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- Date:
- Thursday , June 12, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI P45 Platinum
MSI brings their P45 Platinum to the table making use of Intel’s P45 chipset. In addition to building this board around the P45 chipset, MSI has added some new features to their P45 chipset based boards that are certainly worth looking at.
Introduction
MSI has been in the motherboard game for a number of years producing enthusiast level boards and everything below that. Most of the time boards are boards and they just differ a bit in the feature department. Now MSI is stepping up to the plate with a ton of new features and design ideas now available on their P45 motherboards. With the introduction of the MSI P45 Platinum MSI follows the industry trends with their own features designed to improve efficiency and reduce power consumption. MSI has also stepped up their game and now use 2-phase power on their memory and MCH for improved stability. While this is certainly a step in the right direction MSI is hardly the first to use a 2-phase power solution for their MCH and memory slots. MSI chose all solid capacitors for the P45 Platinum.
MSI also introduces the Rapidboost feature which is an interesting feature to be sure. When Rapidboost is enabled there are two modes to select from. Mode 1 actually leaves all the hardware at the default settings and doesn't actually overclock to the full OC settings until the operating system is loaded. Mode 2 overclocks the system to 50% of the overclock settings specified in the BIOS and brings the overclock to 100% once the system loads the operating system. It is a novel approach and something I've never seen before. The theory behind the feature is that most of the crashes or hang ups are encountered during the POST sequence. My experience tells me that while a really bad overclock usually isn’t stable enough to get into Windows I’d imagine that if you can run Windows off a given overclock it should be able to POST without issue. MSI has done what some might consider a step backwards. The P45 Platinum is equipped with a hardware OC jumper. Essentially it does what some of the pin/pad mods for Intel processors have done in the past. A 200MHz FSB processor can go to 266MHz, 266MHz becomes 333MHz and a 333MHz FSB processor can be taken to 400MHz FSB. It is certainly a nice feature. Supposedly when combined with the Rapidboost Mode 1 and Mode 2 settings greater overclocking thresholds and stability can be achieved. The new electrical components found in the P45 Platinum and P45 Diamond motherboards are supposed to improve overall power efficiency as well as adding power savings over previous offerings.
The MSI P45 Platinum uses Intel’s new P45 chipset and ICH10R southbridge. Now of course everyone is probably wondering what the differences between the P45 and P35 are. Well to be honest, nothing earth shattering. The P45 chipset is manufactured on a 65nm process and does support different PCI-Express lane configurations than the P35 chipset did that are more optimal for Crossfire performance. Instead of being stuck to a 16x4 configuration 16x4 or 8x8 are now supported. However some companies like ASUS have already achieved this on the P35 chipset through the usage of their Crosslinx chip. The P45 also seems to run a little cooler and that is likely due to being produced on a more efficient manufacturing process. The P45 chipset itself does have one interesting change in that it supports 4GB modules for a total of 16GB of memory over 8GB of supported memory on the P35 chipset.
The P45 Chipset will also support Intel’s new ETU software (Extreme Tuning Utility) however the MSI board didn’t come with that software so we didn’t test that software with this board and used only the included Core Cell software for tuning the system in Windows. Like the P35 before it, the P45 chipset supports DDR2 or DDR3 memory. ICH10R seems largely unchanged from the ICH9R so anyone expecting revolutionary performance improvements or a host of new features will just have to get used to some disappointment here. The ICH10R southbridge supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 so there is nothing new there. The MSI P45 Platinum supports the latest Intel ® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. As with most motherboards made today, few components are required to complete a working system. All that is needed for a working system is an LGA775 processor, DDR2 memory modules, a power supply, a video card, and hard drive.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The packaging for the MSI P45 Platinum differs from the usual MSI packaging format I’ve come to know. Like most other top tier board makers MSI has now switched to the “box within a box” with a handle on the top. Included with the board are driver disks, a new hard drive backup utility disk, cables, manuals, quick start guide and a set of quick connectors for the motherboard similar to ASUS’ Q-Connect plugs. There is a USB IO bracket, SATA cables, and a Crossfire bridge.
Board Layout
The layout of the MSI P45 Platinum is outstanding. MSI has in the past done somewhat worse than other manufacturers in this area. Their Circu-Pipe cooling system took up a ton of space and caused numerous issues in regard to memory installation, video card installation, and of course processor heatsink clearances. Those issues are mostly eliminated with the inclusion of MSI’s Circu-Pipe 2 heat pipe cooling system.
The CPU area is clear of obstructions. This is a nice improvement over some more recent MSI boards. With this series it would seem that MSI has done away with their old Circu-Pipe cooler, and they have replaced it with their new Dr. MOS heat pipe system. With that said I had some trouble mounting my Apogee GT waterblock to the board. However that block takes up an unreasonable amount of space. So having some fitting issues with it is expected on most boards.
