MSI P55-GD65 - Mid-Range P55 for the Masses
by Gary Key on October 10, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup -
We utilized a wide variety of memory kits from Corsair, OCZ, Patriot, GSkill, Kingston, and Super Talent to verify memory compatibility on our test boards. Our OS and primary applications were loaded on the Kingston 80GB SSD drive and our games were operated off the WD 300GB VRaptor drive. We did a clean install of the OS and applications for each motherboard.
We chose the ASUS GTX275 video card and Corsair’s 750HX power supply. Our air cooler of choice is Thermalright’s Ultra 120 eXtreme, primarily for its exceptional performance during our overclocking tests. We also tested with the retail cooler and those results along with direct CPU comparisons can be found here.
Our 790FX/X58 results are provided for comparison only. For our test results we setup each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings. Otherwise all other settings are left on auto. The P55 and 790FX motherboards utilized 8GB of DDR3, while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7/920, i7/870, and i7/860 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.
We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5/750 stock setup as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported in current BIOS releases for this processor at a stock Bclk setting of 133. We had early BIOS releases that offered the native 1600 setting but stability was a serious problem and support was pulled for the time being. Performance is essentially the same between the two settings.
The AMD 790FX setup is slightly different as trying to run DDR3-1600 at CAS 7 timings on the 1:4 divider is extremely difficult. Without resorting to some serious overvolting and relaxing of sub-timings, we set our AMD board up at DDR3-1600 8-8-8-20 1T timings but with NB speed at 2200. The difference in performance between C7 and C8 DDR3-1600 is practically immeasurable in applications and games on this platform.
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MadMan007 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
er *video performance test. Whatever, not the place I'd expect to read about motherboard features or stuff that I'd epect to find in, ya know, regular motherboard reviews.vlado08 - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Gary, give us the POST time ot the boards. Not the OS load time but the POST time. And Sata to be in AHCI mode.Sunburn74 - Saturday, October 10, 2009 - link
This really was a great review. You tell the end user pretty much everything he needs to know. I love how you tested S3 resume. Its very frustrating to buy a board said to have great overclocking and find that you can only overclock 300mhz before S3 sleep goes haywire. If this board can be pushed to 190blck before S3 goes awry that is amazingly good. Gigabyte boards give you about 600mhz of head room before they start failing in that regard. I don't know about you, but I don't like having to to weigh the value of keeping a 4ghz processor vs being able to have a computer that sleeps.Also what gives with the floppy and the ide ports? Who still uses floppies?
Great review. I'll definitely keep this board in sight for when I build my p55 rig.
lopri - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Gary now writes practically critic-proof reviews.Zaitsev - Saturday, October 10, 2009 - link
Who still uses floppies? I still use floppies. I was pretty perturbed when I realized my P55 Asus board didn't have floppy support. Call me old school, but its compatible and works when you need sata drivers.MadMan007 - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Well I can see how floppy is deprecated unless you need drivers for XP (old now, although WHS needs a floppy for F6 drivers) or an alternative OS (not sure about the latter) but I'm with you on IDE. If they're going to have a JMicron controller on the board might as well include the IDE connector, it probably adds almost nothing more to the cost.There are particular instances where having an IDE optical drive is beneficial. I set up my SATA drives as AHCI and some bootable ISOs do not play well with AHCI (or RAID) setting. I do have a SATA optical but having an IDE optical for booting such ISOs without having to mess around in the BIOS is nice and it guarantees compatability. I guess you could use a SATA optical on the JMicron set to IDE but I had the IDE drive so...
I think it's funny that someone would 'look down on' a board for having an IDE connector..wtf? It's not hurting anything being there, just ignore it.
Makaveli - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Who still uses Floopies I do!! I won't do a bios flash on my motherboard from windows or flashing a videocard bios!!!However there are these really great devices called USB thumb drives which you can make bootable and guess what goodbye floppy!!
The only valid reason to keep using them is if your board doesn't allow booting from USB!
Welcome to 2009!
stmok - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Floppy disk for SATA drivers?Can't you slipstream them in a customised Windows install CD via nLite/vLite? (I've only seen it done to a WinXP install CD.)
MadMan007 - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
Good luck running nLite or vLite without an OS installed! ;) That's what second computers are for but still...tony montana - Saturday, October 10, 2009 - link
I old school too. The same on IDE. why I have to spend some bucks on a new DVD burner for 4 or 5 burns a year?This board has at least these ports at the right place for me, not on the bottom like others.
thanks for review, is one of the two mobos I have in mind to purchase and I have seen some tips I haven´t see in others reviews