X99A GODLIKE Gaming LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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X99A GODLIKE Gaming LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review - MSI’s X99A GODLIKE has not only a pretentious name but more features than you can shake a stick at. The decision to use a game reference from a series that long since died out is a puzzling one. While we're not going to pretend to understand MSI’s marketing, it has built what may be one of the best "Red and Black" motherboards of all time.
 
M-M-M-Monster Bill, OMG $500+

Great review, but seriously that is just too much. It is nice to see that MSI is trying to make their fan controls better, many manufacturers are still lagging in that department.

Killer NIC just needs to go away
 
Could someone explain the hate for the Killer NIC ? I would agree that it is not something I would pay extra for on it's own but is it actually worse than an Intel NIC ? I would have guessed that they were on par with the Intel NIC's.
 
Simmonz said:
Could someone explain the hate for the Killer NIC ? I would agree that it is not something I would pay extra for on it's own but is it actually worse than an Intel NIC ? I would have guessed that they were on par with the Intel NIC's.
Click to expand...

I would suggest reading the review page about the NIC specifically and the conclusion page.
 
Really nice article overall! I agree with your thoughts on Killer branded network products.
 
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If this had some diamonds and gold/platinum bling, I'd be all over this one. ;)
 
Godlike is a term used in League of Legends for long kill streaks in a match. The virtual announcer calls out to everyone on the arena that the player is godlike for each new kill in the streak.

LoL is only played by upwards of 60 million people and passed the billion dollar revenue point this past year.

That could be at least part of the reason MSI chose the term.

BB
 
BB Gun said:
Godlike is a term used in League of Legends for long kill streaks in a match. The virtual announcer calls out to everyone on the arena that the player is godlike for each new kill in the streak.

LoL is only played by upwards of 60 million people and passed the billion dollar revenue point this past year.

That could be at least part of the reason MSI chose the term.

BB
Click to expand...

The term is much older than that. Unreal Tournament used it for kill streaks though my favorite is still M-M-M-M Monster Kill! I think that is the first large use of it, but I played so much Quake, Quakeworld (cookiemonster skin FTW), Quake2 and 3 plus UT with all kinds of mods that it kind of blurs together anymore
 
zaniix said:
The term is much older than that. Unreal Tournament used it for kill streaks though my favorite is still M-M-M-M Monster Kill! I think that is the first large use of it, but I played so much Quake, Quakeworld (cookiemonster skin FTW), Quake2 and 3 plus UT with all kinds of mods that it kind of blurs together anymore
Click to expand...

Yes, I remember that as well. Good times with UT and Quake. I still miss the UT Flak Gun and the Quake 2 Rail Gun.
 
mls1995 said:
Yes, I remember that as well. Good times with UT and Quake. I still miss the UT Flak Gun and the Quake 2 Rail Gun.
Click to expand...

Rail Arena was a fun mod. My absolute favorite Q2 mod was the Capture the Flag mod with the laser hook.
 
That's some badass artwork on the box, but MSI would do well to move away from the ROG line of styling.
 
BB Gun said:
Godlike is a term used in League of Legends for long kill streaks in a match. The virtual announcer calls out to everyone on the arena that the player is godlike for each new kill in the streak.

LoL is only played by upwards of 60 million people and passed the billion dollar revenue point this past year.

That could be at least part of the reason MSI chose the term.

BB
Click to expand...
It's still pretentious in English speaking markets. No big deal though, most enthusiasts buy based on other factors like quality, performance, stability, and reviews. For those that don't, this board's name will stroke their egos just fine.:D

zaniix said:
The term is much older than that. Unreal Tournament used it for kill streaks though my favorite is still M-M-M-M Monster Kill! I think that is the first large use of it, but I played so much Quake, Quakeworld (cookiemonster skin FTW), Quake2 and 3 plus UT with all kinds of mods that it kind of blurs together anymore
Click to expand...
It was definitely UT99 where I first heard it used in gaming. I remember everyone would switch it to the female announcer voice. I swear Epic games hired a pornstar to do that voice because it sounded like she was getting pumped by a flak cannon.
 
mls1995 said:
Yes, I remember that as well. Good times with UT and Quake. I still miss the UT Flak Gun and the Quake 2 Rail Gun.
Click to expand...

