MSI's P55-GD80 motherboard BIOS updated, brings better performance

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MSI's P55-GD80 motherboard BIOS updated, brings better performance

Labs Update: MSI's BIOS gets a nice update.

When we first had a look at MSI's premium high-end board in Issue 105 what we found was perhaps less than stellar overclocking performance, something that perplexed and bamboozled us a little - and something that we've found to be changed.

Speaking to MSI's Product Manager Jerry Lee, he got us in contact with a BIOS engineer at MSI who was able to provide us with the latest revision of the BIOS that, at least on the surface, appeared to clear up all our issues with the board.

Reflashing our P55-GD80 sample with this latest revision, plonking in the Core i7 870 chip, 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz 8-8-8-24 and whacking a Noctua NH-U12P SE2 heatsink on top, we set about running our stock performance tests to see how this newer BIOS revision measured up.

In the image below the performance is clearly higher across pretty much every facet; scoring 18268 in Cinebench (up from 16928), 26.91s in PiFast (up from 27.21s), 7.776s in wPrime (up from 8.315s) though the memory bandwidth remained relatively unchanged.

click to view full size image
MSI P55-GD80 at stock (133MHz, 22x multi)

Our overclocking endeavours were much improved from that original BIOS, allowing a maximum stable speed of 4140MHz to be hit which resulted in a huge performance increase. To reach this clockspeed Intel's EIST technology had to be disabled in the BIOS, but aside from this small bugbear the issues seem to have been completely resolved. It's even faster at stock than the prerelease GIGABYTE mobo we tested the Core i7 870 in just before launch.

click to view full size image
MSI P55-GD80 overclocked to 4140MHz (188MHz, 22x multi)

It's a good sign that those adopters of MSI's P55 tech at launch can look forwards to a board identical in overclocking prowess to the competition, and there's no reason now (apart from price) that we can think of to stop us recommending this board as a decent choice. It also goes to show the importance of a solid BIOS.

 

 
 
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4 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
tunksy
Oct 16, 2009 5:12 PM
F*** YES!!! no just bring on MSI's Big Bang motherboard! not upgrading til a ige to look at this!!!
tunksy
Oct 16, 2009 5:13 PM
now*^^
Argotha
Oct 16, 2009 5:54 PM
so then whihc one would you recomend out o the gd80 and the gd65 if they were running at stock? (personally I'm leaning towarwards the 65 lots of features and still cheap)
.:Cyb3rGlitch:.
Oct 16, 2009 7:48 PM
So, when's the next Atomic event so I can try it out? :P
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Atomic Magazine

Issue: 107 | December, 2009

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.
 
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