MSI P55-GD80 Motherboard Review @ [H]

robble said:
oh i'm sorry, I know I am in the USA and I thought HardOCP was too.

At least I was born in Texas and last I knew Texas was in the USA.

I do know my motherboard temp monitor program says my CPU is 43 degrees which is ok and I'm supposed to worry if it goes over 50,,, However, I've no clue if 50 will burn my tongue if I licked it.
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You don't necessarily worry about your CPU temperatures going over 50c depending on the processor you have. A 486 at 50c would be cause for concern. A Phenom II, Core 2 Dup/Quad, Core i7? No. It wouldn't concern me in the least.

As for the temps:

43 degree Celsius = 109.4 degree Fahrenheit
50 degree Celsius = 122 degree Fahrenheit
 
robble said:
oh i'm sorry, I know I am in the USA and I thought HardOCP was too.

At least I was born in Texas and last I knew Texas was in the USA.

I do know my motherboard temp monitor program says my CPU is 43 degrees which is ok and I'm supposed to worry if it goes over 50,,, However, I've no clue if 50 will burn my tongue if I licked it.
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You're not supposed to worry if your CPU goes over 50C.

Also, last I checked, Intel is based in the US as well, and they don't seem to have any problem with using the Celsius scale.
 
I was wondering about the overclock chip on this board. I took a glance at the review, but couldn't find anything about it? If I'm not mistaken, this board and the gd65 should have a overclocking chip that is activated by a button on the board. And the add says it wont just go up a certain percentage, it will find the max of the cpu on the board? If that is true, why didn't you test it?
 
Igneos79 said:
I was wondering about the overclock chip on this board. I took a glance at the review, but couldn't find anything about it? If I'm not mistaken, this board and the gd65 should have a overclocking chip that is activated by a button on the board. And the add says it wont just go up a certain percentage, it will find the max of the cpu on the board? If that is true, why didn't you test it?
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Try reading the article a little more attentively:
We have seen "overclocking tools" for years, but you know it and I know it; they suck. Well, MSI’s OC Genie has changed that. While it is not going to give you edge of the envelope overclocks, it is far from shabby. Simply power the GD80 down, depress the OC Genie button physically mounted on the motherboard, and turn the board on and watch in amazement. In 11 seconds, the GD80 OC Genie took my retail purchased Core i5-750 processor from a stock speed of 2.66GHz to 3.5GHz with a RAM speed in the 1300 range if I remember correctly (forgot to write that down). To 3.5GHz with the push of ONE BUTTON! And it was rock solid. There have been a lot of companies attempt this simple overclocking aspect, but none have done it as well as MSI has. It is also worth noting here that when we turned OC Genie off, many of our voltages did stay elevated. I would suggest clearing the BIOS or using a preset when turning OC Genie off to make sure everything is where you want it. OC Genie turns off the Turbo feature as well and does not turn back on without a BIOS reset or profile launch.
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Wow! just Wow! Whooping 4.8GHZ on Dry ICE!!! with this mobo and i750

Here is the Source

48ghz.jpg
 
Now we just need to see some real-world experiences from the average OC'ing Joe and how stable it is in general and using the more traditional type overclocks.
 
Oh! Sorry about that. I just looked at the oc section at the end of the review. Anyone have any info whether they will make a x58 board with this feature? Id buy one for sure.
 
So if for instance i had a pci-e 1x card that i was to put into the bottom x16 slot would that effectively drop the top slot with the videocard down to x8 or would it remain at x16?
 
Kaos_Drem said:
So if for instance i had a pci-e 1x card that i was to put into the bottom x16 slot would that effectively drop the top slot with the videocard down to x8 or would it remain at x16?
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It would drop down to 8x. As long as the second slot is populated by anything, both will run at 8x.
 