I understand it is much likely much older than that. I was just giving it current context to answer his question as to why they would choose the term....

BB
 
BB Gun said:
I understand it is much likely much older than that. I was just giving it current context to answer his question as to why they would choose the term....

BB
Click to expand...

I agree, I remember "godlike" in UT as well. Not that I was good enough to hear that often
 
I did get a driver disc with my MSI godlike board when I picked it up a few weeks back.

That said, the only real fault I find with the board is the BIOS. It really is a long ways off from where it should be. This the is the first MSI board I've picked up in a few years, and I was hoping for better there.

I'm not a big fan of the Killer NIC's either. I only installed the drivers for them, it worked great for me. No errors or issues, like you guys had experienced. I was running windows 8.1 at that time, so that 's probably the difference. I have upgraded to Windows 10 since, and things still seem fine.

Also the 2058 or whatever color choices, so far are only available if you use the android MSI Mystic Lighting app. it gives you a color wheel that you can select any color from.
here's a screenshot
Capture1.PNG
 
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BB Gun said:
Godlike is a term used in League of Legends for long kill streaks in a match. The virtual announcer calls out to everyone on the arena that the player is godlike for each new kill in the streak.

LoL is only played by upwards of 60 million people and passed the billion dollar revenue point this past year.

That could be at least part of the reason MSI chose the term.

BB
Click to expand...

I don't play that game. Frankly I don't get the appeal, but you might be right. And if it's popular in China and the US I can see that. It's not a demanding game as I understand it. I can't imagine equating a high end product like this with a game about as demanding as Diablo II. Ok, it might be more demanding than that but you get the idea.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
I'm not up on Chipset land. Is 2011-v3 going to get Skylake CPUs?
Click to expand...
According to the road map Broadwell-E is what's next. Whether or not that changes is anyone's guess. Some sites have speculated on Skylake-E replacing Broadwell-E. I don't think it will, but that's speculation on my part.
 
DraginDime said:
I did get a driver disc with my MSI godlike board when I picked it up a few weeks back.

That said, the only real fault I find with the board is the BIOS. It really is a long ways off from where it should be. This the is the first MSI board I've picked up in a few years, and I was hoping for better there.

I'm not a big fan of the Killer NIC's either. I only installed the drivers for them, it worked great for me. No errors or issues, like you guys had experienced. I was running windows 8.1 at that time, so that 's probably the difference. I have upgraded to Windows 10 since, and things still seem fine.

Also the 2058 or whatever color choices, so far are only available if you use the android MSI Mystic Lighting app. it gives you a color wheel that you can select any color from.
here's a screenshot
Capture1.PNG
Click to expand...
That's really stupid if true. Awesome that it can done from the phone. Retarded that it can't be done from the Game App on the PC.
 
Dan_D said:
That's really stupid if true. Awesome that it can done from the phone. Retarded that it can't be done from the Game App on the PC.
Click to expand...

Yeah, not sure why they don't have the color wheel on the gaming app in windows. Which each app has similar but different functions. Like you can change the effects of the lights on the desktop app, and it will keep whatever base color you pick. On the android app, it always defaults back to red.

I hope sometime in the near future, they clean that up.
 
Well......maybe the shitty Killer-NIC and the flimsy armor make the board only "God-like" and not G-O-D.:eek:

I don't think this is a 550 dollar board.......

That Rampage board that was all black.....that was an amazing board both in asthetics and components.

This thing is gaudy......not God.

Great writeup.......I loved the bit about losing IQ everytime you type Killer-NIC double shot-whatever...:D
 
Why are you not using SP1?!

No one should be on a pre-SP1 setup any more. That's just dumb.

