Multitasking-

The vast majority of our benchmarks are single task events that utilize anywhere from 23MB up to 1.4GB of memory space during the course of the benchmark. Obviously, this is not enough to fully stress test our 6GB or 8GB memory configurations. We devised a benchmark that would simulate a typical home workstation and consume as much of the 6GB/8GB as possible without crashing the machine.

We start by opening two instances of Internet Explorer 8.0 each with six tabs opened to flash intensive websites followed by Adobe Reader 9.1 with a rather large PDF document open, and iTunes 8 blaring the music selection of the day loudly. We then open two instances of Lightwave 3D 9.6 with our standard animation, Cinema 4D R11 with the benchmark scene, Microsoft Excel and Word 2007 with large documents, and finally Photoshop CS4 x64 with our test image.



Before we start the benchmark process, our idle state memory usage is 4.05GB.



We wait two minutes for system activities to idle and then start playing Pinball Wizard via iTunes, start the render scene process in Cinema 4D R11, start a resize of our Photoshop image, and finally the render frame benchmark in Lightwave 3D. Our maximum memory usage during the benchmark is 5.62GB with 100% CPU utilization across all four or eight threads.

Application Performance - MultiTask Test - Lightwave 3D

Application Performance - MultiTask Test - Cinema 4D

Application Performance - MultiTask Test - Total Time
Power Consumption 3D Rendering
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  • petergab - Saturday, October 17, 2009 - link

    Do they use a foxconn socket on this motherboard?
  • Gary Key - Thursday, October 22, 2009 - link

    Yes, Foxconn socket. We are compiling a list of motherboards with each socket manufacturer along with whether they launched with the revised Foxconn socket or the old one (which seems to be the primary problem child). It has been difficult getting straight answers as you can imagine. ;)
  • thermbug - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link

    Pardon the brain freeze but what does the color coding inside the performance charts indicate?
    I see 3 i7's and i5 and an AMD chip for comparison.
    Am I interpreting correctly that the i5 750 is the light green, dark green is the I7 860?
    The utilization of color doesn't seem to be consistent on the various graphs.

    The MSI board is consistently highlighted as dark green in the latter several graphs. But which CPU is being used in that case? It looks like the I7 860 is the standard test but I can't quite grok it.
  • thermbug - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link

    Pardon the brain freeze but what does the color coding inside the performance charts indicate?
    I see 3 i7's and i5 and an AMD chip for comparison.
    Am I interpreting correctly that the i5 750 is the light green, dark green is the I7 860?
    The utilization of color doesn't seem to be consistent on the various graphs.

    The MSI board is consistently highlighted as dark green in the latter several graphs. But it mentionsBut which CPU is being used in that case?
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    I'm guessing that all results which don't specify a processor use the 750.
  • haplo602 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link

    OMG another P55 board review ... how about a 785G one ? there was NONE since it launched, yet you are covering P55 like the next best thing to sliced bread ...

  • maomao0000 - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link

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  • ipay - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link

    That generally sums up my experience with every MSI board I've ever used. Unfortunately, while the warts are few, they're usually significant enough that they overshadow all the good features, and you end up with a board that's frustrating to use.

    Buy an ASRock or Biostar instead. You'll get a similar layout, similar overclocking options and fewer "warts" at a lower price.
  • yacoub - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link

    My MSI P6N-SLI Platinum (c2d) board has been flawless since day one. It is my first MSI motherboard and has been running great (overclocked, no less) ever since.
  • crab nebula - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link

    If you insert a device in the PCI Express x4 slot, then the other two PCI Express x1 slots are disabled automatically (because the mb has an extra PCI Express Gb LAN controller and a PCI Express IEEE 1394 controller). Somehow this is not mentioned in any review of this mb.

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