Specs and features

Alright lads, meet the MSI Big Bang Fuzion

You've been able to grasp by now that this motherboard is based off the high-end P55-GD80 model (ready for LGA 1156 Core i3/i5/i7 processors). The Big Bang Fuzion motherboard comes with a dark and evil black PCB design with a cooling system that features SuperPipe technology (passive). Much like its little sister the board boasts Dr MOS and APS (Active Phase Switching).

We again spot the handy OC Genie overclocking function and, as stated on the previous page, a Lucid Hydra 200 chip has now been embedded providing not only 16 extra PCIe lanes but adds the ability to mix and match different graphics cards.

The MSI Big Bang Fuzion comes equipped with four memory slots rated at even DDR3-2133 (overclocked) and three PCI-Express x16 slots that thus provide 3-way SLI and CrossFireX support. You'll nearly get lost counting but you'll get ten SATA II ports and then another two eSATA ports. Obviously the board comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet and the other GD80 features like V-Check points, Power, Reset, Green Power and Clear CMOS buttons, and a FireWire connector.

To complement the board even further the Big Bang Fuzion comes bundled with a PCIe x1 Quantum Wave audio card that supports THX TruStudio PC and Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0. Also you will spot an OC Dashboard (external) control pod device that enables users to do some quick, on-the-fly overclocking with the touch of a couple of buttons.

The motherboard comes with a 14-phase power circuit with standard solid-state capacitors. This board has a lot of overclock friendly features, such as on-board controls for clock-speeds, clear-CMOS, OC-Genie, a DIP switch to control voltages, and voltage-sensing points that make measuring voltages convenient.

Make no mistake, the design and implementation of this Fuzion might look like the P55 GD80, but the board design is different. Let's talk about the P55 chipset empowering the Big Bang Fuzion for a minute though.

The P55 PCH - Platform Controller Hub

To understand the product we'll be reviewing today, let's first discuss the heart of the Big Bang Fuzion, the P55 PCH controller HUB. The P55 motherboard chipset is just one chip, no more North and Southbridge. Interesting to learn is that the P55 chipset connects to the processor directly through DMI (Direct Media Interface), and that's different from X58 where it connects directly to the QPI link.

• X58 = QPI bus LGA1366, 2 QPI links, 3xDDR3, plus power.
• P55 = DMI bus, LGA1160/1156, 1 DMI link, 2xDDR3, PCI-E connections, plus power.

The P55 chip has a lot of righteousness embedded in it: we see an all-time first -- integrated PCIe controller for x16 or two eight-speed PCIe cards, when it comes to input / output capabilities we are talking about support for 14 USB 2.0 ports with integrated USB 2.0 Rate matching hubs, 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports and integrated Gigabit LAN Ethernet.

The 16 PCIe lanes especially are on the shy side for multi-GPU configurations. As such MSI adds a NF200 chip here to gain more PCIe lanes and thus bandwidth.

The chipset also supports Integrated Clocking Buffer Through Mode, provides Thermal Sensor Data via SMBUS for discrete Fan Control Solutions and Intel Matrix Storage Technology 9.0. The new Intel Matrix Storage has a new user interface for managing all storage related tasks, support for RAID 0,1,5 and 10, rapid recover technology.

DDR3 wise 1333 MHz is supported straight out of the box, but running the memory at 1600, 1866 or even 2000+ MHz should be no issue either. Speaking of memory, with the arrival of Core i7 870, 860, the new Clarkdale Core i5 and Core i3 processors Intel made the decision to go back to a dual-channel memory interface. Don't get too worried here; the controller is so much faster than the old limited FSB tied memory controllers. You'll have 64-bit wide memory controllers which are connected directly with the processor's silicon. As a result this design brings a bandwidth utilization of as much as 90%, a nice jump from the FSB based 50-60% utilization for sure and as you'll learn in the benchmarks, MSI applied a little trick here, as memory bandwidth is just awesome.