MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Review
by Ian Cutress on April 18, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- Z77
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test beds:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with the 1250W Gold Power Supply and USB testing SSD.
Thank you to Micron for providing us with the SATA testing SSD.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with the memory kits.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with the Corsair H80i CLC.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with the 500W Platinum Power Supply for mITX testing.
Test Setup
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
While this method of power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
MSI motherboards have typically been good with idle power consumption, and the GD65 Gaming reflects this. Metro2033 power consumption is higher than expected, but definitely not in the realm of the high end enthusiast ranges.
Windows 7 POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
For whatever reason the Z77A-GD65 Gaming was not too quick with Windows 7 POST times, with over 15 seconds from power to Windows loading. I noticed that between the MSI BIOS image being shown and the Windows loading there was a period where my monitor would flicker on and off twice before focusing on the loading animation. Ideally I would like to see POST times south of 12 seconds when two GPUs are fitted.
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hansmuff - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Good comment on the polling rate, marketing at its best. I do notice a difference between a 125 Hz rate and a 250 Hz rate in terms of smoothness of the desktop cursor when you move it, but any higher and I personally can't make out a difference.It should also be noted that polling with a higher frequency uses additional CPU cycles, since as the name implies USB is a polling interface.
sherlockwing - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
My favorite part of the MSI Z77 board is the 90 degree USB3.0 header, it really helps hiding that huge usb3.0 header.boogerlad - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Is this motherboard a joke? Covering the fins is very stupid, and fins that are shaped merely for aesthetics is even worse. Are aesthetics more important than performance and practicality these days?mwildtech - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Bitch Bitch Bitch - Beat it!HisDivineOrder - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Dare you deny the dragon?Crono - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I dare not. I actually was planning on doing a custom paint case, red and black, with the Dragon Army emblem from the new Ender's Game coming out in fall. The motherboard would fit well, though really even with a side panel no one looks that closely to see some of the theme details on a motherboard."Your ass is dragon!"
Sunstorm - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Hi Ian, I wanted to point out a piece of misinformation that MSI seem to be allowing various review sites to propagate. The board is not capable of 2X SLI (yes, standard two way) when the third PCI-E 3 slot is in use. I was told by MSI tech support that this is due to how the pcie lanes are provided for the third slot, which differs from the majority of other Z77 boards. This occurs even if the third slot is used for a soundcard ie you are not trying to do tri-SLI, SLI is simply disabled.Multiple reviews of the GD65 (and therefore presumably this gamer version) do not highlight this issue and presumably review sites aren't testing this. MSI seems content to allow this misinformation to be spread far and wide, which led to me buying the GD65 and finding it was not adequate for my needs several months after purchase. Thankfully the retailer accepted a return.
Please update the review to reflect this, if reviewers are able to test this and publish it then maybe a few people will avoid the hassle I had
IanCutress - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Hi SunStorm,I am communicating with MSI directly on this to see what is up. Personally I feel there may be something wrong with the SLI certification flag. It probably confirms that the x8/x8 arrangement is SLI capable, but the x4 from the chipset is not, but there may be a bug that states if the x4 is populated, disable SLI completely. I am hoping to get a straight answer for you.
Please note I would have tested it if I had access to three of the same NVIDIA GPU, but alas I do not :(
IanCutress - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Hi SunStorm. I got an answer, and it boils down to this."In order to run SLI you need either a x16 slot running at @16 or @x8."
So when the third slot is populated, it brings all slots down to x8/x4/x4. Because the second slot is x4, it fails SLI certification.
If you have examples of SLI working in x4 mode *anywhere*, please email me (ian@anandtech.com) as this is rather interesting. If this is truly the case, it's an NVIDIA restriction, not an MSI one.
Ideally if you want 2xSLI and an x4 sound card/RAID card, you need a board that does x8/x8 on PCIe slots and then takes the final x4 from the chipset, such as the Z77 OC Formula or Z77 Extreme6.
Ian
Sunstorm - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Thank you Ian, the fact that you took the time to take a look in to this is much appreciated. I have only found one forum post anywhere which highlighted this issue.Since most reviewers are stating that the MSI GD65 (and presumably related boards) is capable of tri-SLI I would imagine other people buying these boards may end up bitten down the line, even if they do their research by looking at reviews. I think in most people's case, given the price level, the fact that it is not tri-SLI capable is not a concern; however, the fact that ANY card in the third slot disables SLI is pretty important for people to be aware of, particularly as it is a behaviour not seen on most Z77 boards. As far as I am aware, the majority of Z77 boards take the lanes for the third slot from the chipset (as you describe), I've now switched to an ASUS v-pro for this reason.
The only instances where I recall I may have seen SLI operating at 4x or lower are the tests of the impact of PCI-E bandwidth on graphics card performance. I'm not sure how those are conducted though.