News - Motherboard wars: MSI challenges ASRock and Gigabyte

[HEXUS]

MSI product manager joins motherboard spat, saying his board is the best of the lot and challenging them to trial by HEXUS.

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[SiM]

Haha, might make an interesting review. It is nice that these companies have this friendly competitive spirit between then

[stevie lee]

In the interests of fairness, shouldn't you get some off the shelf models instead of relying on asrock, msi and gigabyte to send you stock, un-tweaked boards I'm sure you can think of one or 2 places that might lend you some boards to test 'cough' SCAN, morecomputers 'ahem'.

[TAKTAK]

Stewart deserves some respect for calling out ASRock and Gigabyte on this matter and putting MSI kit one the line

..

seems like a nice challenge

[j.o.s.h.1408]

forget the board. i bet most here got the attention from that pic lol

[mayhem]

Instead of a face of why not just get all the Mbs you have at hexus and test them all. Why just pick 3 when you could test them all ...

I know one of mine would be the coolest with out any fans or copper "because its dead" lol ...

[MSIC]

In the interests of fairness, shouldn't you get some off the shelf models instead of relying on asrock, msi and gigabyte to send you stock, un-tweaked boards

Quite right.
Fair play to MSI though, i like the idea and their balls.

[Nick]

Ok guys, how about this as a suggestion:

To show complete fair play, how about YOU suggest the boards?

MSI are obviously talking about their P45 Platinum board and Gigabyte are talking about their GA-EP45-UD3P, so what board do YOU guys suggest we get from ASRock?

I'm keen to show is that we're not biased, we'll show the results as they are and we'll heap the praise on whoever wins... so how about YOU guys have an input in the boards we test?

And, if we can manage it, what tests would you run?

Keep it sensible and do-able within a decent time frame but tell us what you would do and we'll try and do it.

And I like the idea of getting the boards from a retail source rather than direct from the manufacturers so we'll try and go that route too.

[MSIC]

Well we're talking main manufacturers, and we're talking P45 chipsets, but i think that cost has to be at least mentioned. After all, anyone can do wonders with £500 to splash about, but for me i think that the serious ballpark is the £90 to £120 range. After all, the X48 chipset range starts at £140 or thereabouts, and P45 is about great performance on a (fair) budget.

So we've got:
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P for £115 (or £109 ??)
MSI P45 Platinum for £120.
Asus P5Q WS for £124 (don't know if this 'Workstation' series is marketting fluff or not?)
DFI DK P45-T2RS for £107 (although they dont seem to have all the shiny copper! Boo.)
Foxconn P45A-S is £102, and looks quite dull from a photo point of view - might make an interesting addition (ie not to judge a book by its cover etc).

Then, how about something cheaper like this MSI P43 Neo-F at half the price, again to compare & contrast for your money.

In terms of tests, i'd be interested in some AutoGK runs, converting something like a VOB (DVD) MPEG2 into an avi, or even something like Videora ipod convertor, churning through some video conversions.
These sorts of things put a fair amount of load on the system so you measure speed / times etc, although i'd expect not a huge variance in all honesty. For me personally, if the P43 chipset-based system is 95% of the speed, then it's well worth the money.
We'd all i think be interested in temps, noise etc. I mention noise despite the boards appearing passive, since sometimes poorer electricals can emit a high pitch whine (what is that?).
I guess overclocking ability is a requirement also.

Edit: Oh, another thing.... could we chuck in a decent P35-based system, for interest? Some of us might be interested in an upgrade based soley on the notion that 40-something is better than 30-something! (Even though from what i read there doesnt appear to be a huge change beyond the better manufacturing process)

[Biscuit]

i think this is gunna make an interesting read! why not chuck a non-budget asus board, a DFI and a biostar in the mixer aswell

Guess when picking the board you have to dip into the same price range, do asrock have a board for 100-130? if not i guess the best one they have is the only real option.

[toolsong]

Hi Nick

This is a fantastic idea

For ASRock I'd suggest either the P45XE-R or the P45XE as like the offerings from MSI and Gigabyte these boards only support DDR2 memory.

[Nick]

Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions but we really are going to have to limit this to ASRock, Gigabyte and MSI boards.

We just do not have the time in our schedules to test loads of boards... so let's keep it to the ones relevant to the gauntlet originally thrown down by ASRock.

The the whole thing centres around the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, (the one with the extra copper), so that has to be included in the testing and MSI have said they'll put up their P45 Platinum... so what do you lot reckon is the equivalent ASRock board?

[Lanky123]

Take the heatsinks off the MSI and weigh them. Might put the extra ounce of copper in the Gigabyte into some sort of perspective.

[Biscuit]

Well if i was to do it i would say they should be the same chipset type (P45) same memory type and similar extra features. They dont seem to have one in the same price range or specswise. All the ones on scan are both DDR2 + DDR3 which kinda makes them that little bit incomparable. Its interesting seeing how much more the asrock borads offer for so much less money, doesnt tempt me like.

Seeing as they have been so cocky i guess non of these advantages asrock have on paper should really matter, just chuck in the best they have to offer. On scan it seems to be the Asrock P45R2000 @ almost £25 less which is closest pricewise.

[shaithis]

Would be nice to see MOSFET and northbridge temps on the boards, to see all-round cooling solution performance.

An Asus board is a must, would be nice to see what the differences are between their "budget" and performance brands.

Biostar TPower I45 would be nice to see as well.

[SiM]

I don't see a similarly priced P45 ASRock board on scan... so I guess the highest range one should be included in the comparison.

IMO tests should be purely about overclocking and temps at different voltages (low voltage increase overclock and high voltage increase overclock). Highest FSB, CPU clocks, memory frequency wins
Maybe include some benchmarks at stock (at max overclock) too... Like 3D mark, memory bandwidth bench and timing some x264 encoding.