MSI X79A-GD65 Motherboard Review

[siopao1984]

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MSI X79A-GD65 Motherboard Review by VR-Zone.com

Introduction



It's only been a few days since the launch of Intel's long awaited, if not knee trembling exciting Sandy Bridge-E platform. Already there are a plethora of X79 motherboards competing for the attention and the cash of PC enthusiasts. Today we take a look at the MSI X79A-GD65, a mid range board targeting the budget conscious users.

Before we dive into the MSI board, it's well worth taking a look at our articles here and here covering the platform itself.

Like all other Sandy Bridge-E boards, the X79A-GD65 uses the X79 'Patsburg' chipset, supporting second generation Core i7 processors for the LGA2011 socket. The model we'll be reviewing is the four dimm version. MSI also has an eight dimm version of the GD65 available.

Below is a general overview of the X79 platform. The increased number of PCIe lanes and quad channel memory support are the major distinguishing features over the mainstream P67/Z68 platforms.



Specifications of the MSI X79A-GD65

[siopao1984]

A Closer Look at the MSI X79A-GD65

A quick glance at any motherboard box should tell you instantly about the major features on offer. MSI is pushing the military class theme and PCIe 3.0 support with prominent logos with detailed benefits and testing information on the rear. MSI is keen to promote the the fact that their components have undergone a strict regimen of qualification testing.





The board comes with a decent bundle of accessories. There's an eSATA adapter with supporting cables, additional twin USB 3.0 port bracket and a full complement of SATA cables with Molex to SATA power adapters. MSI also includes small adapters to connect a multimeter to the voltage read points. Topping it all off is a flashy certificate stating the board has met stringent testing criteria, qualifying for the military class designation.



Moving onto the board itself, we have four DIMM slots unofficially supporting up to 2400Mhz DDR3. There are three PCIe 3.0 compliant x16 slots, two PCIe 2.0 slots and a single 1x slot. On the storage support side we have the standard two SATA 6GB/s ports and four SATA 3GB/s ports from the X79 chipset. There are an additional two SATA 6GB/s ports courtesy of a ASMedia ASM1061 chip.



The rear I/O panel is fairly standard. There are a total of eight USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a single Gigabit LAN, Firewire and analogue audio jacks. MSI offers a choice of S/PDIF and coaxial digital audio outputs. Also present is a legacy PS/2 port and a CMOS clear button.

[siopao1984]

A Closer Look Part II

The board has several features that will make the overclockers happy. Most noteworthy is the inclusion of direct base clock control buttons for real time adjustments. The buttons work in 0.1Mhz increments giving precise control of the system and is an excellent feature when benchmarking on the limits of stability. Also present is a debug LED readout and voltage read points for connection to a multimeter. The OC Genie button is a one touch overclocking button that increases CPU and memory frequencies and voltages automatically. There is an onboard power switch but strangely no reset switch which we feel is an oversight. Also present is a switch seen at the far left which manually switches between the two BIOS'.



There are three PCIe 3.0 compliant x16 slots, two PCIe 2.0 slots and a single 1x slot. Of course there is support for Crossfire and SLI in three way configurations.

We quickly tested 3 way SLI with a set of GTX580 Lightnings and initially discovered we had no display when the output was connected to the first card. After a quick look in the manual we realised the requirement to connect the monitor to the third, or bottom located card. This is only required for 3 way setups. For single and dual cards, connecting to the first or topmost card is fine.



Here we see several of the I/O controller chips. Audio duties are handled by a standard ALC892 8-channel controller with THX TruStudio Pro support. Firewire is controlled by a VIA VT6315N chip supporting a port at the rear with an onboard optional plug for an additional port. There is a single LAN port provided by a Realtek RTL8111E controller. Also seen here is a commonly used NEC USB 3.0 controller that handles the two rear ports.



MSI is heavily promoting their Military Class theme in recent times. The PWM section of the GD65 does indeed appear to be solid, featuring what MSI confirms is a 10+2+2 phase configuration. The board incorporates DrMOS II components which integrates the driver and MOSFETs into a single package. Also present are tantalum capacitors and super ferrite chokes. The board should have no problem powering even heavily overclocked CPU's.



