MSI P55-GD80
Intel delivers new processors and new sockets, in this ever changing world of technology we get to test MSI’s latest upper echelon offering for Intel’s latest, the P55 chipset.
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Intel’s P55 chipset is the latest change handed to motherboard manufacturers. Not only do we have a new chipset, it comes with a new socket and (so far) 3 new confusing CPU’s. brings 2 variants of the P55 to bear, today we will look at their top of the line version, the P55-GD80. |
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The MSI P55-GD80 arrived with all of the fanfare warranted for a new board, pretty packaging and lots of cables / connectors to look through and play with. It’s funny how my first focus is what kind of cables and little add-ons (like JP1 jumpers and SLI / CrossFire cross connects) are included, the P55-GD80 does not disappoint. Packed in a multi-tiered box to protect the motherboard. There is a plethora of SATA cables, all with my favorite little metal clip to hold them snug to the motherboard and hard drive.
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Also included with the cables and what not is the eSATA adapter as well as the aforementioned JFP1 riser that is a godsend for those of us who hate connecting those FP cables onto the Motherboard. A CD that holds the latest drivers as well as a few programs that are neither a show stopper or a throwaway. The “Quick Reference” guides go over the basics of the motherboard, granted, anyone worth their salt would flip through the actual manual as that is where the meat is, that is where you hope to find the juicy tidbits of which memory module must go where (such is the case on the P55) and where in the BIOS do I go to start to have fun with the speeds…
There is a custom rear IO shield and a small bag containing some extension cables, which we will explain later. Here we also see the SLI / CrossFire connectors.
You’ll need a full sized ATX case in order to fit the MSI P55-GD80. I was a actually surprised to see that there were no stickers attached over the PCIe slots, maybe they finally got our message . At first glance, I didn’t detect any problem areas with the layout of the MSI P55-GD80. We’ll address each section as we move through the review.
First of all, lets take a look at Intel’s all new P55. Off the bat we see that the P55 chipset connects to the processor directly through DMI (Direct media interface) interface bus, very different from X58, where it connects directly to the QPI link. The P55 chip comes fully stocked: we see a first with integrated PCIe controller handling 16 lanes, this equates to x16 on a single graphics card or x8 speeds for dual PCIe cards. When it comes to input / output capabilities the P55 has built in support for 14 USB 2.0 ports with integrated USB 2.0 Rate matching hubs, 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports and an integrated Gigabit LAN Ethernet.
The P55 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. 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.
The MSI P55-GD80 sports the LGA-1156 socket, this new socket supports the latest processors from Intel, the i5 (Lynnfield) and i7 (Clarkdale) that use the LGA-1156 socket, these should not be confused with the i7 (Bloomfield) that utilizes the LGA-1366 socket, umm, what??? The P55 chipset, and hence the MSI P55-GD80 supports up to 16GB of memory. This is done using the 4 DIMM slots that support DDR3 at 1066, 1333, 1600, 1800, 2000 and 2133 speeds (1066 and 1333 are the default memory speeds).
The first section we will cover on the P55-GD80 is the Front left quadrant, here we will find your aforementioned 4 memory slots. Interestingly enough, while the memory must be installed in slots 1 and 3 first, slots 1 and 3 are not where you would think. The slot order, from CPU to the rear of the board is SLOT2 / SLOT1 / SLOT4 / SLOT3 (you can see this in the image). OK, moving on we also see the 24 pin power input and a nice little option MSI is calling “V-Switch” or Over Voltage Switch. This 4 pin switch allows you to override the BIOS limits for VCore, VTT, VDDR3 and PCH. Looking over the values that MSI allows you to select within BIOS I am somewhat confused, as the available values would void most warranties out there today. Is there something coming down the pipe and MSI has insider info on it? Next to the V-Switch is a voltage check block, this allows for a single point of reference to check those voltages, just in case you don’t trust the reported values in your BIOS.
