Introduction



Micro Star International was founded 22 years ago, back in 1986. From then on MSI grew to become one of the world largest mainboard manufacturer as well as being a market leader in the video card industry. But there is more, MSI is specialized in the server industry, notebooks, barebone systems, add-on cards, communication and many more consumer electronics. When you go visit your nearby computer retailer the chance that you stumble upon a MSI product is very real, not just because MSI offers a wide range of products but also because of their large availability in the entire world. Everyone who has done something with computers probable recognize these three letters in group.

Today MSI presents us their newest addition to their motherboard products. Named the P7N SLI Platinum, MSI offers a NVIDIA SLI compatible mainboard for the Intel LGA775, with high availability and mainstream prices in mind MSI might have a bestseller in hand. We all know why the P965 and P35 were so popular, right? Well this could be just like it:


MSI P7N SLI Platinum || Intel LGA 775 || NVIDIA 750i chipset || Price: ~ € 100

Specifications



Let's have a closer look at MSI's offering ->

More board details

Lets start off with the cooling, MSI certainly made quite a spectacular heatsink design for their P7N Platinum mainboard. In the center you can't miss the half-pipe north bridge heatsink which reminds me of the high-end Zalman CPU heatsink: 9700-LED. A heatpipe is used to extract heat in an efficient way, and lots of cooling fins make sure all the heat is being ventilated properly. More heatsinks are being used to extract the PWM Mosfet heat, the south-bridge heat and the extra nForce200 heat, MSI made sure to interconnect all these heat sources with the high-efficient NB heatsink via heatpipes, these are properly aligned so that you will not ever have problems mounting larger PCI(e) devices.



On top right you find the memory sockets. Like many mainstream boards you have availability of 4 memory slot where each pair of memory slot has its own communication channel with the north bridge. MSI gave the different channels another paint just to make sure the user is using the board at best performance, you’ll also notice the extra text which is painted just next to the first DIMM slot. For powering the memory modules MSI used a single phase switching FET circuit which is nothing to extravaganza but will do its job very well even when pushing the board to the max.



More high-efficient power switching can be found around the LGA775 socket, MSI uses a 4 phase PWM circuit design to power the CPU with, high size caps combined with quick responding SMD condensers make sure the CPU is being fed with a clean and reliable power signal. Again, nothing spectacular but still good for those who like to push their boards far beyond specifications.



The P7N SLi Platinum offer up to three PCIe 16x slots. In between the first and second slot you'll notice the nForce 200 chip; this controller is in fact a PCI Express host and uses its own bus protocol to communicate with the North Bridge. This special inter chip connection offers 14.4GB/s traffic between the nf200 and the NB, still that is far away from the available bandwidth that the nForce 200 offers: 32GB/s! Well, for our 750i chipset you can forget part of that, NVIDIA crippled the chips used on 750i board so that it has 'only' 24GB/s, NVIDIA said that the 14.4GB/s inter chip connection is still fast enough for dual and triple video card configuration. It is to be said that the nf200 allows direct peer to peer communication, for example with NVIDIA SLI, there is no need to send the additional data back to the North Bridge first, the nf200 can do it too.



The connectivity at the South Bridge isn't huge, but decent enough to cover most main stream enthusiasts. Important for some of you might be the dual IDE connectors which allow you to keep your older DVD ROMS and Writers, ... when upgrading to this board. The SATA connectors are easy to access and due to its 90° twisted design is will make sure that the SATA connectors will never come in the way of larger PCI Express video cards.



For the front panel connectors MSI added different colors to make sure the connectors are easier to recognize, they also added a removable plug which allows you to remove all front panel connectors via and move, and you never have to worry again about how everything has to be hooked up because the plug will fit only in one way. ASUS has been shipping these tools before, you will certainly recognize these:



From the above picture you may have noticed how the P7N SLI Platinum does not have a CMOS clear jumper. Well, don't be too surprised, MSI did add one, only now it is located in between the rear panel connectors. Some may not like the idea but it is very handy for those enthusiasts who use well designed housing and don't want to open/close their case every time they wish to have some play with overclocking their gear.

Other connectivity is fairly basic although that the optical SPDIF and external SATA connectors will certainly be of good use for some of you.



