MSI's Upcoming Z77 Motherboards At CES

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We have a couple pictures from the showroom floor at CES 2012 showing off MSI's new Z77A-GD65 and Z77A-GD80 motherboards. Both LGA 1155 boards feature Intel's Z77 Express chipset, 4x DDR3-2667 memory slots (up to 32GB), Military Class III components, PCI Express Gen 3, ClickBIOS II, OC Genie II and more. Here's the money shots.
 
Please don't use their dopey "Military Class III" marketing drivel...

MSI claims "MSI's Military Class III components have been United States Department of Defense MIL-STD-810G standard certified..."

Yet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810
Claiming "compliance to MIL-STD-810" can be misleading; as it is a flexible standard with no authority to certify or oversee it that allows commercial suppliers to make up their own test methods to fit their product. Suppliers can and some do take significant latitude with how they test their products, as well as how they report the test results. As a result, claims of "compliance with MIL-STD-810" can be misleading...
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AKA, there is no certification. It's all on a manufacturer to claim whatever they want. Pure marketing drivel.
 
CharonPDX said:
AKA, there is no certification. It's all on a manufacturer to claim whatever they want. Pure marketing drivel.
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Meh. They're still making among the best boards right now. At least they're not putting ammo magazines on the southbridge as a gimmick. :)
 
MSI has been riding middle of the pack at best for the past 10+ years. Yet I always seem to fall for [H] reviews and pick one up every 5yrs or so only to be disappointed :/
 
BurntToast said:
MSI has been riding middle of the pack at best for the past 10+ years. Yet I always seem to fall for [H] reviews and pick one up every 5yrs or so only to be disappointed :/
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Some people just have weird luck like that. People will swear by Western Digital... yet every WD drive I've touched died on me.

My touch of death by brand seems to have expanded lately, though. By proximity, even. Every Asus product that I owned or have come into contact with has died or had to be replaced.
 
techrat said:
Some people just have weird luck like that. People will swear by Western Digital... yet every WD drive I've touched died on me.

My touch of death by brand seems to have expanded lately, though. By proximity, even. Every Asus product that I owned or have come into contact with has died or had to be replaced.
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It is funny how one person will swear by a brand and another person believes it's a POS. I've never taken the MSI leap, but I do believe I'm going to bite at some point here in the near future. I keep waffling between SB with a proven performer in Z68 and SB-E and what seems like an early adopter's nightmare with X79. I guess the "E" does mean something important after all and I just can't short sell myself with anything less than *enthusiast*. :)
 
Vort Max said:
It is funny how one person will swear by a brand and another person believes it's a POS. I've never taken the MSI leap, but I do believe I'm going to bite at some point here in the near future. I keep waffling between SB with a proven performer in Z68 and SB-E and what seems like an early adopter's nightmare with X79. I guess the "E" does mean something important after all and I just can't short sell myself with anything less than *enthusiast*. :)
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What's even worse is nobody has an ETA on when the 3930k will be restocked.
 
Too bad around two stacks of USB ports are lost to almost completely useless VGA/DVI/DP/HDMI ports. Really guys, tone it down with the graphics ports and beef up the USB connections. Not going to X79 only for a decent port cluster. Not like I use that many USB devices, but me and many others for sure will find USB much more useful.
 
LoneWolf said:
Have you compared the specs listed so far on Z77 to Z68?

I've seen minimal differences, nothing I'd call groundbreaking.
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I hoping it will drive down prices. I'm ready to buy when I can find a few good deals. I wish I had a MC near me.
 
So, what does this chipset have that the Z68 doesn't? Official support for PCI-E 3.0? The board looks nearly identical to my Z68A-GD65. Looks like Intel just slapped a new name on the Z68,called it the Z77, to make it fit better with the new X79. Lame.
 
That's what my little bit of research suggested too. My hopes of LightPeak and native USB 3.0 had blinded me.
 
Corvette said:
That's what my little bit of research suggested too. My hopes of LightPeak and native USB 3.0 had blinded me.
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Light Peak/Thunderbolt will be a fancy, optional feature. Intel not requiring it on vendor mainboards will probably mean you don't see it on much, though I'm surprised few if any vendors saw the opportunity to add it to X79 flagship mainboards to distinguish themselves.

As for USB3, NEC/Renesas chipsets work just fine now, so if you pick a mainboard that uses their controller, you should be good without the need for Intel's native solution.

Even native PCIe 3.0 has few benefits, and Z77 has no more PCIe lanes than Z68. Meaning it's pretty much a big bag of meh.
 
Corvette said:
I wish I had a MC near me.
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I don't know dude, I live in Denver and a MC is just down the street. It's nice to go in and eeew and ahhh all of the stuff they have, but I kind of feel like there is a lot of cheap stuff in the way and there are only a few diamonds in the rough to be found. I suppose if it wasn't there for me I'd feel just like you do, but it isn't all that it's cracked up to be. If you ever come to town I'd be glad to show you the way as it's in a kind of tricky place to find if you've never been here. ;)
 
BurntToast said:
MSI has been riding middle of the pack at best for the past 10+ years. Yet I always seem to fall for [H] reviews and pick one up every 5yrs or so only to be disappointed :/
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MSI may have been middle of the pack for several years but they have stepped up their game lately.

My last 3 boards have been MSI-based and they are light years better than the old P6N I used to have back in the day. I'm very pleased with their overclocking, stability, layout, features, and reliability.
 
Vort Max said:
I don't know dude, I live in Denver and a MC is just down the street. It's nice to go in and eeew and ahhh all of the stuff they have, but I kind of feel like there is a lot of cheap stuff in the way and there are only a few diamonds in the rough to be found. I suppose if it wasn't there for me I'd feel just like you do, but it isn't all that it's cracked up to be. If you ever come to town I'd be glad to show you the way as it's in a kind of tricky place to find if you've never been here. ;)
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I visited Denver like 15 years ago. Barely left the hotel. A big storm rolled through and I watched the planes return to the airport from the balcony.
 
Corvette said:
I visited Denver like 15 years ago. Barely left the hotel. A big storm rolled through and I watched the planes return to the airport from the balcony.
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I think I'm taking this off topic and want to get back to talking MSI because I'm seriously looking at this brand for my next X79 build, but what you describe sounds like the October 1997 blizzard. That was one heckuva storm if you were here at that time.

I also wanted to thank the OP before I forget for the pixs of these boards as you are the boots on the ground at CES and I appreciate you furnishing those of us who like this company with pixs I would otherwise not see. I like their price point compared to the other brands as well as the feature sets and color combos. For some reason I think black and blue looks bad ass once it's brought to life.
 
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