MSI P55-GD65 - Mid-Range P55 for the Masses

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.