Pifast

The MSI P7NGM Digital certainly does well here too. Our P35 once again sits in front, but the GeForce board is right on it's tail with only a few milliseconds seperating the two.

CDex

I had to run these tests more than the usual 3 times (for each) because I was convinced I was doing something wrong. But everytime I did, the MSI P7NGM Digital stormed ahead with around a 15 second lead over the other boards. With it's capabilities in the multi-media department and peformance like this for audio conversion, it's concievable to use this board as a basis for a home media hub; films, photos and quick audio conversions when adding to your library.

DVD Shrink

Again, another test we would like to see the MSI P7NGM Digital do well in as media hub is DVD ripping and it doesn't dissapoint. Keep in mind, we are using a small clip from the War of the Worlds DVD, so any savings will be multiplied over a longer time period/full disk.

Auto-MKV

While the previous two tests showed a marked increase over the comparison boards, here things are more in line with the present company.

Photoshop CS3

Photoshop CS3 is unfortunately not accelerated by the board, hence the similar results above. I don't have Photoshop CS4 to test with but if you've run the DriverHeaven test yourself, you will know that (as indicated above) it does take a while to run through. Any Acceleration for Photoshop can only be a good thing, and puts the MSI P7NGM Digital at the top of the list for budget Desktop Publishing Office machines along with it's Multi-Media capabilities.

Gaming - ETQW

Gaming - Crysis

Keep in mind these are our standard motherboard tests, and to keep things fair, the P7NGM was using an MSI 8600GT just like the other two boards. We'll examine it's graphic prowess soon, but for now, as a subsystem, it keeps up with the comparison boards well enough.

Testing - 3D Graphics Test Suite

Test Setup: Intel E6420 (2.13GHz), 2x 1024MB Patriot DDR2 PC2-6400, Maxtor 500GB 16MB Cache HDD, Vista Home Premium SP1

Half Life 2: Lost Coast – Even though time has moved on, it still manages to impress, and you can't argue at the price. We ran through a typical 2 minutes of play at highest possible settings, including HDR.

Crysis – This FPS hit the scene and pretty much brought every machine to their knee's, and still does. It might seem a little odd then to be using such a heavy duty game for an onboard graphics solution, but let's see how it does anyway.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars – Whilst there is no doubt that ETQW's likes a decent CPU and subsystem, it still requires a decent graphics card to get the best out of it too.