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Moving to the Rear left quadrant we of course have the LGA-1156 socket, surrounding the CPU are several low profile capacitors as well as the DrMOS labeled SuperPipe cooling solution, which is marketed as 2x the size, therefore runs cooler, then that of other Heat Pipes. I must say that I rather like the break away MSI has done from the “Copper” heat pipes, the Blue/Pewter colors go nicely with the rest of the board. DrMOS is MSI’s varient on the 4 phase Standard MOSFET, claiming DrMOS is a single phase solution that is 400% faster, therefore netting the end user a high OC with cleaner power distribution. The clasping mechanism for the LGA-1156 socket is a shift from previous versions, note the CPU hold down must slide underneath the holding screw.
The Rear Right quadrant of the MSI P55-GD80 houses the PCIe slots as well as some PCI slots. You will also find your USB, Firewire (IEEE-1394) and Audio risers. The 3 x16 PCIe slots are configured as follows: Single x16 (x16 mode), 2 x16 cards (x8 / x8 mode), 3 x16 cards (x8 / x8 / x4, all PCIe x1 lanes are unusable). While this is less then ideal (x58 has more built in lanes) remember that the P55 chipset does not have a southbridge, this is all controlled directly from, in this case, the i5 CPU.
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The Front Right quadrant is where we find the solitary IDE connection as well as a plethora of SATA connections. On first glance you see that several of the SATA connectors are facing back instead of up, I am still on the fence with this positioning, while I like this design for IDE (the MSI P55-GD80 positions it’s sole IDE facing back), the SATA connector, being much smaller, did not truly get in the way when pointed up. With the inclusion of “locking” SATA cables, I am less apt to be negative about this alignment, as the cables are fairly secure and stay in place (older non-locking cables would easily fall out of these connectors). SATA 1-6 are supported by the P55, SATA 7 and 8 are supported by the JMicron JMB322.
There is also several buttons that MSI have included in this section, they are as follows: Clear CMOS / OC Genie / Power ON / Power Reset / Green Power / Base Clock Control.
Clear CMOS, Power ON and Power Reset are fairly self explanatory, the only thing you might be wondering is, where are the buttons. Well, MSI decided to go the path of electromagnetic touch pad, there are no physical buttons, you simply touch the motherboard directly, pretty slick. I will dive deeper on the others.
OC Genie: This must be pressed while the system is powered off, yet still plugged in. Pressing OC Genie (turns the light on) you will get an automatic OC the next time you power on your system. This is calculated by the OC Genie ASIC, it intelligently determines proper OC values and applies them on boot. Pressing the button a second time (turns the light off) your system will return to default speeds.
Green Power: Enables the settings within BIOS, typically to conserve as much energy as possible, yet perform the functions requested of the CPU and surrounding components.
Base Clock Control +/-: These buttons allow you to “on the fly” increase or decrease your base clock, therefore increasing or decreasing your OC. The issue here is that your VCore needs to be up to speed to handle the new base clock so you don’t freeze the system.
Now we move to the Rear I/O section where we have from left to right, top to bottom: Mouse / KB / Coax / Fiber S/PDIF out / 1394 / USB / USB / eSATA-USB combo / LAN / USB / LAN / USB / 6 port analog audio. Unique here is the eSATA-USB combo port, which of note, can be disabled in BIOS (along with the other USB ports) in order to protect from someone connecting an external eSATA / USB drive and stealing information from you.
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The underside of the MSI P55-GD80 is understated as it should be. Only a simple metal plate that supports the Foxconn LGA-1156 socket can be seen (more on that later).
The BIOS
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The MSI P55-GD80 uses the familiar AMI BIOS. There was a time I wasn’t wild about it but over time it has grown on me. Since we’re familiar with it, for the most part, the BIOS is similar to many other boards we’ve worked with, even when they are from different manufacturers. The menu is very intuitive, with each option opening a new page with further options for modification. Most of the items are straight forward, but there are a few areas of note. The Advanced BIOS features page is the first place you would go to to configure the boot order and some of the basic chipset features. You can enable or disable the boot logo as well as choosing a quick boot or something more verbose.