And there is an error on the PCIe lane configs,

"Physically the slots are x16/x8/x8/x16/x8 electrically. The following configurations are actually supported: x16/ x0/ x0/ x0/ x0, x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x0, x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x8, or x8/ x8/ x0/ x16/ x8 with a 40 lane CPU. "

electrically:
x16/x8/x8/x16/x8

supported configurations :
x16/ x0/ x0/ x0/ x0,
x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x0,
x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x8,
x8/ x8/ x0/ x16/ x8

So about that middle slot? and no mention of where the m.2 is getting its lanes from?

Hitting the manual on MSI's site gives more info (probably should have included this in the review) but still shows the middle slot as not having any lanes?

wtf MSI?!

REF: http://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/E7883v1.0.zip

I most certainly would not buy this board ever even if it was like $10
 
mashie said:
Ok so you need an Xeon CPU to be able to use the full 128GB but at the same time the board will disable one of the main Xeon features which is ECC if you do? :confused:
Click to expand...

If you want to use ECC you need to buy a server board that has ECC support. The board doesn't disable ECC it just doesn't support ECC memory, that is typically a server board feature.
 
Even if I had the money to burn, I am pretty miffed at the name. It is both insulting in its arrogance and from a religious point of view. Really, what was their marketing team thinking?
 
I love MSI's low end boards but I don't understand their choices for high end boards.

I'll buy a low end MSI board for many builds any day but I don't think I'd ever consider their high end options.
 
That is a Wicked-Sick price. Not in a good way.
MSI may have good looking boards sometimes but performance only gets ya so far.
A good motherboard can be had for 1/2 the price.
 
omegatotal said:
YES, LMCTF with L2 hook and runes

SO MUCH YES I miss this ^^
Click to expand...

Used to regularly play on a server where the hook timing had been tweaked so that the hook was a travel device.

Spider-Man matches...
 
Slyr7.62 said:
That is a Wicked-Sick price. Not in a good way.
MSI may have good looking boards sometimes but performance only gets ya so far.
A good motherboard can be had for 1/2 the price.
Click to expand...

Yeah. This board is definitely a ninjapiraterobotjedi sorta board.

And MSI's high-end boards are all going Killer NIC?

Time to start avoiding MSI boards. ESPECIALLY at this sort of silly, inflated price point.
 
I have an ASrock Z87 Fatal1ty board with a Killer NIC and Windows 7, the drivers sucked.

Was a bit pissed off when I saw they had it on this board but decided to give it a shot. The Windows 10 drivers are excellent, and the NIC teaming was a breeze to setup, actually quicker than my Intel. Interface looks good too no complaints.

Overclocking couldn't have been easier either, very happy with this board
 
omegatotal said:
Why are you not using SP1?!

No one should be on a pre-SP1 setup any more. That's just dumb.

And there is an error on the PCIe lane configs,

"Physically the slots are x16/x8/x8/x16/x8 electrically. The following configurations are actually supported: x16/ x0/ x0/ x0/ x0, x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x0, x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x8, or x8/ x8/ x0/ x16/ x8 with a 40 lane CPU. "

electrically:
x16/x8/x8/x16/x8

supported configurations :
x16/ x0/ x0/ x0/ x0,
x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x0,
x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x8,
x8/ x8/ x0/ x16/ x8

So about that middle slot? and no mention of where the m.2 is getting its lanes from?

Hitting the manual on MSI's site gives more info (probably should have included this in the review) but still shows the middle slot as not having any lanes?

wtf MSI?!

REF: http://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/E7883v1.0.zip

I most certainly would not buy this board ever even if it was like $10
Click to expand...

Actually. I'm not using pre-SP1 Windows 7. I cut and pasted the lane configuration info straight from MSIs product page. Go look at it under specifications > detailed. You'll see exactly what I put in the article.

As for the M.2 slots, I thought it was clear. PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes must come from the CPU. The PCH is Gen 2.0 only.
 
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