Igneos79 said:
I was wondering about the overclock chip on this board. I took a glance at the review, but couldn't find anything about it? If I'm not mistaken, this board and the gd65 should have a overclocking chip that is activated by a button on the board. And the add says it wont just go up a certain percentage, it will find the max of the cpu on the board? If that is true, why didn't you test it?
Click to expand...

I tried the oc genie button on mine and it went to 3.0ghz. I made some adustments myself, and am stable at 4.0, boots at 4.2 and runs some apps, but locked up once. i am still working on it, just started oc this morning. I would say the oc genie is bogus. I am on the stock hs also. I am waiting for a kit for my ultra 120 or zalman 9700, to become available.
 
Zero82z said:
No, that only applies to the graphics slots. If you use a dedicated 1x slot, you won't lose any lanes elsewhere.
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The reason i asked the question that seemed a bit silly in the first place was because many of the reviews i have seen show that p55 boards with 3 pcie x16 slots have the first 2 running from the processor linked channels and the third one runs off of the secondary chipset at 4x limited speed. I made the assumption that since it is not linked to the pcie lanes in the processor it would not have a negative impact on the single videocard that i plan to run.

For instance the Asus p7p55d deluxe has - Expansion Slots:
2x PCI-E 2.0 Slots x16 (One at 16x or Two at 8×8x)
1x PCI-E 2.0 Slot x16 (At 4x, 2.5GT/s)
2x PCI-E 2.0 Slots 1x (2.5GT/s)

I'm sorry for the block of text but i really am trying to make a wise purchase and not jump into a motherboard that i won't like. I run 16 internal harddrives...don't ask why it doesn't matter, what does matter is that i need to run them all on my system whether it be an x58 or p55. My current setup has me using 3 harddrive cards a new board will at least let me remove one of the cards, but due to placement of the x1 slots on the gd80 i will be forced to use the bottom pcie16 slot.
 
Kaos_Drem said:
The reason i asked the question that seemed a bit silly in the first place was because many of the reviews i have seen show that p55 boards with 3 pcie x16 slots have the first 2 running from the processor linked channels and the third one runs off of the secondary chipset at 4x limited speed. I made the assumption that since it is not linked to the pcie lanes in the processor it would not have a negative impact on the single videocard that i plan to run.
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Actually, I thought you were referring to the second slot, not the bottom one. If you use the bottom one for something else, it shouldn't affect the top PCI-E slot whose lanes are provided by the CPU.
 
hey guys,i just got this baby, but the control center isnt working, every time i double click it ,and shows a messege "Driver cant load"
can anyone help, thank you advince.

Sorry, forgot to say,im runing Windows 7 64bit RC 7100
 
You probably answered your own question. I wouldn't be surprised if MSI didn't test their software on Windows 7.
 
Also for all the people fretting about the PCI-E lanes, Kyle is right and Anand's recent analysis confirmed that the performance difference with two GPUs on X58 vs. P55 is marginal:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3649&p=1

The only way it would matter is if you are going to use 3 or 4 GPUs.

For regular graphics cards, maybe it will matter in another 2 years? Given the console-driven nature of graphics acceleration these days, that seems to be how long it takes until we see a genuinely new release (GTX 280 came out 2 years ago now). By that time both these chipsets will be equally obsolete anyway.
 
I had the weirdest problem with my board. Works and looks great, but both of the "smaller" flexible SLI connectors were defective. I was about to pull my hair out after hours of trying to figure out why the screen would shake and squiggle and shift in SLI mode before I finally just plugged in the rigid SLI bridge from my old EVGA motherboard. Problem solved.