In contrast to many competitors who are placing hefty heatsinks or fans on their X79 boards, The GD65 heatsink looks positively skinny in comparison. Even when pushing voltages well beyond stock for the CPU and PCH, these heatsinks were merely warm with a fan blowing over the socket area. The heatsink is screwed down and makes excellent contact with the X79 chip and MOSFETS.

[siopao1984]

The Click BIOS II

Here we see the default UEFI BIOS screen. Most features are arranged into categories for easy access. Navigating around the BIOS is simple, its logically laid out and well featured without being bloated. On the right there's the browser section, which requires a windows app to be installed. We'd prefer to see something else here, perhaps integrated Memtest or something like Prime95 or Linpack for testing an overclock.



Selecting settings and then the advanced tab shows the hardware monitoring, peripherals and power management options.



Below is the monitoring page.



Below we have the fun part, the overclocking settings. Most of these settings are similar to what you'd find on a P67 or Z68 board. The biggest difference is of course the base clock ratio adjustment which can be set to 100, 125 and 166. It will be a very important setting when the upcoming quad core 3820 CPU's arrive.



Scrolling down further we have more voltage controls.



At the bottom of the OC page we have menus for the CPU specifications and features. The memory-Z function shows the SPD information of the RAM modules



Here is the CPU features page. The features are broadly similar to the setting found on the regular Sandy Bridge platform.



Here we see the the overclocking profiles section. A total of six profiles can be saved. New to this generation of MSI boards is the ability to import and export profiles to a USB drive. This feature allows users to share their profiles in a forum for example.



The utilities section includes the M-Flash bios flashing utility, a HDD backup feature and a tool called Live Update which connects to the internet to check for BIOS updates. To use the hdd backup and live update, the MSI 'Winki' windows software must be installed.



Software

MSI bundles several utilities with the X79A-GD65. One of the apps is called Click BIOS II which is a software recreation of the BIOS. Many settings can be changed although we found the system had to be restarted more often than not, even for a base clock change, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a windows based app.

Also included is the MSI control centre which performs many of the same functions as the Click BIOS app. Note that this app requires the Intel Management Engine utility to function.

[ehcastro3]

Nice...unsa ang version ani na naa'y 8 slots for Memory (for 2 sets Quad channel)? GD80?

[siopao1984]

Test Setup



For comparison purposes, we used the Asus Rampage IV Extreme. Although it is far beyond the price range of the MSI and not a competitor, it is a useful reference board to test for efficiency. Other than the video encoding test, all benchmarks were run three times with the median result being the one reported.

Here are the 4ghz overclock settings.



Benchmarks



Fritz Chess is a highly threaded benchmark capable of utilising the full 12 threads of the 3960X. The boards are neck and neck as is to be expected at identical settings.



There is nothing to separate the boards here. All SuperPi 8M runs were within a fraction of a second.



Cinebench is a common benchmark used for evaluating rendering performance. As is the case in all the other benchmarks, the boards are virtually identical.



For this test we used a 33minute 1080p video and converted it to an Mp4 at a resolution of 1024x576 suitable for playback on an Ipad. Here is one where the X79A GD65 was able to eek out a close win, if only by a couple of seconds.

[siopao1984]

Benchmarks continued

Here we have the AIDA64 cache and memory benchmarks. It is difficult to take much away from these results. AIDA64 seems to have some performance issue with the X79 platform and it doesn't reflect the extra bandwidth on offer from the quad channel architecture. Given the platform is barely out of the womb, we'd expect this to be resolved in the near future.

First is the Asus R4E, second is the MSI GD65.





Below is a test of the X79 SATA III performance using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64. To maintain accuracy in testing, the 120gb Kingston HyperX SSD was secure erased to remove all data before each test. This probably isn't healthy for the SSD, but it provides an apples to apples comparison. The first result is from the Rampage IV Extreme, and the second from the GD65.





The GD65 trails a little here, particularly in the 4k random tests. The tests were repeated with the results being similar indicating the GD65 has a little ground to make up in SATA III performance.



