The Tomorrow’s Star of Intel Platform- MSI P965 Platinum First Exposure

[windwithme]

The last third part of July, 2006 will be another milestone of processors
Intel gives up the Pentium 4 structure which they use for several years,
then back to the low frequency/ high performance/ low temperature
structure with is similar to AMD K8, and release several processors base on
code name Conroe instead of Pentium series.







Base on the new-gen processors
The Supporting chipsets include the high-end 975X ( have to change the circuit design of motherboards)
and the lower price,mainstream segment,which is called 965 chipset.








The board what I get is MSI P965 Platinum
The whole appearance of the board












The right bottom of the board.
The official spec of P965 for PCI Express is one X16
But MSI add one yellow PCI Express x16 slot runs at X4 speed
The Sound chip is Realtek ALC883, 7.1 channel















The right bottom of the board.
The south bridge is the latest ICH8R, supports 6 SATA2, with AHCI controller and RAID 1, 5, 10
In addition, the JMicron JMB361 storage chip provide 1 IDE and 1 SATA2
So we can connect up to 7 SATA drives
















The above part of the board
The component around CPU socket looks good.
The north bridge of P965 is equipped with a sheet of heat sink.
Although the temperature of Intel chipset is not low, but it still lower than NVIDIA nF4/nF500 series,
so I think it is enough to use the heat sink on 975/965 chipset.














The I/O part
It has 4 USB, one 10/100/1000 Mb/s LAN, one S/PDIF output, one IEEE1394,
and 6 mini-jack analogue audio output.

















Testing Platform
CPU:INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800
MB: MSI P965 Platinum
DRAM:Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3
VGA:MSI RX1900XTX CrossFire
HD:Seagate 7200.7 80GB
POWER:AcBel 550W
Cooler:Tower112


















Let us do some warm-up testing
DDR2-1000 3-4-4-9 2.3V SP2004X2 working stably











It looks an attractive Conroe board.
The BIOS introduction and another performance test result, please wait for
windwithme do the complete testing later…

[lv_dicedealer]

Nice intro, thanks.....

[Haltech]

Looking good. Hopefully it can be priced lower than the gigabytes!

[StyM]

nice info. tnx.

[freecableguy]

965 board with Crossfire...interesting...

[Vric]

Would be nice to see the impact of 4x on Crossfire !

[ssnseawolf]

I guess we still don't have a price point for it? Performance looks good.

[cupholder2.0]

What are you doing? Turn those clocks up!

[majestik]

looks impossible to fit any wb with all these caps around it.

[Supertim0r]

hehe, crossfire/sli on 965

[tys90]

Looks nice, anticipating the OCing results...

[NiCKE^]

As all others I would like to see some max fsb if it's possible?
Looks like a nice board indeed!

[Pandamonia]

Max FSB is the important question at hand.

can you please find this out?

thanks

[Lestat]

OMG THE BATTERY IS ACTUALLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!!
YEAHHHHHH MSI!!!!

looks good.
i sure hope MSI brings back some of their old magic. i sure like MSI they have always been good boards for me, just not the best clockers, i sure hope they open the floodgates with these new boards.

unless i missed something its a really nice layout. very nice.
even using the 8pin ATX and the 4pin onboard molex. nice! which oddly enough.... the P5W DH did not...

[Wonkers]

OMG THE BATTERY IS ACTUALLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!!
YEAHHHHHH MSI!!!!

looks good.
i sure hope MSI brings back some of their old magic. i sure like MSI they have always been good boards for me, just not the best clockers, i sure hope they open the floodgates with these new boards.

unless i missed something its a really nice layout. very nice.
even using the 8pin ATX and the 4pin onboard molex. nice! which oddly enough.... the P5W DH did not...

How do you know what the ideal placement of components is? I'm not questioning your opinion, merely asking about your logic. Having clear access to remove the battery without removing other components from the board?

That would be common sense for a manufacturer wouldn't it? Also what should someone lookout for that's poor placement?

[dandragonrage]

I'd prefer the battery and the pin headers next to it (front panel stuff?) to switch places with the JMicron chip and it's PATA and SATA connectors. But overall, not too bad.

If you have a case that mounts the mobo upside down, though, this layout should own.

Well, as long as the caps don't cause a problem, anyway.

[hipogtr]

Thanx for the preview and pix of the board. Looks good.

[Vric]

nice board layout. sadly my cooler wouldn't fit on it, but I like the layout.

[vapb400]

Looking good! thanks for the preview, can't wait to see the bios

[SMa]

Why does MSI makes great boards and then always place the Dual Channel slots directly next to eachother...
My cooling doesnt fit on that.

[celerity]

Hope my TT120 fits

[elmor]

As you can see on the pic they are not next to eachother? Channel A = Green, Channel B = Orange.

[DJ Krypplephite]

Looks good. You should get that bus to 1337 if you can though, that would be awesome!

[jdam]

looks like i found my new board

[vapb400]

As you can see on the pic they are not next to eachother? Channel A = Green, Channel B = Orange.

That is what he is saying, most companies alternate it so it goes
Chan 1
Chan 2

Chan 1
Chan 2

MSI goes with
Chan 1
Chan 1

Chan 2
Chan 2

Doesn't effect me, but it messes up some peoples ram cooling.