Final Words

As with all of MSI's enthusiast boards, their Dynamic Overclocking Technology (D.O.T.) is featured on the MSI X48 Platinum. As the systems loads up, the PC will dynamically overclock. This accounts for some of the boosts in performance we've noticed during testing when enabled. For the actual review testing, we disabled this, but a quick run through as General allowed us to gain an additional 5% on average of performance.

Overclocking the old fashioned way was actually very easy, despite the E6750's 333MHz FSB. With little effort, we were able to reach 490Mhz on air, which is the exact same result we hit on the MSI P35 earlier this year. Default voltage wasn't enough for this though and we were required to increase the voltages to the max allowable for CPU and chipset. Given the fact we were using air cooling, we did run into the same stability issues as the P35 where after about 90 minutes, we would encounter some random lockups. Perhaps a move to water cooling would help, but we would recommend additional cooling for the chipset cooling. Lowering the FSB by 5MHz improved stability.

On that note, stability throughout testing, save for the small hiccup while overclocking, was excellent. While we've had mixed results throughout MSI's product line when it came to stability and aggressive overclocking, stability during mild overclocking and stock speeds have always been a hallmark of MSI products. It's a great feeling when unpacking a motherboard, installing the key components and seeing the POST screen immediately when booting up. Another nice feature is the ability to reset the CMOS by a button press in the rear IO area, saving us the hassle of having to crack the system open.

Feature-wise, we were not floored with the extras included, but simply satisfied. We were impressed with the storage options though. If you have a lot of hard drives sitting around, you'll likely find a spot for them on this board. Another item we liked was the diagnostic LEDs.

The LED will display relevant POST information which will aid the user in troubleshooting if they are experiencing an issue with the board. Of course, there are a couple caveats. If your board is flat out dead and won't power on, this won't help you much. Another issue is unless you have a windowed case, you'll need to remove the side panel to view the message.

Performance-wise, we are not as excited as I suppose we should be with a new chipset release. Overall, the X48 is the fastest Intel chipset we've tested, but we're only talking less than 5% on average when compared to the P35. Pricing is unknown, but no doubt it won't be cheap. That said, the board offers official FSB1600 support which will make Intel's latest CPUs easier to overclock in theory. From a support standpoint, your expectations of 1600MHz memory should be that it will work and not so much of a crapshoot. We came away very impressed with the MSI X48 Platinum and have no problems recommending it to our readers.

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