3D06 is heavily CPU limited with a card like a GTX580 Lightning making it a good test of the whole system. The Asus board got its small advantage from the Canyon flight test, indicating a little better 3D efficiency.



The GD65 trails ever so slightly again in 3DMark 11. The physics test is seeing good improvement thanks to the extra cores of the Sandy Bridge-E chips.



AvP is a GPU limited game. You would expect the results to be similar and they are.



Resident Evil 5 isn't a modern or difficult game to run but it responds to CPU clocks and makes a decent complete system test.

Other than the SATA test, the general conclusion is that the MSI X79A GD65 is competitive in CPU and memory intensive work and a tiny bit behind in 3D efficiency, although the difference is results is pretty much negligible. SATA performance is really the only one where the GD65 lags a little. These are the sorts of things that can be improved as the BIOS matures. MSI has the makings of a solidly performing board. It just needs those few tweaks that would really allow it to shine performance wise against what may well be the best board in the market in the Rampage IV Extreme.

[siopao1984]

Overclocking

We were forced to be a little conservative with overclocking. High ambient temperatures prevented us from pushing the CPU as far we would have liked on the Intel watercooler.

We began first with memory overclocking, attempting to push a 4x4gb configuration as far as possible. We managed to pass 2300Mhz, but couldn't acheive any real stability. We ended up at 2296Mhz with1.35vtt, 1.35 vsa and 1.7Vdimm , still an impressive bump over the Z68 platform, but not at the level we were able to acheive with the Rampage IV Extreme.



With 2x2gb of Kingston 2250Mhz we hit a bit of a wall at around 2360Mhz. We got the same sticks to 2480 on the R4E. We forwarded our configuration and settings to MSI who quickly informed us that this memory was not optimized for in the BIOS, and promised a fix. Kudos to MSI for acting so quickly.



Getting the board to run in the reasonable 4-4.5Ghz range is an absolute breeze. The 2133 memory multi worked straight away with minimal tweaking with a 4x4gb configuration. Then its simply a matter of pushing the CPU multi with a bit of voltage while keeping an eye on temperatures. Its very similar to the regular Sandy Bridge platform which is probably the easiest platform to overclock ever.

For a bit of fun we ran 3DMark Vantage with triple GTX580 Lightnings at a CPU core clock of 4750. Temperatures were hitting 75+ after the Vantage CPU test so we stopped from pushing further. The 3960X really has some power in this benchmark! Add in the extra PCIe lanes and the GD65 can be a really nice multi GPU board.

[siopao1984]

Conclusion

The MSI X79A-GD65 is a solid board. It works well and it's stable. You won't find the bells and whistles found on some of the higher priced boards but then you'd expect to pay a premium for those features. It has shown enough in its infancy to make for a good 24/7 gamer or air overclocker, if not being one for the benchmarking crowd. We expect the GD65 to come in at the lower end of the price spectrum which counts strongly in its favor.

Performance wise the board is competitive in CPU and memory intensive work but a little behind in SATA performance. In reality the end user may never notice it. The board was consistently a tiny bit behind the Rampage IV Extreme in 3D although a frame here or there won't be noticed. It will be interesting to see what effect PCIe 3.0 has in the future once products that support it arrive.

Overclocking wise the board is not in the top tier... yet. We would have liked to see the board perform well out of the gate given its overclocker centric features such as the direct clock control and voltage read points. MSI is hard at work improving the overclocking of their X79 boards, particularly in the area of memory overclocking and compatibility. These concerns are relevant only to a small section of the community however. Users looking to push their chips and memory to the limit may want to splash the cash on a board such as the Gigabyte UD7 or Rampage IV Extreme.

Bang for buck is where the GD65 will excel. A 3930K with a bit of overclocking and a graphics card or two will make for a really strong system. An upgrade to an Ivy Bridge-E CPU in a year with a PCIe 3.0 graphics card and you're all set to have a top machine for a good couple of years. When you think of it in those terms, A Sandy Bridge-E system built with a good solid board like the X79A-GD65 suddenly looks pretty good.

Global availability and SRP's of the MSI X79A-GD65 4D model will follow shortly.

[fern-pewee]

wow nice one! how much is the price for this baby!?