The H/W Monitor is an often neglected, but very important page in that you can keep close tabs on how your system is doing with temperatures, voltages and fan operation. While this page has never “saved” me, it is something I pay attention to on a fairly regular basis, especially on initial build to make sure I didn’t miss something.
The Green Power page is where we choose how we want the system to act when we have enabled Green Power. If used, the defaults are a good place to start, remember, while you want to be green, you still need to get your work done.
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The Cell Menu page is where the fun really begins. It is here where the majority of tweaks and tricks are done to improve performance. You can adjust the CPU FSB or ratio, if your processor is unlocked. There are several sub-menus for CPU and Memory manipulation, If doing things manually scares you, MSI’s OC Genie is designed to automatically adjust CPU/Memory to maximize system performance. You have the ability to store OC setups, be them via OC Genie or manual OC’s.
The M-Flash page is where you would update the BIOS using either a USB Flash Disk or an internal hard drive (Fat/Fat32 requirement to be read).
The Overclocking Profile page is where your OC’s are stored for your quick retrieval, I would store at least one OC here so that you have all of your tweaks and settings pre-set, ready to roll. The stored OC’s can be either manual or OC Genie configured.
Installing the OS
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Well, this is actually a two step process, as I am installing Windows 7 (32 bit) and Ubuntu 9.10. Windows 7 went without an hitch, the Driver CD did not have Windows 7 drivers, so I downloaded them directly from the MSI website. Once into Windows I installed MSI’s Live Update, this allowed me to make sure all of my firmware / drivers are the latest offered by MSI / Intel.
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As you can see, Live Update was out of date and had to be updated 
All of my other drivers were current, including the 1.5 BIOS I had installed shortly after receiving the motherboard.
Ubuntu 9.10 did not install as smoothly, it booted into the GUI from the LiveCD just fine, once there I could see my HD, which was still formatted NTFS, but for some reason when I launched the installer it could not identify any drives on my system. I booted directly into the install and once again, the Ubuntu Disk Manager could not see my Seagate HD. I moved the drive from the P55 SATA ports to the JMicron SATA ports to no avail. I finally downloaded the minimal install image, booted that from floppy and did a net-install of Ubuntu, that went flawless. The nice thing about building this way is that you get the latest on first boot, there typically is no other updates required, outside of ATI / nV driver updates of course.
Test Setup:
The MSI P55-GD80 will be equipped with an Intel i5 750 clocked at 2.66GHz, 4GB of Patriot Sector 5 DDR3-2000, Seagate Barracuda 320GB, and an HIS IceQ3 3850 for our video needs. Windows 7 Ultimate is the OS of choice, fully patched up to the time of testing.
The comparison motherboard will be the MSI X58 Platinum with identical hardware save for the CPU (i7 920 @ 2.66GHz) and Memory (6GB SuperTalent DDR3-1600).
While the comparison system has more memory, all tests were run on 32 bit OS’s, therefore negating the possible extra memory advantage.
The software used is as follows:
– We tested CPU Arithmetic and Multimedia.
: Once again, a few CPU tests along with some memory bandwidth tests.
a plethora of Linux based tests that give us a nice look into performance of the motherboard as a whole.
DVD Shrink: We ripped the War of the Worlds bonus feature off the disk at 100% and compressed the file from the hard drive to 70%. Times are in minutes:seconds, and lower is better.
Left 4 Dead – A little added test here. We have all heard that the Intel i5 CPU controls the PCIe lanes, therefore no SB. Lets see how a like speed Intel i7 compares when running a timedemo from Left 4 Dead, just for grins of course…
All benchmarks will be run a total of three times with the average scores being displayed. Any system tweaks and ram timings were configured to the best possible for each platform. Despite the differences between the motherboards, we matched the tweaks as close as possible. The drivers otherwise were identical.
Sandra Lite: CPU Arithmetic
The MSI X58/i7 is quicker here, the Hyper-threading isn’t hurting it any on these raw CPU tests.
Sandra Lite: CPU Multimedia
The MSI X58 Platinum once again flexes it’s muscle, especially on the Floating point side of things. Once again, raw power points at the X58/i7 combo.
