![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , November 24, 2009
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI P55-GD65 LGA 1156 Motherboard Review
MSI’s latest Intel P55 based board looks to be cut from the same mold as its big brother P55-GC80 motherboard. The GD65 is mean, lean, and ready to rumble. While it does not pack in all the features of the GD80, the GD65 does not act like a $155 motherboard.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel LGA 1156 Core i5 750 CPU with the board base clock running at 133MHz and 2 x 2GB Corsair CMD8GX3M4A1600C8 memory modules running at 1333MHz were used in testing.
Audio - Subjective Listening
One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose to listen to the Nine Inch Nails album The Slip.
Audio playback of the selected tracks was enjoyable, with no detectable distortion of any type heard throughout.
Audio - Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using our standard Labtec Desk Mic 524 testing microphone. Spoken words were recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
While there was no distortion either with or without Microphone Boost enabled, overall pickup and audibility was much better with Microphone Boost enabled. Without Microphone Boost, playback of the recorded vocal audio sounded more like whispers.
Drive Performance
To adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected to both ports. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using a Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drive on the IDE header and Samsung 40GB SATA II hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration on the Intel P55 controller only and in standalone mode on both the Intel P55 and JMicron JMB363 controllers. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a standalone configuration on the JMicron JMB363 controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.
The SATA 2 drives on the Intel P55 controller had the best overall performance, with the RAID array marginally besting the standalone drive performance. The JMicron’s standalone SATA drive’s performance fell neatly in between that of the Intel connected drive and the IDE drive. The two external drive devices performed on par with one another, with the IEEE 1394 device having a slight performance advantage. In all cases, the measured CPU utilization remained below 1%.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Realtek GigE NICs. It was found that both onboard network connections had similar performance, so only one set of numbers is provided. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 750MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and a 750MB worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an integrated Gigabit NIC on the host system and a crossover cable to connect the host system to the test system. A crossover cable was used to rule out any possible bandwidth losses due to hub or switch passage.
Realtek GigE controller
The large file transfer performance results fell better than expected, with the download speed coming in at a speed 42 MB/s average, besting that of upload by 9 MB/s. For the duration of both tests, the CPU utilization remained below 10%.
The small file transfer performance results were as anticipated, with the average upload speed having a slight advantage over download at 30 MB/s. Again, the measure CPU utilization remained under 10% during both tests.
Synthetic Performance Testing
Test Systems
The following system configurations were used for the system benchmark graphs, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections:
Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Type & Clock Speed - Memory Speed
Sisoft Sandra 2009
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode for all systems with the exception of the Intel X58 based board which ran in Triple Channel mode.
The P55-GD65 performed on par with the other P55 chipset based systems. While its performance was dwarfed by the x58 by system, the board performed as expected due to the bandwidth differences between dual and triple channel memory, as well as the increased speed of the processor and memory used in the x58 based system and overclocked GD80 system.
The P55-GD65 again performs solidly, managing to stay neck in neck with the other more expensive P55 based boards. This is indicative of a properly designed CPU to board interface.
Hiper Pi
The P55-GD65 manages another as expected performance, managing to easily stay with its P55 brethren and again illustrating the well performing nature of the board itself.
wPrime
Again, the P55-GD65 manages to stick with its P55 pack, again illustrating that the board is performing as it should overall.