Overclocker motherboards by MSI and Gigabyte (Intel P45)
Author:
Date: 18.09.2008 |
|
Layout and Features
Since both the boards are aimed at computer enthusiasts and overclockers, that has affected their design. In particular, the boards have more than one PCI Express x16 slots: 3 on the Gigabyte's, and 2 on the MSI's.
Besides, both the boards use a massive cooling system which includes additional radiators on the power supply module, as well as water blocks on the north bridge.
Note that there are three power connectors on the MSI's board. The main connector is positioned on the bottom edge of the board, and the additional 8-pin one - on the upper right-hand corner, with the 4-pin Molex near the north bridge. There are merely two connectors on the Gigabyte's board: the main one, and the 8-pin additional (positioned similarly). Both the boards allow plugging in a 4-wire cable to the 8-pin connector.
Let's take a closer look at the water blocks.
As you can see, both the water blocks are aligned with the radiator, which allows using motherboards without a system of fluid-powered cooling. We also note that on the Gigabyte's board the unions of the water block are closed with rubber caps, and on the MSI's - with a piece of pipe (which spoils the exterior).
Each of the boards has four 240-pin DIMM slots for memory modules. However, the Gigabyte's board is aimed at using DDR2, whereas the MSI's - DDR3. The overall capacity of supported memory does not exceed 8 GB.
There are three PCI Express x16 slots on Gigabyte EP45-Extreme. However, because of the chipset's limitations, only 16 lanes are allocated to the first slot (from the north bridge). If the second slot is used, only 8 lanes are allocated to it (also from the north bridge via a switch), and therefore the number of lanes on the first slots is reduced (to 8). Besides, the board also used the third PCI Express x16 slot to which 3 lanes are allocated when the PCI Express x1 slot is used, and 4 lanes - in the reverse case (selection is made also via a switch).
On the P45 Diamond, all is simple: two PCI Express x16 slots with the 16+0 or 8+8 operation schemes. Also on the MSI's board, there are two PCI and a couple of PCI Express x1 slots. On Gigabyte EP45-Extreme, there are three PCI and one PCI Express x1 slots.
Let's now examine the expansion options. There is the south bridge ICH10R on the Gigabyte's board. In the end, the board supports six SerialATA II links with the option of setting up a RAID array. The MSI's board also uses the ICH10R.
The engineers of the companies have used different chips to implement the ParallelATA interface: Gigabyte used IT8213, while MSI - JMB363 made by JMicron (which also supports a couple of SerialATA ports + RAID). Moreover, engineers at MSI found that a bit too little and they installed the JMB362 chip (without support for RAID) which serves two external SerialATA ports. Therefore, you can plug in 8 hard disks (6 SATA II + 2 PATA) to the Gigabyte's board, and 12 hard disks (10 SATA + 2 PATA) to the MSI's board.
Then, the south bridge ICH10R supports 12 USB2.0 ports. On the Gigabyte's board, 8 ports are positioned on the rear panel with 4 more plugged in using brackets. On the MSI's board, the configuration of the ports is the same (there is also a bracket for two ports in the bundle).
Besides, both the boards support the Firewire bus. For that, there is an additional controller made by Texas Instruments on the Gigabyte's board. This is the TSB43AB23 chip which supports 3 matching ports (all are external). MSI P45 Diamond uses the VIA 6308 chip which serves two ports (one external, the other one internal; there is also a bracket for a port in the package bundle).
Now a few words on the audio subsystem. The Gigabyte's board uses the ALC889A (High Definition Audio) codec, and on the MSI's there is a separate sound card based on the Creative X-Fi chip (which is much better).
Both the motherboards offer support for a high-speed network connection. Each board uses a couple of RTL 8111ะก Gigabit Ethernet controllers. In the end, on the rear panel of each board you can see two RJ-45 connectors:
Each of the boards supports one COM port which is plugged in using a bracket. We also note a great number of integrated USB2.0 ports (8 on each) and a special button to clear the CMOS settings. Also on the MSI's board, there is a couple of external SerialATA and one FireWire port. On the Gigabyte's board, there is a complete pack of audio outputs, including optical and coaxial SP-DIF.
Once we are talking about the buttons, we note that the Gigabyte's board also has two convenient buttons to start up and reboot the system. On the MSI's board, there are three buttons, two of which perform the same functions, and the third one seems to be redundant (no response on pressing; no description in the user's manual). As regards the boot-up diagnostics, this job is quite simple with the Gigabyte's board, since the latter uses a 7-stage POST indicator. The boot-up diagnostic feature is also there on the MSI's board, but it is implemented with a lot of multicolored LEDs, which is screaming.
The boards' components layout diagram:
Now on to the BIOS settings.
 |
Content: |
 |
|
|
Top Stories: |
|
 |
|
MoBo:
|
|
|
|
VGA Card:
|
|
|
|
CPU & Memory:
|
|
|
