MSI P55-GD65 - Mid-Range P55 for the Masses
by Gary Key on October 10, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Overclocking
The P55-GD65 offers a very good overclocking experience. Some additional BIOS tuning would make this a great motherboard for most enthusiasts.
Core i5/750 8GB Results
Our maximum stable overclock on air-cooling with the Core i5/750 resulted in a 4.2GHz clock speed at a respectable 210MHz Bclk with a variety of 8GB DDR3-2000+ kits. The primary voltages settings were 1.3625V VCore, 1.38V VTT, 1.83V PLL, and 1.65V VDimm. The VCore setting is deceiving. We had to run the board with Load Line Calibration (Low Vdroop) enabled for stability. This meant setting our voltage manually to 1.3625V with load rates rising to 1.3975V.
We could not stably run our memory above DDR3-2000 with 8GB loaded and the i5/750. We scaled back to DDR3-1683 at C7 timings which offered the same performance, if not better, than DDR3-2050 C9.
Core i7/860 8GB Results
Our i7/860 fared better clocking wise than the i5/750, with a 21x205 setting for 4.3GHz. Memory was set at DDR3-2055 with 9-9-9-24 1T timings at 1.65V.
VTT is set to 1.39V, PLL at 1.85V, VDimm at 1.65V, and VCore at 1.350V with LLC (Low Vdroop) enabled. Under load conditions VCore was +.015V~+.02V with low Vdroop enabled and -.04V~-.05V with it disabled. Our Core i7/870 clocks matched these exactly.
Core i7/860 4GB DDR3-2400 Results
MSI advertised up to DDR3-2400 speeds so we decided to verify their claim. Unfortunately, the board had serious problem running our DDR3-2400 Blade kit at 2400 with the stock 9-10-9-24 1T settings on 1.65V. We just could not dial in that memory speed. We had to settle for DDR3-2055 8-8-8-24 1T timings at 1.65V. The primary problem being that the board strictly utilizes the SPD under auto settings and the board tried setting the base 7-7-7-20 SPD settings at 2400. Even manually tuning each individual setting still resulted in a limit around DDR3-2100. Of course, our final settings is more than fast enough for application usage and let’s face it, nobody will be buying this board thinking they are going to break world records.
Thoughts
The overclocking results are very solid and certainly 4.2GHz~4.3GHz speeds are fast enough for most users. We have no concerns recommending the MSI P55-GD65 board for 24/7 overclocking use. When overclocked, the board is extremely stable. Our only concern is that S3 resume did not work properly with the Bclk set above 190.
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MadMan007 - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
The lack of information regarding PCIe slot assignment when different slots are populated has been SORELY missing from all P55 mobo reviews. It's either laziness or an attempt to cover up shortcomings but it seems pretty important to me - people actually expect to use slots that are present on the board, ya know?I STILL haven't seen an answer to how many lanes the primary graphics slot keeps when the secondary graphics slot is populated with a 1x or 4x card! This affects anyone who has a graphics card and sound card, or TV tuner, or disk controller and given the layout of many boards you're likely going to have to use the secondary graphics slot for those devices.
I am also bothered by the lack of C2Q benchmarks. Loads of people have them and asking whether i5 in particular is a worthwhile upgrade is being ignored.
crab nebula - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
There are two kinds of P55 mbs:1. Non SLI: The PCI Express 2.0 x16 link does not split.
2. SLI x8: The PCI Express 2.0 link splits into two x8 links, usually SLI-certified by NVIDIA
3. SLI x16: The nForce 200 chip is equipped for 2-way SLI: x16, x16 and 3-way SLI: x16, x8, x8.
Most mb of the first type also have a second PCI Express x16 slot which is connected to P55 and works at x4 (1.x in bandwidth).
MSI P55-GD65 is of the second type. If you insert a PCI Express device (of whatever lanes) in the second PCI Express x16 2.0 slot (electrically x8), the first PCI Express x16 2.0 slot also works only at x8.
A problem of P55-GD65 is that the severe (?) limitation of the PCI Express x4 slot is not mentioned in its product page or the manual at all. For example, suppose that a user is using a PCIe x1 sound card in the first PCIe x1 slot and a 2-slot graphics card. If he wants to use a PCIe x1 TV tuner card and insert it in the PCIe x4 slot, then he will suddenly find that his sound card stops working! So he has to use the second PCI Express 2.0 x16 for the TV tuner. Then this decreases the speed of the graphic card to x8!! Although practically this is not a big issue, this limitation still should be mentioned somewhere in the product page or the manual.
"the layout of this board is just fantastic, especially the PCIe/PCI layout." ?? It looks like Gary Key is simply ignorant of this. ASUS and ASRock mbs have much better board layouts in this respect: all expansion slots actually work!
MadMan007 - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Exactly the type of scenario that no mobo reviews have mentioned and which I was thinking of. Thank you for spelling it out.crab nebula - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Correction: "There are two kinds of P55 mbs" has to be "There are three kinds of P55 mbs". (The fourth type would be those that use Lucid Hydra 200.)lopri - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
I don't know how you don't see PCI Express slot information from the reviews so far? They have been clearly explained or are in the board specification page. There was even a special article regarding P55 chipset PCI Express.MadMan007 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
You need to reread and comprehend my post. I'm not asking for specs, obviously those are easy to find, but how lanes get assigned when slots are occupied especially with something other than a graphics card. I guess all reviewers are too lazy to put anything but one or two graphics cards in their test mobos.lopri - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
I didn't go back and re-read the reviews, but at the time when I read them I was able to tell how the lanes are assigned on a given board. It's not like there are multitude of choices available.. All P55 boards so far (maybe except the one w/ NF200) support either a x16 lane or two x8 lanes from the CPU. Everything else belongs to the PCH and if I remember correctly all reviews made it clear when a physical x16 slot (x4 electrically) belongs to the south bridge.MadMan007 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
You still fail to comprehend and say it like I'm a moron who can't read a chipset diagram but your other link at least answered the question about the CPU-based lanes.lopri - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3649">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3649MadMan007 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
That is a video card review so no it's not been spelled out in mobo reviews. It's what I figured but hoped the lane splitter chips might be smarter. Thanks for the link though.