming and enthusiast space, known for its high performance products and innovative designs. With each new generation of products, MSI releases new technological innovations on to the world with one goal in mind, to get the highest performance possible out of the target platform. Their P55 based line looks to do just that.

The MSI P55-GD80 motherboard supports the LGA1156 line of Intel processors via the integrated Intel P55 chipset. The chipset itself has in-built support for the following technologies: Intel LGA 1156 Core i7 and Core i5 processors, DDR3 memory operating in Dual Channel mode up to 1333MHz officially, and either NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX graphics mode using matched video cards.

World-renown mainboard and graphics card manufacturer, MSI, has attracted the attention of major worldwide media and power users since the launch of its Xtreme Speed P55 mainboard series. Not only does this series boast a total feature set and specs, but the Xtreme Speed P55 features many MSI-exclusive performance enhancing designs. The series has received wide media acclaim for its outstanding overclocking capabilities, especially the P55 series’ flagship product, the P55-GD80. Featuring DrMOS, SuperPipe and OC Genie, this mainboard's overclocking capabilities are truly amazing. The Taiwan overclocker, Coolaler, was able to overclock the Intel Core i7 860 CPU (2.8GHz)to 5.39 GHz with MSI’s P55-GD80 mainboard, breaking the world record and pushing the processor 92% past its set frequency. This performance surpasses the competition, and beautifully demonstrates MSI's P55 series overclocking prowess.

Intel X58 based motherboards are the only motherboard chipsets that are available to support the Core i7 CPUs which are the fastest CPUs on the consumer side of things on the computer market at the moment. One thing about the initial wave of X58 motherboards is the lack of a micro-ATX solution besides one exception which is hardly a trend, as most manufacturers were pushing SLI and Crossfire support on their X58 motherboards and offering them for the high end of the enthusiast market. MSI has long been known as a motherboard maker that also has delved into video cards, notebooks, Netbooks (MSI Wind) and other computer related equipment. MSI and other motherboard manufacturers have recently begun releasing X58 micro-ATX boards for those that want that form factor. Today's review is on the MSI X58M motherboard with the micro-ATX form factor.

Genie in a Bottle

Today, we are following up with MSI's P55 offering, the P55-GD80. The P55 chipset is of course a step down from Intel's range-topping X58 chipset, and will be paired with Intel's Lynnfield processors. Naturally, the P55 chipset is aimed at the slightly less demanding performance mainstream user segment, and has a slightly different feature set than the X58 chipset (a few new additions, but also some departures mostly due to processor differences). You can read up on these here.

However, despite Intel's positioning of the P55 chipset as one for 'mainstream' users, the MSI P55-GD80 motherboard that we have here is packed with numerous features that are more commonly seen on enthusiast-class motherboards. Apart from MSI's familiar DrMOS integrated Driver-MOSFET package, which helps improve power efficiency (you can read up more about it here ), there's also two new features that MSI are showing off for the first time: OC Genie and SuperPipe.

As its name suggests, OC Genie is a one-button overclocking solution. By pushing the OC Genie button, the onboard OC Genie chip will calculate the optimum settings of your system and overclock the CPU and memory accordingly, all in a single second. It sounds like magic and we can't wait to give it a go ourselves when the time for a full review comes.

On the other hand, there is SuperPipe, which are essentially thicker heatpipes. Just by looking, you can tell that these 8mm thick heatpipes are chunkier than those found on other motherboards, and MSI claims it can improve cooling efficiency by up to a massive 90%. Again this is something we're looking forward to check out in actual testing on the final board revision.

This is the MSI P55-GD80, it packs a lot for a board based on a mainstream chipset, and we'll be taking a closer look at what it offers in the following photos.

Good Things, Small Packages, Cliche Cliche

The AMD 785G chipset has been one of the worst kept secrets in some time, and while the official release is still some days away, we are seeing the first motherboards featuring this chipset hit the market.  Newegg had a couple of 785G boards for sale for about half a day before pulling them down, and several customers were able to get their hands on these "leaked" units.  While I cannot talk about the actual chipset itself, it is no secret that it is an entirely new product from the chipset folks at AMD.  DX10.1, improved UVD, and more performance in modern games are the hallmarks of the 785G chipset.

Micro Star International is a Tier-1 motherboard manufacturer based in Taiwan that manufactures hardware for computers and computer related equipment. Their boards are popular among the enthusiasts and they have been around since 1986. Their motto is Quality Products Create Faithful Customers.

AMD recently launched their AM3 CPUs including the Phenom II X4 810, Phenom II X3 720 and Phenom II 710. Their competition with Intel is currently at the mid-range of the market as their CPUs are not performance competitive with the latest fastest Core i7 CPUs. To go along with the AM3 launch there has been a launch of AM3 motherboards to support DDR3 memory. Today's review is of the new MSI 790GX-G65 board.