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.
Sebuah ajang klasik untuk para overclocker - "MOA 2009" (Master Overclocking Arena) by MSI, mengundang semua overclocker dari 7 negara di Asia Tenggara (India+, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand & Vietnam ) untuk bertanding dalam BABAK PERTAMA, dimana para overcloctheletes (atlit overclocker) terhebat bertarung. Hanya 10 overcloctheletes yang akan tampil kembali di BABAK KEDUA. Setelah itu, hanya 3 overcloctheletes terbaik dari tiap wilayah yang bisa bertanding dengan para petarung kelas berat pada tahap final di Beijing Olympics Palace, China, 29 Agustus 2009.
Tema MOA 2009 adalah "IT Olympics". Pertandingan ini diawali dengan babak kualifikasi online regional yang akan diselenggarakan untuk Eropa, Asia, dan Amerika. Hanya mereka yang mampu melampaui BABAK PERTAMA (22 Juni sampai dengan 12 Juli) dianggap lolos ke BABAK KEDUA. Hati-hati, kompetisi ini berlangsung dengan cepat dan sengit. Eliminasi selalu mengancam dan hanya overcloctheletes terbaik yang dapat bertahan dan mengklaim gelar juara!
PHASE ONE has begun, overcloctheletes! Let the overclocking begin!!!
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.
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.
Apart from these features, the MSI P55-GD80 also has native support for CrossFireX and SLI, dual Gigabit LAN ports, a plethora of expansion ports and onboard control switches. So even if the P55-GD80 is based on a mainstream chipset, it has enough features to keep high-end users happy.
Intel released the Core i7 CPU and X58 chipset late last year for the enthusiasts. While the enthusiasts accepted the change in platform, a lot of people that want to buy a new computer don’t want the extra expense that a new CPU, memory, motherboard would require to buy. That is one reason Intel continues to sell CPUs based upon the Core 2 family of CPUs as they can offer them at lower prices satisfying the demand for the people not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars to replace everything.
Intel launched the P45 chipset as the mainstream counterpart for the X48 high-end chipset a couple of years back. The P45 spawned several chipsets with integrated graphics including the G45 and G41 which are based upon the Eaglelake codename. Micro Star Incorporated (MSI) has been in the computer component business a long time manufacturing motherboards, video cards and other components from a variety of manufacturers. Today’s product on the review bench is the G41TM-E43 motherboard based upon the G41 chipset.
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