The MSI Gaming Booth Tour with dGPUs in AIOs and Notebooks plus Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on June 29, 2015 3:00 PM ESTSLI Bridges
Aesthetics are becoming in important part of the PC Gaming space, and regardless of the revenues it seems that PC component manufacturers have to make an effort on styling especially when it comes to presentation. This includes tiny details such as cabling, temperature responsive LEDs, and effects that when combined actually have a positive impact on looks. With the case of SLI bridges, we’ve seen other companies such as EVGA implement their own design to counter against the generic brown/green/black PCB types we typically get inside a motherboard box. MSI is now entering this market with their own brand:
To go with the rest of the product line, these bridges will be outfitted with LEDs that are controlled through the software. MSI has been able to add this control element without needing a separate cable into a special header on the motherboard, and control will be through their gaming app. Pricing is unknown at this point (we might see one bundled with a high-end motherboard through) and release date was said to be ‘later this year’.
Transparent GT730 with White PCB
As an aside to the general coverage, I did see one GPU that caught my eye in a model that I least suspected. This is a GT730:
It’s a fairly innocuous card with standard specifications, but the PCB is white (like Galax cards) and the shroud design is semi-transparent, showing the cooler underneath. Part of me would love to see this design on the higher end models, perhaps with LEDs similar to that of the Fury X that light up as more power is applied to the card.
Case Mods
To finish up our look at MSI’s booth, I want to outlay some of the case mods that were there. Producing custom designs for cases is a niche market for sure, but other companies such as Cooler Master are designing some of their product lines around the concept of allowing users and makers to implement their own look to a chassis. As a result, many of the PC hardware manufacturers each year are now inviting professional modders (as in people who make designs as a full-time job) and commissioning designs to fit with the company ethos. That means with MSI, we get a dragon with a chassis strapped to the back:
There’s no point talking about specifications of the builds here because they can change, and perhaps I should be wondering where these designs end up after the event in question (used for future events, giveaways or back of a storeroom?).
MSI did not have much to show from their XPower overclocking line this year, either for motherboards or graphics cards under the Lightning moniker, but here’s a suitable yellow and black construction suit modification.
With the ECO line of motherboards, the low power market is one of the targets in the motherboard space. Last year we reported on the white and green motherboards MSI were showing, and then we reviewed the B85M ECO which eschewed the white colored PCB for a more conventional color. The white board used in last year’s display found its way into this Ecosphere case which has a map of the northern hemisphere on the transparent dome.
The most recent line from MSI is the black and white Krait variant of the mid-range motherboards, focusing on SLI and implementing a snake logo. Naturally the modification had to be a snake here.
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medi03 - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Fanobi Bullshit.In fall 2013 $399 R9 290 was on par nVidias $999 GTX Titan.
R9 290X was the fastest single card GPU (550$) until 780 Titan (699$).
It's still damn good bung for the buck card, staying within 10% of nVidia's card that costs nearly twice as much.
Fury X is whole new story, 1199$ crossfire beating 1998$ Titan X SLI.
And then there is $599 R9 295x2, which wipes the floor with any single card out there in pretty much any game that wasn't released just yesterday.
Antronman - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Ti stands for titanium.Shadow7037932 - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Mining on GPUs has been dead for quite a long time, esp. with ASICs available now.will1956 - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
i've gotten a sapphire 7870 GHz OC and was waiting for the Fury (hoping they would release a air cooled version) but now not a chance. i'm getting the 90 Ti.I've got a Silverstone FT03 with a H80i so the water cooling kinda throw it out
will1956 - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
*980 Ti.TheJian - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
You're on 12 gpu related articles in the last 30 days (only one shared with brett), but can't manage a 300 series article for two weeks (and it's written BEFORE launch to up it at NDA release etc correct?) or FuryX article for AMD's two major launches this summer (and sick in summer, sorta odd). That's a pretty big pill to swallow. Quick, someone give me a Heimlich, I'm choking... ;)Still time to respond to comments too...Tweet etc...but a major review of a HUGE launch (considering the hype that is...seems like no fury at this point, no new era of gaming either) can wait for a week, never mind the 300's ignored too. Ok...
