MSI Big Bang XPower X58 Board Pictured

[Soultribunal]

With Intel working its way towards Hexa-Core Processors it is not uncommon to see some manufacturers showing off the future boards that will support these chips. Pictured here is the MSI Big Bang XPower that will be build on Intel's Latest X58 Chipset. As always with early non-production models, details are a bit sketchy. It will be running the X5... [ Read full article ]

[SKYMTL]

And the PCI-E slot orgy continues....

[Dead Things]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

And the PCI-E slot orgy continues....

You say it like it's a bad thing.

(I imagine that fellow would be quite popular at an orgy)

[Iphikratous]

Theres also a 6-pin PCI-E connector just north of the top PCI-E slot.

[martin_metal_88]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

And the PCI-E slot orgy continues....

I don't know in what way you mean this Sky but my point of view is that they should make MOBO with 4X PCI-E 16X to do quad sli or quad CF and no more, put some PCI-1X and old PCI ( always usefull for manything ) instead of wasting some port for the PCI 16X useless contest.

Edit : great board indead

[SKYMTL]

My thoughts. There are my PERSONAL thoughts...not professional observations:

Aside from Folders, the appeal of this board will be limited due to the frankly idiotic placement of the PCI-E 1x slot. The PCI-E 1x slot is placed there due some absolutely misguided copy-cat effect where it seems companies suddenly think every high end boards needs a plethora of PCI-E slots even though neither SLI nor Crossfire scales above 4 GPUs. Instead, they use a hot-running, power-sucking, performance-robbing NF200 chip just to make sure folders get a hard-on and maybe buy their board.

IMO, this type of layout has no place on a consumer-oriented motherboard. ASUS has it right: keep this stuff for your workstation-class boards.

All I can say is thank God they kicked Lucid to the curb when it came to the X58 iteration of Big Bang.

My main frustration is that we are finally seeing some new X58 baords come out and the best thing they can claim to have is more PCI-E slots. Seriously, this is all the engineers can come up with? To copy EVGA and to a greater extent ASUS? Give me some innovation like EVGA did with their new digital PWM circuitry or Gigabyte / ASUS did with SATA III / USB 3.0 implementaion or ASUS did with that brilliant SATA III add-in card. All we are seeing here is a case of PCI-E slot envy run amok.

And yes, I know that a PCI-E 1x cards will work in a 16x slot...

[martin_metal_88]

So we are thinking the same way. There is many thing that they can do and that would be better then PCI-E. I would for sure prefer a smaller board with better function instead of a field of un-used PCI-E slot.

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

My thoughts. There are my PERSONAL thoughts...not professional observations:

Aside from Folders, the appeal of this board will be limited due to the frankly idiotic placement of the PCI-E 1x slot. The PCI-E 1x slot is placed there due some absolutely misguided copy-cat effect where it seems companies suddenly think every high end boards needs a plethora of PCI-E slots even though neither SLI nor Crossfire scales above 4 GPUs. Instead, they use a hot-running, power-sucking, performance-robbing NF200 chip just to make sure folders get a hard-on and maybe buy their board.

IMO, this type of layout has no place on a consumer-oriented motherboard. ASUS has it right: keep this stuff for your workstation-class boards.

All I can say is thank God they kicked Lucid to the curb when it came to the X58 iteration of Big Bang.

My main frustration is that we are finally seeing some new X58 baords come out and the best thing they can claim to have is more PCI-E slots. Seriously, this is all the engineers can come up with? To copy EVGA and to a greater extent ASUS? Give me some innovation like EVGA did with their new digital PWM circuitry or Gigabyte / ASUS did with SATA III / USB 3.0 implementaion or ASUS did with that brilliant SATA III add-in card. All we are seeing here is a case of PCI-E slot envy run amok.

And yes, I know that a PCI-E 1x cards will work in a 16x slot...

[bojangles]

Haha, funny you mentioned Lucid SKY. I was very disappointed with that tech.

I think they should make a board with all PCI-E 16x slots, but make the ones that don't run at full x16 speed either a different colour and/or silkscreen the rated speed of the slots either below or beside them. It would make installation much simpler, especially for novices.

[MarkOne]

this board can only host 3 double slot card ...

[DkRk]

I'm assuming the extra PCIe slots are there just to grab potential buyers' attention more than anything else. It may make some looking at the board go 'oh wow' and they'll remember it while cruising through the online shop looking at the competition.

Bit of a shame there's no Hydra, but I understand why it's not implemented. I'm hoping Lucid comes out swinging with a second revision because I like what they're intending to do. Causing a ruckus in the nVidia/ATI duopoly in any way is cool beans in my books.