MSI P55-GD65 – Features

MSI is currently offering four P55 motherboards including a mATX board. Their budget P55 model (P55-CD53) will set yous dorsum $120, while the near expensive (P55-GD80) sells for most $210, considerably less than competitors' P55 flagship products.

Sitting between these two boards is the P55-GD65, which is priced at $160 making it one of the cheaper boards featured in this round-upwardly.

Characteristic-wise the MSI P55-GD65 is like to the more than expensive Asus P7P55D Deluxe offering Firewire, dual Gigabit LAN and 8 SATA ports. At simply $40 more than the ECS P55H-A, you seem to be getting more for your money, though nosotros experience the biggest advantages volition exist seen when overclocking. For now let's bank check the board's features in greater particular…

The MSI P55-GD65 features 4 DIMM slots and just 2 PCIe x16 slots similar the ECS P55H-A. These are the ii merely motherboards in our round-up that don't offer 3 PCIe x16 slots, which may or not be a deal breaker for you.

Improving on the standard storage capabilities of the P55 chipset, MSI has included the JMicron 363 controller which supports an additional 2 SATA ports (8 full). Even so just i of these ports can be constitute on-board while the other has been mounted on the I/O panel where it acts as an eSATA port.

Whereas Asus went for an old VIA 6308P controller that uses the PCI bus to gain Firewire back up, MSI stepped it up a notch with the more modern VIA VT6315N controller. This controller utilizes the PCI Express bus and can detect connected device types, automatically configuring data speeds to 100, 200, or 400 Mbps transmitting both asynchronous and isochronous (real-time) data packets.

Another fault Asus made with in the P7P55D Palatial was their choice in LAN controllers, which again saw them apply an outdated fleck that used the PCI bus. MSI got it right with a pair of Realtek RTL8111DL controllers, both of which utilize the PCI Express coach for maximum throughput.

The audio has been taken care of by the ALC889 codec which is 1 of the more high-cease offerings from Realtek providing 8-channel audio. At that place are too quite a big number of MSI engineered features such equally APS (Active Phase Switching), Direct OC, OC Genie, DrMOS, V-Cheque Points, Thousand-Flash and USB Safeguard.