MSI P55-GD80 LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

A Closer Look at the MSI P55-GD80 pt.2

The bottom right-hand corner of this motherboard is cholk-full of interesting features. There is the onboard clear CMOS button, the OC Genie auto-overclocking button, the post code debug display, the Direct OC base clock (BLCK) adjustment button and lastly the touch-sensitive button panel with power, reset and green power buttons.


The overall expansion slot layout and assortment is excellent. There are three full-sized PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots. In a single graphics card configuration, the top PCI-E x16 slot will operate at the full x16 speed while the bottom slot will run at x4. When two graphics cards are installed in the top and middle x16 slots, they will operate at x8 each with the bottom slot once again operating at x4. This motherboard does support Quad-GPU CrossFireX and Quad-GPU SLI with two dual-GPU graphics cards. Attempting to run three graphics cards would be pointless for gaming purposes since the third card would run at x4 and thus be a huge bottleneck. However, if you partake in Folding@Home or would like a card to run PhysX, you could feasibly run three graphics cards on this motherboard without issue.

The heatsink in the usual northbridge location is more for show and heat distribution then anything else, since there are only a few small electrical components under it.


Starting clockwise from the top-left, we see the venerable Realtek ALC889 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC. Meanwhile, the VIA VT6315N is a FireWire/IEEE 1394a controller that runs on the PCI-Express bus.

The Realtek RTL8111DL is Gigabit LAN controller that also runs on the PCI-E bus and there are two of these chips on this motherboard to supply the two GbE LAN ports. Once again, we aren't sure why motherboard manufacturers are not making use of the P55's native Intel Gigabit LAN support. Lastly, we have MSI's OC Genie hardware overclocking processor which we have elaborated upon in the features section.


Here we have a close-up of the 8mm Superpipe which gives you a general idea of just how thick it really is. Another interesting feature that MSI has packed onto this high-end model is an onboard display that shows how many CPU phases are in use in real-time. Useful for most users? Probably not, but neat nonetheless.


Starting from left to right, the rear I/O panel features a PS/2 mouse port, PS2/ keyboard port, coaxial and optical S/PDIF connectors, a FireWire port, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 2.0 and one powered eSATA port, a Gigabit LAN port, two USB 2.0 ports, another Gigabite LAN port, two USB 2.0 ports and finally six audio jacks on the audio module. All in all, this is everything we could possibly want other than a Clear CMOS button for overclockers.


The back of the motherboard is interesting due to what it lacks, which is MOSFETs. This is a testament to the aforementioned 3-in-1 DrMOS components. We are glad to see that the MOSFET and chipset heatsinks are held in place with proper mounting screws, not frail plastic push-pins.