So far goes the hardware, let's try the softer approach ->

Simulated BIOS options

As a mainstream product the board doesn't come with an endlessness amount of BIOS options, instead they offer the common board settings as well as few overclocking and monitoring options. This time I did not take the effort to go picture every BIOS setup page, instead I rebuild the BIOS inside Macromedia Flash and let you folks have a look round for yourself. Do note that the interactive video below is just a simplified version of the original BIOS and that I left out some menu's here and there intentionally. You can navigate through the BIOS by clicking on the menu, click on "ESC" to go back to the previous page.


MSI P7N SLI Platinum - BIOS simulation by Madshrimps.com

Overclocking

Like shown above, there are no in-depth tweaks available for the MSI P7N SLI Platinum, though with nearly 0,4V extra CPU core voltage, up to 3,1V memory voltage and voltage settings for the northbridge, Southbridge and VTT power line you have all the mandatory options to push you setup way past standard specs. The auto overclocking options offer slight performance increments, yet I tried manually overclocking the board and to my surprise I could easily set the board to the same settings others more advanced boards would also hit maximum stability. Off course that was only while using an air cooled Zalman heatsink, later I went on using my modified Prometeia Mach I combined with an Intel E8500 CPU in order to see how far I could really push the board.



Through multiple 3D test from Futuremark I was able to keep the system stable at roughly 4,7 GHz. Not that bad, but this CPU can do a lot more on other boards. The main reason is probable due to the mounting which was really horrible because the chipset heatsink blocking the modified Mach mounting head, the actual CPU temps under heavy stress could go as high as 15°C which is no where near Single Stage Phase Change performance!

Test results: 2D applications

We start our testing course with Cinebench 9.5. This is a 3D graphics render application which uses the CPU power.



The Intel chipset based ASUS P5E gives the MSI board quite a challenge, no wonder since the ASUS board comes with Intel's high-end chipset X38. Stock as well as with the system overclocked we could measure the MSI board fallen slightly behind, but the gap is close to negligible in real life.



Futuremark's 3D Mark 2006 software also features build-in CPU rendering tests that are combined with a decent score calculating system. Because a score is being used as results, it doesn't really say how well a certain application will work in real life, though the positive side is that we have a higher detailed compare. On stock clocks our MSI board falls slightly behind but the difference get smaller once the host clock is being ramped up.



SuperPi 1M is one of the most popular 2D benchmarks mostly because it is very easy in use and takes up less then a minute to run through (On an Intel Core 2 system). Though being a single threaded application it is less useful to test dual core systems, but for today's pc it still can put quite some stress on the CPU, DRAM and MCH. Just like with the CPU rendering tests from above both boards remain very on par here, stock the ASUS board is only a little bit faster then MSI's offering, but once again when the system is overclocked the NVIDIA chipset is able to produce on par performance then the Intel X38 chipset.



In the longer SuperPi calculations it becomes clear that the ASUS X38 is quite a bit faster then the 750i, with a difference of up to 4s it is roughly 3% faster at stock performance, but the gap widens when the host clock is being set to 400MHz, then the MSI board is fall further back to being around 6% slower.



Another well-know benchmarking tool is Wprime, in here it is for the first time that we see the MSI board come at as best, but with a close to zero lead you can say they both perform just about on par here.



SiSoftware has made a long journey already in pc-land, we tested their latest Sandra applications for Windows PC's: SiSoft Sandra Lite 2007. Inside we can find multiple in-depth tests for almost every main pc component; we chose to run through the CPU MULTIMEDIA and MEMORY BANDWIDTH benchmark. The above chart we can see the Multimedia score of both Intel systems, yet again performance is very on par between each different chipset, with the X38 board from ASUS just slightly in head.



The memory bandwidth test in turn puts the MSI board much in front of the ASUS board. We saw this with the 650i chipset and now history is simply repeating. At stock speed the difference is acceptable, but once the system is being booted at 400MHz Front Side Bus the 750i seem to handle the memory much better resulting into a clean victory with more than 600mb/s compared to the X38.



Driverheaven has been promoting their Photoshop benchmark for quite some time as being a fun alternative for SuperPi, PiFast and other 2D benchmark software. In this test we open a high-res picture in Adobe Photoshop and run it through multiple digital manipulation effects, by using the build-in timer we can use this batch of tests as a trustable system benchmark. Although mostly being a CPU benchmark it seems that the memory subsystem is also stressed quite a bit, looking at our chart we can clearly see how MSI's board takes the lead here once again, at higher clock rates the difference is slightly smaller.