Everest Ultimate: Memory Read / Write / Copy
This portion of Everest Ultimate we test memory performance, here is where the tables turn and the sibling P55/i5 steps up, outperforming in all 3 tests.
Everest Ultimate: CPU Photoworx and CPU Queen
Photoworx is a combination of CPU raw power and memory subsystems, this test basically performs similar operations as if you were to have a large RGB image and were manipulating layers, filling, flipping and color to black translation. The P55/i5 steps up and performs slightly better the X58/i7 for Photoworx, but back to raw power with the CPU Queen test, and back to the X58/i7 taking the crown.
Phoronix Suite: Memory Read / Write
Just as in the Everest tests above, the P55/i5 outperform in this category.
Phoronix Suite: SuperPI and FF-Mpeg
Lower values are better performance, not much variance here as they both fly. Encoding a little Video works the system a little harder and tests all functions of the Motherboard, the P55/i5 once again outperform.
Phoronix Suite: I/O Zone
With the P55/i5 including the SATA controls within, it gets a nice performance boost over the X58/i7, this is impressive considering they have been released within a year of each other. The other test’s covered within I/O is compressing a 2GB file and how many SSL signatures / second the system can handle, with the P55 enhancements, once again the P55-GD80 outperforms.
Phoronix Suite: Audio Encoding
Here we see how the CPU / Memory and I/O function as a team, the P55/i5 proves once again, you put the entire system to work, and it just performs.
DVDShrink
Dead heat between the two, but the P55/i5 still edges it out.
Left 4 Dead
OK, here we go, L4D was setup identical on both machines, 1920×1200 / 4xMSAA / 8x Anisotropic / Triple Buffer / Very High Shadow Detail / High effect Detail / High Model/Texture Detail. The demo was created by VL specifically for Video card reviews. We loaded up Dead Air, turned it up to Expert and went to the Finale, plane crash and all. We recorded just over 5 minutes of play (it was difficult to last that long to be honest :p) and ran it back through the timedemo command.
Interesting indeed, especially if you are a gamer… This is definitely a telling aspect of the MSI P55-GD80.
OverClocking
The MSI P55-GD80 gives you several options for overclocking. Our first foray was using the on board OC Genie, this uses an ASIC to determine the best OC. We found the ASIC was a little conservative, but for good reason in the long run. While we posted a higher OC manually, we payed for it in the smell of burned CPU… Luckily it was short lived and our CPU is fine, but we definitely hit the upper threshold with stock cooling.
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As you can see, 3.13GHz via the OC Genie is nothing to sneeze at, and it allowed tempuratures to get rather high as well, looking at our manual OC, you see why OC Genie stopped there. We netted an impressive 3.7GHz tweaking by hand, granted, you NEVER want to 97C as a top temp while benchmarking, so unless you have better cooling, best to stay in the 3GHz range. I sincerely feel that with proper cooling this motherboard could easily garner a 4GHz boot and test.
Final Words
While the P55 sports itself as the budget minded upgrade, I would state that performance, at least with the P55-GD80, is still very much there. Add to that a very full offering and your budget solution doesn’t feel, well, budget like. While the X58 Platinum outperforms in raw CPU power, one of the most important, to this reviewer and many readers I am sure, is gaming performance. In that aspect, the P55-GD80 stands above the X58. Sure there are a few shortcomings, Dual DDR3 instead of Triple, 4 memory slots instead of 6, but how many of us will actually require that extra 2GB or extra slots? While 64 bit is here and working well, most gamers I come across are still trotting along happily on 32 bit machines without a worry.
If stock performance is not enough for you, overclocking is a snap with the P55-GD80. By simply pressing a button we were able to reach 3.13GHz on stock air, which isn’t all that far from where we could get using manual tweaks.
continues to impress me further with each board I have gotten to review. Their quality has been second to none and their willingness to allow hackers to tweak the board to the ultimate limits is worthy of praise. When you put this all together, you have a motherboard that looks great, overclocks well for beginners while leaving the manual pieces available for the tweakers and is loaded with a plethora of options. I don’t know about you, but that’s a Win Win in my book.
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