The board has 4 DDR2 DIMM slots that are placed in such a way as to allow the installation of memory modules with large video cards installed. The MSI P45 Platinum uses a 2-phase power design on the memory slots and on the MCH for stability. For those of you who really keep up with MSI boards we have reviewed in the past you may have noticed that we have hammered MSI for years now over their DIMM slot color coding scheme and the fact that it differed from every other board on the market and at no point had MSI ever provided any reasoning behind why they chose to color code and place the banks/slots the way they did on previous boards. I am pleased to report that MSI has addressed this and now use a standard color coding that matches what everyone else in the industry has done for several years now. The manual for the board also shows the correct installation method to enable dual channel memory as being the standard alternating bank/color matching method we all know and love.
The north bridge is of course in the usual place. It is cooled by MSI’s new Dr. Mos heat pipe system. Unlike its predecessor the DR. Mos cooling system is not circular at all. In fact it has a trapezoidal baseplate and even looks roughly like a bunch of axes placed close together at the bottom and fanned out close to the top. The heat pipes are a brilliant design. I do not use the word lightly as they really are. The cooling fins maximize the usage of the available space and create a very small foot print so that the cooling system doesn’t interfere with the installation of RAM, power connectors or cards. I’d also like to mention that the cooling system also works VERY well. It was cool to the touch regardless of how long the system had run or how much overclocking I did. This was the coolest running board I’ve seen in some time. We did run the P45 ASUS boards and P45 MSI boards side by side and there was no doubt that the MSI board was the cooler running of the three.
Linked from the north bridge cooling system is a heat pipe that connects the south and north bridges. The heat sink on the south bridge is relatively low clearance and stayed fairly cool to the touch. SATA ports are directly in front of the south bridge. MSI did two things I really liked here. First they used right angle connectors which just make sense at this point. With video cards being gigantic in size these days and the motherboards being littered with a ton of components this type of connector scheme should be used by everyone. Secondly these connectors support the newer locking SATA cables that can’t be pulled out accidentally.
The MSI P45 Platinum has two PCI-Express x16 PCIe 2.0 compatible slots. One slot operates in x16 mode while the other in x4 mode. In a Crossfire configuration both slots operate in x8 mode. Compared to previous P35 and P965 chipset based boards this is a welcome change as this is far more ideal for dual video card configurations. There are two legacy PCI 2.2 slots and two PCI-Express x1 slots.
There is a single RJ-45 port, 2 PS/2 ports, 1 IEEE1394a port, 6 mini-headphone jacks, an optical out port, 6 USB ports, and one eSATA port.
MSI Dual Core Center
MSI’s Dual Core Center application hasn’t really changed in the two years or so I’ve been reviewing their boards. This time MSI actually changed something and added a green power button. (More on that in a moment.) MSI’s Dual Core Center software allows for monitoring and overclocking in Windows.
The MSI Dual Core Center utility displays the system status and general PC Health information. Fan speeds, CPU/FSB clock speeds, and voltages are all present here and can be monitored in real time. The utility features MSI’s Dynamic Overclocking Technology also known as D.O.T. This feature can be enabled or disabled via the Dual Core Center or via the BIOS. The software allows for overclocking within the Windows environment through manual adjustment of FSB and voltage values or through the use of more conservative pre-defined profiles. D.O.T. is enabled once the button is clicked on and the little fan in the corner starts spinning. The pre-defined overclocking profiles provide an adjustment range of about 3-25% which is actually rather minimal using today’s Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo/Extreme series processors.
The Advanced Menu is accessible from the arrow at the bottom left hand side of the utility’s main screen. Alternatively there are two buttons with waves on them. One is listed as “smooth mode” and the other as “sharp mode”. I am not really sure what that’s supposed to mean exactly but I suppose it is akin to basic and advanced. You can also create and load custom overclocking profiles within this utility. To do this all you need to do is click on the user profile button and edit the changes to your content with them and then save the settings. As always the functionality to alter the thermal thresholds and fan speeds for each profile exists in this version. What is new however is the Greenpower button. This launches a new window that looks like it came from an entirely different utility and you have very easy to read but somewhat difficult to understand settings and information being displayed all at once. This utility would actually prove to be a nice basis for a style and interface that would be far more pleasant to use than the Dual Core Center utility the Greenpower monitor spawns from.
While I really like the Greenpower monitor and enabling or disabling the feature is really easy to do, the values here seem a little unclear at best. While the voltages seem about right the efficiency numbers look a bit odd and the CPU power monitor shows an unbelievable 213.44w of power. I am not sure if this is supposed to represent the full power being consumed by the system or if this is supposed to be what the CPU is using. The former is possible and the latter is almost totally impossible as the maximum power usage of the Core 2 Duo E8500 used in my testing is FAR below that number. (Less than half of that number and more like one quarter of that value to be more precise.) Another point of interest comes about from enabling the Greenpower throttling. When you do enable the feature you are again presented with some numbers under the Power Saving section showing you how much CPU Power and Accumulated System Power you are supposedly saving. This also shows the System Power Saving Rate. One other nice thing about this is that you can see what CPU PWM Phase mode is currently being used with the given settings. In Greenpower mode it shows 2-phase and 5-phase when the power savings are off. This utility is a nice idea but some changes to the wording would go a long way to making it easier to use and understand.