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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IanCutress - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
The x8/x8 + x4 vs. x8/x4/x4 difference will only showcase for those that need the PCIe slots, and I hope I have pointed this out in every review I have written. The x8 requirement for SLI will definitely feature in my future reviews, and I will be testing it on Haswell for you.After speaking with MSI, they *will* (because I'll hunt them down) be updating their website to make it more obvious to users. A lot of reviews will just go to the back end and copy/paste of the specifications rather than going through them like we try to do, to see where reality meets purpose. In recent months I have found a few glaring errors with both websites and manuals (!).
Ian
Sunstorm - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Many thanks Ian. The quality of the reviews here, as well as interactions like this between commentators and the authors are what really make you guys stand out as pretty much the best tech site out there, in my opinion. I'm glad that I have potentially flagged up this SLI issue that has not come up before.WeaselITB - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Wow, kudos on this. I'm not really in the market for a new motherboard (and I'm more of a ROG fan, anyway), but this sort of interaction is exactly why I keep reading Anandtech. Awesome.-Weasel
just4U - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Realtek Sound?I noticed the SoundBlaster Cinema Sticker there yet it says Onboard sound is Realtek. Is it software emulation like what you see out of Asus? Or like Gigabyte's Killer series where it really is a SoundBlaster chip?
IanCutress - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Software Emulation; the Soundblaster Cinema software package is part of software stack, and enabled it by default. We had to disable it to run our RMAA audio tests properly as it interfered and raised an interchannel leakage error.Ian
just4U - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Such a shame.. MSI, use the real thing ok? That goes double for you Asus. Doesn't have to be SoundBlaster either but come on these are supposed to be a step above.benbenkr - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Why did you guys not test DPC latency on this board?Seriously, DPC latency is like one of the -->MOST<-- important thing to test given how much BS software which comes with all the motherboards these days.
IanCutress - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
DPC Latency is on page 6, under System Benchmarks (http://anandtech.com/show/6902/6). It's a quick test and there are people who want the info, so we are happy to provide the extra data point. Some boards fail this test spectacularly, so it's good to get onto the manufacturers to fix it.tech6 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Just another cynical marketing attempt to extract more money from the gaming community. Raise the price, make it black, put some cool graphics on it a loud contrasting color and call it a day.Lucian2244 - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Isn't that how every business work?