Having said that I did notice Jarred now works at maximumpc...Pretty much insinuated AMD is shoveling them around so fast so nobody can thoroughly vet the card. Ouch.
http://www.maximumpc.com/amd-radeon-fury-x-review/
"We received a card for benchmarking… sort of. The whole of Future US, which includes Maximum PC, PC Gamer, and TechRadar, among others, received one Fury X for testing. We asked for a second, since our GPU testing is done at a different location, but to no avail."
It gets worse, even mentioning others, and only 10 samples for all of europe which according to him is really odd. Not sure why people keep turning hairworks off when it's just amping up tessellation (ok, may notch it down from 64, but off? Developer wanted us to use it) which happens to run REALLY fast on maxwell. How many other games will use tessellation like this in the future?
https://techreport.com/review/28513/amd-radeon-r9-...
See Beyond3d benchmarks. Hairworks won't be the only thing doing this I'd say.
"The Fury X still manages just over half the throughput of the GTX 980 Ti in TessMark. "
Same with Polygon throughput. There are others amd leads in, but this surely shows it isn't Hairworks doing in AMD on witcher3 (or nasty stuff from project cars etc), AMD will just hurt in some stuff period as will NV I guess, but NV seems to get the best of AMD as far as what devs are really doing. Should we be turning stuff off to hide AMD's gpu issues? Would we turn down AMD stuff that highlighted their efficiency in some aspect?
As techreport says:
"At the end of the day, the results from these directed tests largely confirm the major contrasts between the Fury X and the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. These two solutions have sharply divergent mixes of resources on tap, not just on paper but in terms of measurable throughput."
Why hide it when it shows for either? Gamers should know how data like this plays in the real world. It would appear games like Project Cars, WOW Warlords of Draenor, Witcher 3 (with hairworks on, IE tessellation up), Wolfenstein New Order, COD Adv Warfare, Dragon Age Inq etc show some of AMD's weaknesses (games showing ~20% advantage here basically even at 4K). AMD has a few themselves, but not as many and not this big of an advantage (mostly 1/2 NV's advantage in them meaning less than 10%). Some of them are losses at one site a win on another too, like Metro LL at toms a loss at 4K for NV, but win at techpowerup etc.
"The game uses DirectX 11 without the conventional approach to tessellation. It uses a deferred rendering engine with a custom Ambient Occlusion technique."
Techpowerup's comment on tessellation in project cars game. Again, this shows what I'm talking about. You can turn crap off to hide AMD sucking wind in some attribute. Are all of the games I mentioned doing some form of something we should turn off? NO.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/...
63fps vs. 45fps in project cars at 4K. Ouch. Dev wanted us to see their effects not turn them off because AMD sucks at it. At 1080p/1440p the gap gets to 20% on more than I listed (GTA5 etc). Wolfenstein doing something too with Id's Tech5 engine (over 20% to, and even 970 topples FuryX in 1440p and lower). Even 980 beats FuryX at 4K. Really the discussion should focus on 1440p since 95% of us are at or below this, which is even worse in these games and adds more, and this is all before OCing (which adds games like thief at 4K etc at 21% for NV). Devs will more often than not program for 75% share vs. 25% (AMD) too and more often then not, just because that is what they are designing on (75-80% of the workstation market owned too, game designers etc).
Back to your comment though, a 390x/FuryX release are clickbait articles you aren't interested in? ;) Your excuse is humorous at best, never mind what it is at worst. D. Lister, Chizow etc are correct. Can't wait for the clickbait FuryX article :) Hard to believe you put up a dozen gpu articles in a month but FuryX couldn't get the time of day over one of them...LOL.
nightbringer57 - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Well, a fast and hastened article to meet the deadline at any price would be kind of clockbait.When the dedicated reviewer is not available, it's quite honorable to give up the hype deadline and wait until he's well and ready to give us the great article we will certainly have.
mmrezaie - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Thanks Ryan. I would prefer to have better in depth review than an ad like article. So get better soon.D. Lister - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Ah, well then, the silver lining maybe a more in-depth analysis, considering the absence of a strict deadline. Get well soon mate.just4U - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
One thing I'd like to see in a video card review right now is 2 390s (not x) in crossfire.. no one has done that yet and they look to be a very solid choice for 4k Gaming on price/performance.On topic. I've been using a lot of MSI stuff of late. Really like how the company is handling things these days.. I do wonder if they got their support up to par. That used to be a issue with them.