Gaming Tests
3DMark11
3DMark11 measures your PC’s gaming performance and makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders, and multi-threading.
3DMark Vantage
A reliable and popular benchmark, 3DMark Vantage can provide a good insight into the overall gaming performance of a system.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. The game was released in Europe and North America on May 24, 2011.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts in March 2011 for Microsoft Windows. The game is the second installment of the Crysis series and is the sequel to the 2007 video game Crysis and its expansion Crysis Warhead.
After seeing how the MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) performed in 3DMark11, 3DMark Vantage, Dirt 3, and Crysis 2, I’m beginning to wonder what actual "optimizations" were made in regards to this board’s gaming prowess. The benchmark results don’t lie as both boards in our tests almost gave us identical scores. Both motherboards are giving us solid performance numbers, which is definitely a positive sign that these X79-based boards combined with the right components and drivers can give users a great gaming experience in today’s most taxing PC games.
The one thing the X79A-GD65
The one thing the X79A-GD65 (8D) has going for it is the number of DIMM slots you have. Of course 8 DIMMS can give you a huge workable memory footprint of 32GB for not much money now days. The MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) costs $290.00 at Newegg. Other enthusiast set motherboards start around the $250 mark.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064LW8UY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=emjay2d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0064LW8UY
Nice review, thanks! These
Nice review, thanks! These look to be great boards and MSI continues to pump out quality product. That said a few things really disappoint me on the new Intel IB chipset lineup that are in no way unique to this board. The most disappointing to me is the lack of native SATA3 ports.
: – Supports two SATAIII ports (SATA1~2) by X79
Really Intel? Still only 2 ports? Lacking is too kind a word IMHO. This is supposed to be an enthusiast chipset yet it has no more native SATA3 ports than the “old” P67 based board I’m currently running. So as an enthusiast the only way I get SATA3 speeds with more than 2 SSD’s in a RAID0 is an aftermarket solution taking up an expansion slot.
Aside from that I’m really impressed by the temps you achieved on air with that OC. 4.6Ghz~1.5v and only 50c on air with a 125TDP cpu HT enabled? That’s the best I’ve seen to date. I cant keep my 2500K 4.6Ghz~1.3v that cool using a H70 under load. You guys testing in a walk in freezer? 😉
Anyway thanks for the review. All I have to do now is find a reason to justify an upgrade with the boss. I don’t think upgradeitis is gonna cut it this time around.
I recently bought the MSI
I recently bought the MSI x79A GD45 8D . I installed the components, and switched on. Unfortunately the computer kept on restarting every couple of seconds. I couldn’t even get into the BIOS
You have to reset the cmos at
You have to reset the cmos at the back of the pc 😉
I have recently bought one of
I have recently bought one of these unfortunately when I turn it on I get no display. There is a dubug code FF on the board.