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MSI Big Bang X58 XPower review -
Final Words & Conclusion
by on: 05/25/2010 02:00 PM [
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Final Words & Conclusion
There is a lot we can conclude on with the XPower motherboard. Fact is .. I like it, I really like it a lot. The sheer performance, the component usage, the layout and design all works out just really well.
The baseline performance is top notch, and when you start to overclock, then that's where things really take of. If you use the OC Genie then you can expect a very spicy overclock, with the motherboard arranging that all by itself.
You power down the PC. Then push the OC Genie button. And power on the PC. Now within a second or four your PC will start to post at its new impressive overclock. Our 3.33 GHz clocked Core i7 980X processor was then overclocked to 4.1 GHz while our memory was tweaked to its rated 1866 MHz CAS 8 -- pretty close to its optimal XMP profile. So yeah, that's enchanting. I really like the OC Genie function. If you need some extra power, use it. If you like to preserve power and do daily things on your PC, leave the PC at default (as if that would be slow with a system like this).
Manual overclocking does not suck either, enforcing liquid cooling on the processor allowed us to drive it even further than what we would normally achieve on air-cooling. We got to 4.5 GHz and that my friends is just a really good result. Reaching even higher performance would require us to use phase-change cooling, dry ice or liquid nitrogen. We did reach 4.7 GHz as well, but temperatures really became an issue for the processor. Well, we where happy @ a 100% stable 4.5 GHz.
Any negatives? Two dislikes I stumbled into. I am not fond of the touch buttons. I prefer the good old fashions button and not electro magnetic sensing stuff. Especially during overclocking you want a certain feel.
The second negative has to be the fact that MSI decided to not include NVIDIA NF200 ICs. The result is that we have six (!) PCI-Express slots, but we can't even use quad-SLI. The NF200 ICs are a mandatory requirement from NVIDIA, locked at driver level. Now I understand the logic of sheer added cost of the chips, which made MSI drop that option. Then again, if you chunk down so much money for a motherboard you certainly do not mind spending a little more. The fact that this motherboard is not supporting Quad SLI, much like the ASUS Rampage III Extreme, is a bit of a bummer for the professional overclockers trying to break records. These motherboards are supposed to be the best of the best, breaking 3DMark records and what not. As such you'll immediately stumble into that limitation. Quad Crossfire however IS possible, but scales worse than NVIDIA's latest and greatest.
These two things are the only remarks really for what otherwise seems to be a near perfect motherboard. Grand performance on everything, plenty of bandwidth for the USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G controller ... yeah we are very much impressed as the feature set is just astonishing.
The MSI Big Bang XPower motherboard is spectacular in all its ways, the really nice design, the exceptional arrangement of all apparatus used, the high class components, the functions, the wide variety of options, the overclockability, the OC Dashboard, the extra audio options with that added PCIe x1 Quantum Wave audio card that supports THX TruStudio PC and Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0
The Big Bang series motherboards are seriously impressive, the XPower being the most impressive one of them all. Now you'd probably expect a motherboard with these features and kit to rise to 400 EUR and above, availability is limited right now, but we spotted it as low as 300~325 USD/EUR already. And that's cheaper than other brand X58 enthusiast class motherboards with a whole lot more features all right.
It is a lot of money for a motherboard, true. But well worth investment we say. Two quirks aside, it's worthy of our best hardware award that we hand out very rare and only so often. Well done MSI, what a pleasure this motherboard was to work on.
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MSI Big Bang Z77 Mpower review
Today we test the Z77 MPower version, which as you'll notice is a pleasant upgrade from their Z77A-GD65 motherboard -- yet with an improved CPU VRM, more friendly warranties and a new black and yellow color-scheme which merges the Lightning series graphics cards and these motherboards a little closer together. Have a peek at what was just released, this is the MSI Big Bang Z77 MPower motherboard. You just have to be impressed by the overall looks ...
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MSI Big Bang X58 XPower review
We test and review the XPower from MSI. Last month Intel added a new processor in the line-up, the ever so strong Core i7 980 Extreme six-core processor. Seriously breathtaking, and to date the fastest consumer processor on the globe with very decent overclock potential as well. That was reason enough for most ODM to make new updates and revisions of the X58 chipset based motherboards, as next top the new processor we also have seen the gradual adoption of features like USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G. MSI is on of the ODMs releasing something really special, today we'll review the Big Bang X58 XPower motherboard. It is chucked full with the latest gadgets and features, it is equipped to make sure you get the very best overclock out of it and heck, even if you can't overclock, flick a button and the motherboard will do the work for you, completely automated.
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Today we test the Z77 MPower version, which as you'll notice is a pleasant upgrade from their Z77A-GD65 motherboard -- yet with an improved CPU VRM, more friendly warranties and a new black and yellow color-scheme which merges the Lightning series graphics cards and these motherboards a little closer together. Have a peek at what was just released, this is the MSI Big Bang Z77 MPower motherboard. You just have to be impressed by the overall looks ...
MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal review
Powered by Intel's P67 chipset, the MSI Big Bang Marhal comes with MSI's latest Military Class II design that makes use of a 24 phase (!) power SFC choke setup alongside the best quality Hi-c CAP's and Japanese made solid capacitors. Added to the mix for additional PCIe lanes is a Hydra chip, which also can be utilized to combine mix and match graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup. The board comes with 24-phase DrMOS power design, voltage monitoring points, an external overclock device called the OC dashboard, that all new EFI BIOS, dual-BIOS selectable with a simple button, and OC genie button that allows you to have say a 2500K processor run at 4200 with the flick of a switch. I'm not done though, we spot integrated audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi application (software) layer, ten SATA ports of which four are based on the all new SATA 6G. Thick heatpipe (passive and thus silent) cooling and more and more. This board is a true hardware enthusiast dream come true, or is it ?
MSI Big Bang X58 XPower review
We test and review the XPower from MSI. Last month Intel added a new processor in the line-up, the ever so strong Core i7 980 Extreme six-core processor. Seriously breathtaking, and to date the fastest consumer processor on the globe with very decent overclock potential as well. That was reason enough for most ODM to make new updates and revisions of the X58 chipset based motherboards, as next top the new processor we also have seen the gradual adoption of features like USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G. MSI is on of the ODMs releasing something really special, today we'll review the Big Bang X58 XPower motherboard. It is chucked full with the latest gadgets and features, it is equipped to make sure you get the very best overclock out of it and heck, even if you can't overclock, flick a button and the motherboard will do the work for you, completely automated.
MSI Big bang Fuzion (Lucid Hydra) review
MSI has yet another motherboard lined up in the P55 motherboard Big Bang series, ready and waiting for you. It's called the 'Fuzion' and comes with that much discussed Lucid Hydra 200 chip. Now the big deal about the Big Bang mainboard is that the board has that Lucid Hydra 200 chip that allows it to support multiple video cards of different brands and models at once. This in theory would allow you get the extra performance from your old video card and your new card even if one is NVIDIA and the other is ATI. The Hydra 200 is a real-time distributed processing engine that acts as an intelligent graphics load balancer.
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