Does this make sense to anyone? Seems really unlikely that I'd have two defective bridges. I've never used a flexible bridge, though, and I did need to bend it quite a bit since it was about 33% longer than needed given the distance of the two cards.
 
dccmadams said:
I tried the oc genie button on mine and it went to 3.0ghz. I made some adustments myself, and am stable at 4.0, boots at 4.2 and runs some apps, but locked up once. i am still working on it, just started oc this morning. I would say the oc genie is bogus. I am on the stock hs also. I am waiting for a kit for my ultra 120 or zalman 9700, to become available.
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That is interesting, all of the other reviews I've read on the board have gotten the i7 860 closer to the 3.4ghz-3.6ghz range with the OC Genie button, and one of the customer reviews on Newegg got an 860 up to 3.9ghz with OCG. I wonder how the board determines what overclock setting it is going to use.
 
dapgu said:
hey guys,i just got this baby, but the control center isnt working, every time i double click it ,and shows a messege "Driver cant load"
can anyone help, thank you advince.

Sorry, forgot to say,im runing Windows 7 64bit RC 7100
Click to expand...

I'm running the final version of Windows 7 here and it's working perfectly fine.

Also with stock cooling the OC Genie button gave me 3.53ghz, and temps full load are around 50c, I'll get a better cooler eventually.
 
Interesting quote from Anandtech's review of the MSI P55-GD65:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3655

The OC Genie overclocking technology could not be easier to use and it works exactly as MSI advertised. Even the 3.3GHz i5/750 and 3.7GHz i7/860 generated overclocks on perfectly acceptable voltages pleased us. We think MSI could have squeezed more out of the i5/750 and improved memory timings a little better, but at least the results made a difference in everyday usage without any fuss. Yet, this feature had a dark side.

It refused to work with several of our test power supplies and we are not talking $35 no name units (they all worked perfectly), but some of the best power supplies from Corsair, BFG, Thermaltake, and others. We could grant a pass on this if it was just one power supply, but we noticed a definite pattern with this board and its big brother, the P55-GD80 when using Channel Well based power supplies.
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Has anyone else encountered problems like this?
 
Well I'm only on the initial stages of my system, ran memtest at the XMP settings without issue, installed Win 7 without issue. Nice mobo so far. If you have a window on your case, I hope you like lots of LEDs, especially blue ones. :)
 
bitgod said:
Well I'm only on the initial stages of my system, ran memtest at the XMP settings without issue, installed Win 7 without issue. Nice mobo so far. If you have a window on your case, I hope you like lots of LEDs, especially blue ones. :)
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Yuo can disable the LED's in bios, under Green Power
 
Yeah, finally found that. I've since deleted the Control Center software, and I should delete the live update too, since they're both useless.

Live update says I'm up to date with the current 1.4 BIOS. Well that's not true, go to the website and you can find 1.5 on there. As it is, I'm running 1.6b7 now, now that I found where to get the beta versions. I highly recommend anyone that's going to OC to update to a newer version of the BIOS, it fixes things like the non-working vdroop control. 1.4 is fine if you're just going to run stock, but they've definitely made improvements.

And ControlCenter...sigh, I wouldn't mind having that around, I didn't even try OCing with it, I was just looking at it for what the settings were at and that kind of stuff, but just accidentally touching things would start making BIOS changes, and that just boggles my mind. Make me hit an apply button before you start adjusting settings on-the-fly! I locked up my system at one point and had to clear the CMOS, and I found that actually fixed a few things that the app had messed up. So that's off my system now.

Other than that, I'm happy with the mobo. (well, other than it's got a Foxconn socket, but I'll ignore that).
 
Just picked one of these up. The socket is foxconn :(

I plan to hopefully OC to 4.3 on air cooling ~ should I give up while I can and go for another board? I'm not a fan of knowing I could potentially burn up the chip prematurely!
 
MrSneis said:
Just picked one of these up. The socket is foxconn :(

I plan to hopefully OC to 4.3 on air cooling ~ should I give up while I can and go for another board? I'm not a fan of knowing I could potentially burn up the chip prematurely!
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Well, I think you are worrying about something that is not going to be a big impact to you if you back off the voltage a bit. And REALLY what is 300MHz or 400MHz going to give you in the real world if it makes you feel like you are not comfortable with your system voltages?
 
