MSI Big Bang XPower - X58 mothetboard - w/ official support

[Hondacity]

raju

is the drmos (drivermosfets) not good for high power app? looking at the drivermosfets from asus..it looks beefier.

[Raja@ASUS]

No it is something else. I've told MSI, and it is what it is.

[Hondacity]

imc vreg?

[Raja@ASUS]

imc vreg?

Don't worry about it too much. I'm just picky in that I think vendors should put more work into boards that cost more.

[Hondacity]

wish i knew which hw shortcoming it had...hehehe

[thebanik]

Confirmed. B29 was the bios I had on the very early board back in april and had issues plenty.

Thanks massman, thats what I was suspecting

[Mmichel]

Of course, you are right, i know, its hard to find differences for common using today, on board from 100 EUR cheap mobo, to 500 EUR Giga monster price UD9 ...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3su9g5 - last Beta Bios

PS. Board was officialy released, i think ..., here is on shelves

A7666IMS.10Z ---> A7666IMS.111

01. Follow PCB1.1 to add QPI VDroop Control Item.
02. Follow PCB1.1 to add DDR Phase Mode & LED Control.
03. Fix SLI function fail issue. (Fix N9600GT VGA Card S3 resume issue side effect)
04. Fix XMP Profile2 DRAM Frequency display error issue.

A7666IMS.111 ---> A7666IMS.112

01. Fix DDR Phase LED error when S3 resume issue.
02. Clear non VGA BIOS RAM to avoid other device option ROM invoke failed.



Mike.

[zsamz_]

The initial sample boards were locked to a 180 amp OCP. MSI released a mod for this that set it to 400 amps and then needed to be told their input inductor is limited to 30 amps only (that's why they now have two input inductors on the retail boards). Lots of goofs on the BIOSes to date, and I'm sure everyone has had to send in a lot of fix lists. S3 resume was borked right up to last week. Most memory timings all over the place. tWR only recieved a buff last week as well. On top of that, the hw side is not that great IMO for a high end board (air, LN2 or whatever).


Later
Raja

thanks you saved me 300$

[Leeghoofd]

weird Raju we didn't have any power issues with GT over 6Ghz... not with the early (modded) nor the retail sample (unmodded)... bios indeed needs some fixes...

What do you mean with the HW side is not that great ? Not enough gimmicks ?

[Raja@ASUS]

Too many gimmicks, not enough substance IMO. There are areas where $200 boards can do better.

[massman]

What if you put things in perspective? Can the flaws cause inferior overclocking results by a large margin?

I noticed BenchBros hit 6.6G aquamark (ok - no vantage, but still) and AndreYang 6.7G 3D.

[wesleys_dad]

So do you guys feel the asus rampage 3 is a better motherboard?

[Raja@ASUS]

So do you guys feel the asus rampage 3 is a better motherboard?

If you're not doing all this 6GHz+ stuff (not many compares by anyone at those frequencies), then the answer is a definite yes. From BIOS to overclocking, it's a great all-rounder.

[Blacky]

My friend got himself one today and seems there's a problem detecting his HDD's do you guys know which could be the problem? any response is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Blacky

[Leeghoofd]

For bloomfield 24/7 OC there's only REX III... my UD9 has big issues with booting over 220Bclock from bios, same counts for the Xpower (QPI issue)... For LN2 this is a very durable board and I was amased it blew my REX III sample away

[Raja@ASUS]

I think you'll find it's far closer on the retail sample R3E now Leeghoofd. The R3E is a very well executed board.

[Leeghoofd]

Some quick shots of the board just live up the thread

[Charles Wirth]

A major issue I found was in USB speed.

If you try to install an OS via USB it will take forever.

[Mafio]

Leeghoofd did you tested this mobo with a bloomfield CPU? if yes, what's the max BCLK with QPI in full and slow mode?
what about efficiency in 32m?

thanks

[Charles Wirth]

Did anyone get the OC panel, disks, sound card or manual?

[OC Nub]

I think I may try this board. I need 215bclk for my 920, nothing more. The price is right, and it looks like it comes with a sound card. I thought about trying the REX III but I am not an Asus fan and dont want to pay 369.00 for one.

[Leeghoofd]

I got all in my media package Charles, though the Driver DVD (not a final release one) is fubarred, takes ages to read and can't install a darn thing from it (probably burned to fast)


Mafio : for Bclock we found with Bloomfield/GT that you can boot max from bios 220Bclock (QPI issue). When doing soft resets you can go up to whatever ya CPU can handle (my 950 is 229 max on 3 boards on air and LN2, crap CPU) Massman did 249 on GT with SlowMode. We already passed it to MSI so hopefully they will get this fixed as 220 is not good enough for a 2nd generation X58 high end board. I'm experiencing similar issues with the GB UD9 board. The REX III and Classie boot straight around 230Bclock on air... which is how it should be...

I'm not into slow mode really... either it works flatout or it doesn't here... (I'm more the 3D guy for benching) REX III here did 238Bclock 3D06 stable, will need to get some LN2 to tests the Xpower and UD9. ( as my phase unit is dead )

I'm still busy digging into these boards, but below is the average result of a stock run on my 950 with rams at 1600Mhz C8-8-8-24 1T TRFC 88 and uncore at 3200Mhz. OS Win7 Pro 64bit



Need to rerun all the tests on the REX II for comparison (was benched on another OS a year ago). Just for Info : REX III Bios 704, GB UD9 on F4A and the MSI on 111 bios. I need to find out why the REX III was slower here as in most of the other tests it was king of the hill. Xpower seems good bang for the buck, UD9 is not so good in that department :p

[Mafio]

thanks

efficiency is very good

edit: maybe R3E is slower in 32m because of higher RTL
i don't know what kind of benchmark did you run but 32m depends a lot by memory and low RTL means easily 1 or 2 sec faster

[Leeghoofd]

Could be, there's where the quests begins I usually run 3D01, 06, pi 1 & 32, Wprime32 & 1024, Cinebench, Pcmark05, X264HD, FarCry2 and RE Benchmark...

[Mafio]

Could be, there's where the quests begins I usually run 3D01, 06, pi 1 & 32, Wprime32 & 1024, Cinebench, Pcmark05, X264HD, FarCry2 and RE Benchmark...

i don't know about pcmark but all the others test aren't that sensible to memory settings.
therefore higher RTL setted by default by R3E could be the reason of this gap in 32m.

comparisons between mobos are always tricky, there are to much things that can influence the results...