![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , April 17, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI P35 Platinum Combo
Every now and then a product comes along that raises an eyebrow, the MSI P35 Platinum Combo is one such a product. MSI takes an unusual approach to making a board that supports DDR2 & DDR3 memory technologies yet is enthusiast oriented.
MSI Dual Core Center
MSI packaged their usual Dual Core Center with the P35 Platinum Combo. The MSI Dual Core Center displays usual system status information such as temperatures, fan speeds, and CPU/FSB clock speeds. This utility incorporates MSIs’ usual Dynamic Overclocking Technology. This feature can be toggled on and off from this utility or via the system BIOS. The utility is easy to understand and to use, but it doesn’t have the best layout. It does allow you to overclock dynamically within Windows either manually or by the use of pre-defined profiles. This allows your overclock to automatically be adjusted based on system load and without the need to reboot the system. To use the Dynamic overclocking utility the user needs only to click the D.O.T. button. Once clicked the fan in the corner will begin to spin. The arrows next to the D.O.T. button set the pre-defined overclocks by percentage for the utility within the range of 3% to 25%.
The advanced menu is accessable from the arrow at the bottom left hand side of the utility’s main screen. Alternately there are two buttoms with waves on them. One is listed as “smooth mode” and the other as “sharp mode.” These are actually what are used to toggle basic and advanced mode. You can also create custom profiles when you click on the user profile button, then advanced, and then on the clock icon. From there the profile can be adjusted to the user’s preferences.
One of the great things about this utility is the fact that you can adjust the thermal thresholds and fan speeds for each individual profile. Each of the four icons at the top of the utility corresponds to motherboard temperature, motherboard voltage, motherboard fan speeds, and motherboard clock speeds for FSB and CPU overclocking. There are also several presets to choose from here. They are: AV, Game, Office, Silence, and Cool. When choosing a profile settings the user is prompted by the standard legal disclaimer.
While the utility has worked for me before, and I’ve got very little to complain about, I had quite a bit of trouble with it this time. Really any clock speed adjustments would cause a hard lock requiring me to power cycle the machine.
BIOS
The MSI P35 Platinum Combo uses the standard American Megatrends Inc. BIOS. Version 0B3 was used for testing.
The BIOS for the P35 Platinum Combo is the usual AMI/Award style BIOS found on virtually every DIY build in the last 10 years or more. The BIOS is laid out in the usual menu style by category. The standard CMOS Features menu contains the usual drive settings, time and date, and system information.
The Advanced BIOS Features section contains the usual boot sector, full screen logo display, quick boot, Num-Lock, IOAPIC and MPS table version settings. Additionally there are three sub-menus here as well. CPU Feature, Chipset Feature, and Boot Sequence. The CPU Feature sub-menus has Execute Bit Support and Set Limit CPUID MaxVal to 3 settings. The chipset feature sub-menu only has an HPET enable/disable setting. The Boot Sequence sub-menus is self-explanatory.
Integrated Peripherals contains settings to enable, disable or configure options or features integrated into the board such as USB, HD audio, IEEE1394, and onboard LAN port. There are also two sub-menus here. On-Chip ATA Devices and I/O devices. The hardware monitor is pretty standard. It contains the temperature of the CPU and motherboard a long with the system voltages and fan speeds.
The Cell Menu is where we get down to business. At the top of the screen the current CPU and memory frequencies are displayed. Below that are D.O.T. Control, Intel EIST, Adjust CPU FSB Frequency, and Adjust CPU Ratio. Once you adjust the CPU ratio or FSB frequency the new clock speed is displayed below the CPU Raito adjustment. Next is Advanced DRAM configuration where you can adjust all your timings or set the system to use the SPD values of the memory modules. FSB/Mem Ratio is also adjustable here. There aren’t but a handful of ratios to choose from which caused me some issues while overclocking. (More on that later.) Next you’ll find PCI-Express settings. Below those settings are the voltage adjustments. MSI has provided a good range of voltage adjustments for everything. Last but not least you can disable the Spread Spectrum settings.