MSI P67A-GD65 Motherboard

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PC Perspective's review of the MSI P67A-GD65 motherboard is now online for your viewing pleasure. You can see our evaluation here for comparison purposes.

MSI has come a long way in the quality of their motherboards and the addition of a UEFI BIOS is a step in the right direction to give amateur users a simple interface to overclock their systems and perform other sub-system tests. I was impressed with this board's ability to keep up with other higher-rated P67 motherboards, and it was even simple to overclock and configure.
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I ended up getting my replacement motherboard by UPS today. MSI brand, similar style to this one, AMD version and slightly older. I'm actually rather pleased with it and the OC Genie (as silly as it sounds) feature... I already knew what my stable overclock for my CPU was so I gave it a try... about 30 seconds later, the bios screen came up with the new figure... and it pegged it right on. (Did it about 133Mhz higher with a voltage bump, so I came pretty close to the safe ceiling it looks like.) 2.8Ghz to 3.33Ghz with one "ENABLED" flip in the BIOS. No issues booting into Windows or Ubuntu. I didn't buy it for this feature, but it was interesting to experience.

ASUS was my go-to brand for almost everything but now it seems they're coasting on their reputation more than anything else. My mobo replaced is one of the m4a series and long term issues are starting to show up en masse. If MSI keeps it up, I wouldn't be surprised if they came more highly recommended.
 
I have this board. Great board and it looks like with a new bios update, they fixed the Intel XMP issues I was facing.
 
I haven't used an MSI board I liked since my dual slot 1 LX microstar. Every one I tried seemed picky about ram and generally flaky/unstable.

It's been a while, but [H] gave it top marks so I gave them a another chance. What the hell, they are cheap enough. Besides, I've tried ASUS and Gigabyte's P67 boards. Time to test something different.

Wow. Rock solid with 16GB ram and OC'd with the push of a onboard button. No hesitations, reboots, freezes, stuttering during OS install, drivers, updates and benchmarking. Felt just as solid as an X58 UD series Gigabyte board. Perfect. The first MSI board I'd actually sooner take over Gigabyte or ASUS in almost decade.

Thanks [H]. Great pick
 
I feel PC Perspective didn't give full props to this board - only rating it Silver? Just because of the goofy BIOS?

Editor's Note: There are obviously some concerns about reviews on the 2nd Gen Intel Core processor platform, in particular motherboards based on the Cougar Point chipset, aka P67/H67. On January 31st, Intel announced that it had found a bug in its chipset that could cause issues with SATA channels disconnecting and has issued a recall on all or most parts. As a result, the majority of the Sandy Bridge based processors and P67/H67 motherboards have been pulled from online and retail sales.

You might wonder then why we are posting a review of such a product. In short, though we are disappointed that the products are not currently on the market for sale, the fact is that we have never seen these failure issues and the performance and features of the products still properly represents the capabilities it will offer when they return to the channel in March or April. We have several platform reviews finished or in the pipeline and we plan on publishing all of them for informational purposes to our readers - that is always our goal anyway.

But, expect to see this note of warning on every one of them.

What's up with this? I thought all those issues were resolved with the latest run of these boards? Why even bring it up months after the fact?

This one is certainly on my radar and in my wishlist. I don't know about the rest of you but I like the idea MSI has their own driver update utility. That's one thing I despised about ASUS - their website was either slow or down, poorly organized, and file descriptions confusing.

I certainly look forward to trying this MSI board out.
 
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INFINITE said:
I feel PC Perspective didn't give full props to this board - only rating it Silver? Just because of the goofy BIOS?

Editor's Note: There are obviously some concerns about reviews on the 2nd Gen Intel Core processor platform, in particular motherboards based on the Cougar Point chipset, aka P67/H67. On January 31st, Intel announced that it had found a bug in its chipset that could cause issues with SATA channels disconnecting and has issued a recall on all or most parts. As a result, the majority of the Sandy Bridge based processors and P67/H67 motherboards have been pulled from online and retail sales.

You might wonder then why we are posting a review of such a product. In short, though we are disappointed that the products are not currently on the market for sale, the fact is that we have never seen these failure issues and the performance and features of the products still properly represents the capabilities it will offer when they return to the channel in March or April. We have several platform reviews finished or in the pipeline and we plan on publishing all of them for informational purposes to our readers - that is always our goal anyway.

But, expect to see this note of warning on every one of them.

What's up with this? I thought all those issues were resolved with the latest run of these boards? Why even bring it up months after the fact?

This one is certainly on my radar and in my wishlist. I don't know about the rest of you but I like the idea MSI has their own driver update utility. That's one thing I despised about ASUS - their website was either slow or down, poorly organized, and file descriptions confusing.

I certainly look forward to trying this MSI board out.
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I think they did the review long before they posted it.
 
Using this board now with my new build. Was worried from reading about all the problems people have been having with the P67 chipsets. Knock on wood, zero issues with anything, board works perfectly. Using the B3 version.
 
I had no major issues with this board; do note that for some odd reason they block the second pcie slot with the jfp2 (basically 3 pin led light on for the case); it is easy to work around but silly layout esp when you examine the layout by biostar, asrock, asus which are nearly identical 'cept ofr not blocking the pcie :)
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anyways I had no issue; if you do have compatiblity issues the boardy will cycle power (no diagnosis like the biostar/asrock boards).
 
are you talking about the 2nd 16x PCIe slot? Amazon dont have alot of pic of this board, so I couldnt really tell.
 
Still running the MSI board I mentioned before and it's been fantastic. Every stability issue I had before is gone now with the swap. I shouldn't have to feel like I'm going to be that cautious about trying a new brand, but damn it if it doesn't feel fucking great when it works out. If MSI keeps their shit together, I'd probably start recommending them over ASUS.
 
I love this board...it's been great to work with. I haven't had any stability issues at all in the month or so that I've had the board and overclocking is a cinch, once you figure out how to navigate the bios (which really isn't that hard to do....I actually like how the bios is setup). A while ago MSI didn't have the best reputation, especially when put together with Gigabyte or ASUS, but now I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a new motherboard.
 
still no problems on my end.
love this board. well worth the buy.. and when i want to crank up afterburner and push button oc to play crysis, i can and i have no problems.
 
Betauser said:
I was going for the ASUS sabertooth but I see alot of them are getting some stability issues, so I might go with this board.
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I am a ASUS fan i had the P8P67Pro B3, after fooking around with it and a gazillion bios fixes i returned the POS and picked up an MSI P67-GD65, so far its running great and I'm happy with it!
 
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