Have had my GD80 for about a week now and other then small quirks of Windows 7 the board itself has been very solid so far. I tried overclocking with the Genie and it runs solid at 3.514 ghz but I pulled it back to stock till I am comfortable with everything. Very nice upgrade over my old EVGA 680i an Q6700. Much quieter and way cooler. Got the Noctua to fit by raising the fan and taking the heatsinks off the ram.

This is my first MSI motherboard and so far I am very pleased with it.
 
Been running with this board for a week now and have been nothing but pleased. Solid performance and the OC Genie works as advertised. Took it to 3.5+ with the press of a button. I may just leave that thing on after I tweak the arrangement of the cooling in my Cosmos a bit more.
 
I bought a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus to use with this board but the cooler support bracket that mounts on the underside of the mobo contacts some surface mounted components so it's a no-go.

Which cooler was used for the review here? I don't want to do a lot of modifying a cooler meant for a LGA775, etc just to make it work for this board.
 
We used water cooling for the most part. We use silicone insulating plates between our mounting plates and the board itself.
 
Has anyone gotten 8GB of Gskill's 2000Mhz DDR3 to run at this speed with an i7 860 processor? I'm asking to see if it's worth the price to buy and install 4 sticks instead of my current 4096 memory of F3-16000CL9D-4GBTD Trident memory. Will all four run from the XMP overclock proflie?
 
I can't speak for Gskill or 2000Mhz, but my 4 sticks of Corsair are running ok at 1600Mhz with the XMP enabled in BIOS.
 
I bought this board along with an Intel BOXDP55KG for comparison sake. Has anyone had any issues with the Foxconn socket on this particular board? I plan to OC, but not to crazy levels. I would like to shoot for 4.0ghz with liquid cooling.

Thx,

skc
 
My board's run stable with 4GB of Gskill 2000Mhz in the XMP profile and an i7 820 processor running regularly at 3.48 Ghz at 40C. That's my everyday running speed without gaming. I have a Sapphire 5850 card that's had no problem running most games with full settings on a Samsung 2343BWX monitor on 2048 x 1152 resolution. It's rather amazing.
I'm using an Arctic Freezer Pro 2 cooler and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS.
 
Anyone care to comment about what heatsinks they have working with this board? I had the same problem that johngalt47 had with his Hyper 212 Plus - the mounting bracket would not fit due to a surface element. I am using the stock cooler now but am not very happy with it.

It looks like I will be limited to using heatsinks that don't use mounting brackets behind the motherboard, since I imagine most will need to go through the same area where the Hyper 212 Plus runs into trouble. Any suggestions?
 
I went with a H50 mainly because there didn't seem to be a lot of 1156 coolers at the time and it was easy enough to go get one at Best Buy. I'm happy with it.
 
It looks like the H50 has a mounting bracket that goes behind the motherboard. Do you know if your GD80 has a surface element as mine does? I have some pictures that illustrate what my motherboard looks like on imageshack here.

I'm wondering if there are multiple revisions of the board or something, as some people on this very forum seem to have gotten the Hyper 212 Plus installed on their GD80, which seems impossible with my board. I have been unable to contact them, though, so I don't know if they are using a different revision without the surface element as on my board.
 
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johngalt47 said:
I bought a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus to use with this board but the cooler support bracket that mounts on the underside of the mobo contacts some surface mounted components so it's a no-go.

Which cooler was used for the review here? I don't want to do a lot of modifying a cooler meant for a LGA775, etc just to make it work for this board.
Click to expand...

I was looking at buying the Hyper 212 myself. I tried searching up for more info and I see it in some people's sig's. Anyone else run into this problem?
 
I ended up using a Zerotherm Core 92 cooler. It was the best I could find that only uses the stock Intel mounting solution (ie. 4 plastic pins you have to push in, no mounting bracket). Be careful if you take this route though because the pins really are a pain to push in.
 
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