Reviews - MSI Eclipse SLI - SLI or CrossFireX the choice is yours

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You've already seen how it performs in 3-way SLI, now find out how MSI's latest and greatest fares in our 2D and 3-way CrossFire test-suite.

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Read more.

Holy cow How much.

sounds nice but dammed expensive and i hope the bios gets regular updates at that price.

This is an odd review I think. I don't understand why we hardly get a look at the Creative sound card. I was a little bit baffled by the reviewer making this comment:

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Unlike Intel's reference X58 SmackOver board, which is curiously equipped with only four DIMM sockets, MSI has sensibly equipped the Eclipse with six, thus allowing you to fully exploit your chosen i7 processor's memory expansion capabilities - in two channels of three DIMMs.

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I assume this is a typo? I thought the i7s were able to use three channels, (with two DIMMs in each on this board)? Also, the comment about the colour:

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The Eclipse, however, doesn't utilise a typical colour scheme for its DIMM sockets, as each channel isn't allocated its own colour. Instead, each triplet of DIMMs is allocated its own colour, thus you populate all the black sockets first to ensure optimal tri-channel performance.

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As far as I know, it is typical to populate the matching colour slots. That has certainly been my experience with DFI and ASUS boards.

I don't understand the whine about the Firewire either. Where the hell on that board would realistically be more convenient? If you are worried about front panel connections, then why the daft complaint about an extra Firewire back panel connector? Who really needs two firewire connections, and doesn't have one on the front of their system?

Sure MSI they could have chucked in an extra SLI ribbon cable, but since three way SLI is limited to graphics cards costing hundreds of pounds each, those rich people can surely afford a bit more for an extra SLI bridge? The board only has a x4 connection at the bottom, and any dual slot card would block all the useful buttons etc. You would be daft to use this board in 3 way SLI.

Why was there no power consumption analysis?

I know these all seem like really petty and minor complaints. For some reason this article made me a bit annoyed. Maybe it is because MSI has, for once, made a board that actually looks nice, has a decent layout *and* actually performs, and they get a shoddy review for their trouble.

Sorry for being a tool. I can't help it.

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Originally Posted by DeSean

As far as I know, it is typical to populate the matching colour slots. That has certainly been my experience with DFI and ASUS boards.

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In my experience MSI have previously colour matched the 1st position of each pair rather than matching the pairs together (A1 and B1 instead of A1 and A2). This always seemed quite illogical to me, although I'm glad they have decided to do it the same way that asus boards are.