More performance charts on next page where we take our systems through some 3D benchmarks. ->

Test results: 3D applications



Futuremark's 3D Mark 01 has aged over the past years and with the current available GPU rendering power this benchmark very dependant on CPU and Memory speed. At stock speeds there is hardly any difference, but with our FSB clocked upwards 400MHz the ASUS board leaves the MSI P7N behind quite easily. We saw the same happening with other NVIDIA chipsets so this is no surprise at all.



Same as with the 2001 version, the boards are performing close at stock speeds, but here the X38 board does not seems to get noticeable faster then the 750i when overclocked.



You might remember our 9600GT SLI review from few weeks back, I suggest you take a look here to see whether or not SLI is your thing. For the heck of it I added the SLI results from back then when I compared today’s boards. In Crysis both boards perform on par, note that SLI video cards gives you a huge boost in performance here (but double price too).



In Oblivion there is less to gain with double video cards, I also measured a small difference in frame rate with the MSI P7N being slightly ahead of the ASUS P5E.



In DIRT more of the same, close to zero difference between the both setups, off course going dual VGA pays off here.

So far our test results, let’s wrap things up ->

Conclusive thoughts

As far as building a brand new rig goes, you should not blindly focus on the pure central processing power or the rendering power of modern GPU's. The system board is not to be forgotten, and even with the modern approach of easy plug-and-play devices and standard bus protocols it is not always to be said that any board will fit you the best. In the mainstream category you get high performing boards with more than decent compatibility, even though you must pay attention because some boards may offer more/less features. With the MSI P7N Platinum you get 2x IDE and NVIDIA SLI support, this certainly is not found on many Intel boards. Other cool features like external SATA connectors and a rear panel CMOS reset button makes the board only come out better.

Another interesting addition is the cooler design. The board comes with multiple heatpipes like many other boards these days, but the North Bridge heatsink is what draws most of your attention. It doesn't look that bad (well, tastes can be different) and all in all it offers decent cooling performance (considering the amount of heat it has to dissipate). The overall look of the board might not be that great (again, tastes can differ) because of the color overload, but at least the board is easy to install and will get you going in no time.

Performance wise you can expect a decent board, not as fast as Intel chipsets but close and in some tests (mostly memory benchmarks) it does seem to be a bit faster then Intel's fastest. The impact it rather small and in my humble opinion you should not base your choice on which one is the fastest of the two because in real life you won't ever notice the difference, instead go compare what the specific board options are.

Anyway, the 750i chipset allows this board to run dual NVIDIA graphic cards which is quite cool since the price is kept on the low side. This way you can easily build a high-end gaming station and save the money you would otherwise pay for high-end mainboards, or you could use the extra penny saved in order to improve the VGA performance of your setup. SLI did run good on this board, well... better then last time at least, but it is still 'in test' so it seems since it can not always promise huge performance boosts compared to single VGA systems.

The BIOS is rather basic which makes it rather easy in use. MSI added pre-defined auto overclock options non-the-less you can still have some fun for yourself because this board also offers the basic overclocking options found on many other board in the same price category. As far as overclocking goes, I was surprised to hit 500MHz bus speeds without too many issues, and with my personal E6600 I could easily set it stable at the same frequency I would reach on many other mainboards.



Plain and simple: a decent performing board, while it may not always look that great (tastes differ) it does come with interesting options like dual IDE, external SATA, rear CMOS reset and off course NVIDIA SLI. The quality is more than decent, all you need for basic and advanced stuff, for ultra high-end requirements though this board will not be the perfect fit... but at a price of roughly €100 you shouldn’t expect it either. Price wise it is a very interesting alternative for any Intel chipset based configuration.

Let's sum it all up once again:

+ Easy accessible connections
+ On par performance with Intel mainstream boards
+ All the basic overclocking options
+ Noiseless board cooling with configurable fan control
+ 90° flipped SATA ports
+ rear CMOS reset switch
+ 2x eSATA
+ 2x IDE
+ NVIDIA SLI
+ Price: roughly € 100


- SLI (in general) doesn't always scale very well
- Not everyone will like the board style
- No GTL overclocking options for Quad Core CPU's

We would like to thank Chantal from MSI for sending us their review sample, we hope you enjoyed reading this review and I hope to see you soon back at Madshrimps.com.