MSI's P55-GD65 motherboard
An affordable alternative

It seems that every time we cover a mainstream chipset launch, motherboard makers send us their most expensive examples of the breed. That's the best way to show off the latest and greatest in mobo whiz-bangery, I suppose, but it doesn't best represent the sort of mid-range motherboards most enthusiasts actually buy. Obviously, the Asus and Gigabyte boards we've looked at today occupy the opulent end of the P55 motherboard spectrum, and MSI has a direct competitor for them in the P55-GD80. We're not looking at that board today, however. Instead, we have the $160 P55-GD65, which should give us a sense of what a more affordable P55 board has to offer.

At first glance, the GD65 definitely looks a little plain. MSI has gone with a simple color scheme, combining black, blue, and pewter tones on a board that looks more sparsely populated than the others.

The open layout nicely avoids troublesome clearance conflicts, which is easier to do with only two x16 slots and generally fewer onboard peripheral chips. That said, the GD65 is hardly lacking in expansion capacity or onboard connectivity options.

Despite its lower price tag, the GD65 still features fancy electrical components, including DrMOS MOSFETs that are reputedly 400% faster than traditional designs. Unlike Asus and Gigabyte, however, MSI doesn't appear to be injecting boards with extra copper. That omission isn't just an artifact of the GD65's lower price tag; numerous less expensive Gigabyte boards have extra copper between their PCB layers.

MSI has also declined to compete in the power phase arms race that has Asus and Gigabyte constantly one-upping each other. The GD65 has a mere six power phases feeding the processor, and MSI assures us that's plenty. Even the high-end GD80 model only has eight phases. Both models support dynamic power-phase switching complete with onboard LEDs that let you know how many phases are active at any given time. MSI says its design is quite efficient, too, delivering power to the CPU with 92% efficiency. We'll see how the board's actual power consumption measures up in a moment.

With fewer power phases ringing the socket and only modest voltage circuitry cooling, the GD65 should be able to easily accommodate larger aftermarket coolers. Keep in mind that the LGA1156 socket uses a new hole pattern for heatsink retention brackets. Your old LGA775 cooler won't work on this or the other boards we have under the microscope.

Like Asus, MSI puts the P55 PCH where one might expect to find south bridge silicon. A small heatsink keeps the chip cool, but it's a low-profile design that won't interfere with longer graphics cards. Longer cards won't brush up against the DIMM slot retention tabs or block access to any of the board's Serial ATA ports, either. Of course, putting the SATA ports right on the edge of the board can complicate cabling in particularly tight enclosures. You win some, you lose some.

The blue Serial ATA port sitting just behind the edge-mounted cluster is predictably tied to a JMicron controller that also powers the IDE port. All three of the boards we've explored feature IDE connectivity, which is somewhat surprising in this day an age. IDE functionality was dropped from Intel chipsets years ago, and SATA optical drives have since become widely available with little associated price premium.

Rather than equipping the GD65 with a third PCI Express x16 slot, MSI opted for an open-ended x4 with enough clearance to accept standard graphics cards. The slot spacing won't allow for a three-way double-wide config, though. Given that the GD65 is only certified for two-way SLI, that's probably not a big deal.

The P55's eight lanes of PCIe 2.0 connectivity are just enough to cover the GD65's array of expansion slots and peripherals, so there's no need to switch around lane configurations to keep all slots running at full steam. I'll get to the collection of buttons at the bottom of the slot stack when we probe the GD65's overclocking performance a little later in the review.

While not as loaded as the UD6's port cluster, the GD65's has all the right boxes checked: FireWire, dual S/PDIF, hybrid eSATA/USB, and gobs of USB. Realtek's ALC889 codec sits behind the audio outputs, but MSI hasn't sprung for the SoundStormesque Dolby Digital Live encoding option. That's a shame, because with real-time encoding on the motherboard and a compatible digital receiver, there's little need for a discrete sound card.

The GD65 isn't equipped with much in the way of additional accessories, but MSI has put a little something extra on the board in the form of probe points for voltage monitoring. Your average enthusiast probably won't bust out a multimeter to monitor CPU, memory, or chipset voltages. However, I can see serious overclockers appreciating the ability to tap those lines.

Overclockers will also find plenty of options in the GD65's BIOS. Memory timings can be adjusted on a per-channel basis, too. The three boards we've rounded up today have some minor differences in their performance-tuning options, but they all offer more than enough range and granularity for even picky enthusiasts. Asus and Gigabyte are often lauded for having excellent BIOSes, but based on the P55-GD65 and other recent models, I'd say MSI's are now every bit as good.

In fact, MSI's BIOS-level fan speed control options are better than what you get on either of the other boards. Users can define a target CPU fan speed between 40 and 70°C and set a minimum speed between zero and 87.5% in 12.5% increments. The two system fan headers can only be set to run at 50, 75, or 100% of full speed, so they're not controlled by system temperature changes.