by Doors4ever
06/10/2009 | 03:50 PM
Our regular readers know that the first review to open the series of articles devoted to LGA1366 mainboards was the one devoted to Gigabyte solutions for Intel Core i7 processors: GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme. However, not many of you know that the very first mainboard on Intel X58 Express chipset that arrived into our lab was MSI Eclipse. We got it back in November 2008, shortly after the new chipset and processors had been officially launched. Don’t you think it is strange that over six months have passed and multiple reviews devoted to new Intel platform have been posted, but there is still no MSI Eclipse mainboard review on our site? However, there won’t be one at all, at least not of the MSI Eclipse mainboard that we have in our possession. The thing is that unfortunately we came across a number of serious issues when we checked out our particular MSI Eclipse sample. In fact, it is quite normal: new processors, new mainboards, new technologies, new operation and overclocking specifics… Any of the reasons mentioned above and certainly all of them combined could cause problems during first encounter. However, all these reasons didn’t prevent us from completing the tests of Gigabyte boards that arrived into our lab just a little later. And although we had gone back to MSI Eclipse multiple times, we still couldn’t get it to work properly that is why we gave up. Looks like it was a too early sample or we may have been unlucky to have got a defective MSI Eclipse right from the start.
The reason why we remembered about all these circumstances today is because we got our hands onto a new MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard, which we are happy to discuss in our new review. It differs from the predecessor not only by the “Plus” in its model name: it looks different, boasts a number of additional features and most importantly works way better. We would like to start, as usual, with the closer look at the board and accessories.
The box that MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard comes in looks quite common for a flagship solution. It is pretty deep, has a convenient carry handle, and a decorative front panel that can be flipped open to reveal some mainboard components through clear windows. At first we only see a colorful box, and then find the mainboard and bundled accessories in two separate packages inside the box.
We have already come across similarly designed packaging multiple times before, however, I personally was extremely pleased to see that the two internal boxed containing the board and the bundled accessories were made from regular brown cardboard instead of the white laminated one. Maybe they were simply trying to lower the production costs this way, but I think that besides purely pragmatic reasons, they are also trying to be more environment-friendly.
The list of accessories bundled with MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard is longer than usual and includes the following items:
Besides that, there is also a lot of technical documentation:
In fact, I listed far not all the accessories, but we are going to get back to those few that I didn’t mention yet later in our review.
MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard looks very attractive and stylish, sticking to the same black and blue colors that dominate the package design:
If we take a look at the top part of the PCB, we will see that all components are placed in their traditional and thus convenient places. The markings on the heatsinks and stickers remind us of high-quality components that are used during the production process.
It makes sense to mention one of the additional accessories bundled with MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard called GreenPower Genie.
This device monitors all major voltages – 12V, 5V and 3.3V - in real time, which allows calculating the power capacity and efficiency of the system. With the enclosed cable you can connect GreenPower Genie between the 24-pin power supply and mainboard connectors and use an additional 3-pin cable to connect to the SMBus (System Management Bus).
Before we move on to the bottom part of the PCB, let’s take a closer look at the cooling system. The chipset South and North Bridge heatsinks are connected with a heatpipe, while the CPU and North Bridge voltage regulator circuitry components are cooler with a separate pretty large heatsink.
Strange as it might seem, separation of these two cooling systems is presented as an advantage, and not a drawback. We won’t argue about it at this time. Let’s take a closer look at a large heatsink over the South Bridge. The next photo shows clearly two copper contact plates of the heatsink. The one on the right sits over Intel ICH10R South Bridge, while the one on the left – over Nvidia NF200 additional PCI Express bus controller.
The hot PCI Express controller also warms up a pair of chipset heatsinks connected with a heatpipe, but the separate heatsink over the processor voltage regulator transistors doesn’t really help to dissipate the heat. This large heatsink doesn’t really work well, it stays barely warm, while the chipset heatsinks run very hot. I couldn’t touch the South Bridge heatsink during work, and the monitoring utilities reports up to 75°C North Bridge temperature despite very intensive airflow. Although this temperature is still acceptable, it is very high. Therefore, we couldn’t really figure out the benefits of separate cooling.
Speaking of the advantages this cooling system has to offer, we definitely have to mention secure screw-on retention used for all heatsinks.
Black spring-screws are barely noticeable against the dark PCB background that is why we would like to provide another photo taken at a different angle.
