Sunday, April 24, 2011

MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal review

The introduction of the latest Intel Core i5 and Core i7 based processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture and paired with that the P67 motherboard chipset for the somewhat enthusiast community certainly brought a big smile to all our faces. Face it, any combination of that processor and a motherboard is just wicked.

Update: this article was written prior to the P67 chipset recall - more info in the conclusion on this.

But... there's also wicked in threefold. We have seen some truly P67 amazing motherboards already, but the one tested today is bound to top them all. It is a motherboard that I have been on the lookout for a long long time. It is the MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal!

The Marshal, as we'll call it from here and onwards, is a eATX based P67 motherboard on which MSI went completely wacky, the board will compel and lure the extreme enthusiast class end-user as it is smothered with features and options.

Powered by Intel's P67 chipset, the MSI Big Bang Marshal comes with MSI's latest Military Class II design that makes use of a 24 phase (!) power SFC choke setup alongside the best quality Hi-c CAP's and Japanese made solid capacitors with a hopefully an extended long life-time expectancy. Primary features:

  • Military Class II components
  • OC Genie II: Auto OC to boost performance in 1 sec
  • ClickBIOS: Easy-to-use UEFI BIOS interface
  • Super Charger: fast charge iPad/iPhone/smartphone
  • MANY USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb/s
  • MANY PCIe slots

But wait there's so much more... to name just a few, this board at default comes with twelve USB 3.0 ports thanks to three NEC USB 3.0 controllers and an internal VIA HUB, is has eight (!) mechanical PCIE x16 slots supporting CrossfireX and 2-way SLI.

Added to the mix for additional PCIe lanes is a Hydra chip, which also can be utilized to combine mix and match graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup. The board comes with 24-phase DrMOS power design, voltage monitoring points, an external overclock device called the OC dashboard, that all new EFI BIOS, dual-BIOS selectable with a simple button, and OC genie button that allows you to have say a 2500K processor run at 4200 with the flick of a switch. I'm not done though, we spot integrated audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi application (software) layer, ten SATA ports of which four are based on the all new SATA 6G. Thick heatpipe (passive and thus silent) cooling and more and more.

This board is a true hardware enthusiast dream come true, a freakfest of hardware but was it really designed into perfection or do we stumble into some compromises? Well, let's have a quick peek after we'll show, test and overclock it. We'll bring it close to 5 GHz on air cooling today and put some really sexy 2133 MHz DDR3 CAS7 memory on it to see if we can set any new records.

MSI Big Bang Marshall P67

The Intel 68 series chipset

Paired with the new Sandy Bridge based processors come new motherboard chipsets, ten in total of which five are intended for desktop processors, namely the P67, H67, Q65, Q67 and B65. Next to the new chipsets there is also a small socket change. Previous Clarkdale Core series processors were seated onto a LGA 1156 package (socket). The new SB processors do not share that same socket, Intel placed them onto socket LGA 1155, one pin less.

The primary reason here is that a last generation processor will not work with a series 6 chipset and vice versa. So you can't install by accident, a Clarkdale based Core i5 on a P67 motherboard.

Now, luckily this doesn't mean you'll be needing a new cooler, your old LGA 1156 CPU cooler is compatible with the LGA 1155 motherboard measurements. Let's have a look at the primary features of the 82P67 Platform Controller Hub chipset.

SegmentCorporateSMB - B65Consumer H67Consumer P67
SocketLGA 1155LGA 1155LGA 1155LGA 1155
Memory channels / DIMM per channel2 / 22 / 22 / 22 / 2
USB2.014121414
SATA Total (Max number of 6Gb/s)6 (2)6 (1)6 (2)6 (2)
PCIe 2.08888
PCIYesYesNoNo
Integrated Display222n/a
Performance TuningNoNoNoYes

Above, you can see the primary desktop chipsets released, H67 and P67 will be the two chipset you are dealing with. For end consumers like you and me the H67 chipset will be less performance targeted and comes with support for monitor connectivity.

The one significant difference in-between H67 and P67 is that the P67 does not support the embedded GPU inside the processor or any of its functions. P67 requires a dedicated graphics card.

The P67 chipset is targeted at performance and enthusiast end users, allowing much more tweaking and providing performance features. As you can understand, we'll be testing a lot of these chipset based motherboards, some of which will also have support for the new uEFI BIOS. A graphics user interface BIOS that is going to fascinate you.

Intel Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K

Interesting to know is that the new 67 series chipsets will come a SATA 6G controller and though not native, all of them will very likely come with USB 3.0 support by using a NEC controller. P67 will have 16 PCIe lanes available for your graphics card (x16) but can be split down into two x8 PCIe lanes for graphics cards if you like to pursuit multi-GPU setup, hence SLI and Crossfire will run quite well on them.

The Intel 82P67 Platform Controller Hub (PCH) SATA2 ports can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology.

Another change is that the chipset now comes standard with an Intel Gigabit LAN (Intel 82579V) controller, on the previous chipsets this was an optional for ODMs, this time around... it simply sits there and can be used by the motherboard ODM. So I expect a big increase in Intel based LAN connectivity the upcoming year, bad news for Realtek that is.

MSI Big Bang Marshall P67

EFI BIOS (MSI CLICK BIOS)

Before we dice deep into the hardware with the help of a photo-shoot, I quickly wanted to show you the BIOS. We touched the topic at the previous page already, the new EFI BIOS is an Extensible Firmware Interface that complies with EFI architecture, offering a user-friendly interface that goes beyond traditional keyboard-only BIOS controls to enable a way more flexible and convenient mouse input at BIOS level.

EFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a specification detailing an interface that helps hand off control of the system for the pre-boot environment (i.e. after the system is powered on, but before the operating system starts) to an operating system, such as Windows.

EFI is an interface. It can be implemented on top of a traditional BIOS (in which case it supplants the traditional "INT" entry points into BIOS) or on top of non-BIOS implementations.

End-users can navigate the new EFI BIOS (basic input/output system) with the same smoothness as their operating system. It's simply a Windows OS feel. The EFI mode displays frequently-accessed setup info, experienced performance enthusiasts that demand far more intricate system settings and you can go nuts in there.

We have recorded a little video on the new EFI BIOS feature, and yes it is as impressive as it looks. The MSI EFI Click BIOS implementation however lacks a bit of creativity as it simply does not grasp me. It's setup is somewhat illogical, you constantly have to seek, it is also somewhat unresponsive and even buggy here and there as sometimes a mouse click on a register or function simply does not work.

Yeah there still lots of improvements to be made on MSI's side alright, but it's better then your regular BIOS of course as it makes common functions really fail proof, features like flashing a BIOS is done in a jiffy and all variables can be managed and monitored really easy. We'll see a lot of ODMs make a move to the EFI BIOS this year.

Specifications

Socket1155
CPU (Max Support)Sandy Bridge
Base Clock100MHz
ChipsetIntel P67
DDR3 MemoryDDR3 1066/1333/1600*/2133*(OC)
Memory ChannelDual
DIMM Slots4
Max Memory (GB)32
PCI-Ex168
PCI-E GenGen2 (1x16, 1x8)
PCI2
IDEN/A
SATAIII4
SATAII6
RAID0/1/5/10
LAN10/100/1000*2
USB 3.0 ports (Rear)8
USB 2.0 ports (Rear)2
Audio ports (Rear)6+Coaxial/Optical SPDIF
1394 ports (Rear)1
eSATA2
Form FactoreATX
DrMOSY
APSY
SLIY
CrossFireY

Alright, let's head onwards to an overview of the motherboard with the help of a photo-shoot.

MSI Big Bang Marshall P67

No comments:

Post a Comment