I personally, do not see any real benefits in separate cooling systems, only drawbacks, especially with a hot Nvidia NF200 controller. However, this controller ensures that three top graphics card slots work at full PCI Express 2.0 x16 speed and only the last fourth slot can work at x4 speed at best.
By the way, unlike EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, that is also equipped with Nvidia NF200 controller, there are no questions about the way multi-GPU technologies get implemented on MSI Eclipse Plus. You can see “CrossFireX Ready” and “Multi-SLI Ready” written right between the first two PCI Express x16 slots.
The next accessory bundled with MSI Eclipse Plus that we haven’t mentioned yet is D-LED2 indicator panel:
It is plugged into a special connector a little below the South Bridge heatsink and displays POST status during system boot-up. Once the operating system is loaded, you can see an MSI logo on the screen and then the panel shuts down for power-saving reasons. D-LED2 button on the mainboard PCB will let you turn it back on and switch cyclically between most important readings. The screen may display the current base clock, processor and chipset North Bridge voltages, or temperature of a random location taken with a thermal diode on a long cable also included among the mainboard accessories.
Actually, the lower right corner of the MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard PCB is worth taking a real close look at. The next photo shows a small black connector for the D-LED2 panel and a number of buttons.
From right to left we see Power On, Reset and D-LED2 button used to switch between the D-Led2 readings. The next button called Green Power allows enabling and disabling MSI APS (Active Phase Switching) power-saving technologies. MSI introduced their own implementation of dynamic switching between active voltage regulator phases a little later than Asus or Gigabyte, however, they did it excellently. Right from the start you could enable or disable power-saving right in the BIOS without any specific utilities, which had already been a great advantage over the competitors’ implementations. Now things got even simpler: all you need to do is press the button. Although, you may also use special Green Power Center utility, if you like.
The last button enables a very interesting function called OC Dial. The rotating knob right next to it allows increasing the base frequency with the increment set in the BIOS, i.e. you overclock the system by raising all other frequencies connected to the base one. As we know, many overclocking fans use special overclocking utilities, however, they are far from perfect and MSI Overclocking Center is no exception. OC Dial function does work fine and doesn’t depend on the operating system.
All buttons are marked, highlighted during work, so you can hardly confuse them, although you can easily miss the one you need. They are located too close to one another that is why I was always very cautious when switching between the D-LED2 readings using the corresponding button, fearing that I would accidentally hit the Reset one.
You may have already noticed that there are no outdated FDD and PATA connectors on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard and there are additional Serial ATA controllers instead. Intel ICH10R South Bridge provides support for six SATA ports. Using a PCI Express lane JMicron JMB362 controller adds another two ports, each is then split into two more with the help of two JMicron JMB322 controllers. One of the advantages of this particular implementation is that the devices connected to these additional SATA ports do not require any special drivers to be installed. Another JMicron controller adds two more ports in the form of eSATA.
Besides a pair of eSATA connectors on the back panel, there are also PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, CMOS Clear button, eight USB ports, IEEE1394 port implemented by VIA VT6308P controller, Gigabit network connector provided by two Realtek RTL8111C controllers and a traditional POST indicator in addition to the D-LED2 panel. All audio connectors are placed onto a separate card with PCI Express x1 interface – Creative X-Fi Xtreme (MS-4132) based on Creative CA0110-IBG chip.
The components layout from the mainboard manual indicates that there are six fan connectors. The interesting thing is that despite the missing FDD and PATA connectors, there is a COM pin-connector, although you will have to get a corresponding bracket yourselves.
Numerous LEDs indicate the number of active phases in the voltage regulator circuitry and provide other status updates.
I pointed out in one of my recent reviews that although most mainboard manufacturers really like to equip their products with a lot of LEDs, they for some reason forget about HDD activity indicators. MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard does have HDD LED, but they did even more than that. There are separate indicators for drives connected to the chipset South Bridge, additional Serial ATA and eSATA controllers, so you will not only be aware that the system is accessing the hard drives at a given moment of time, but you will even know which controllers are being requested. The important thing is that all the LED’s can be disabled in the mainboard BIOS.
Overall, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard looks very good, if we do not regard the additional Nvidia NF200 controller and separate cooling systems as drawbacks. I also doubt that anyone would consider missing FDD and PATA ports a drawback as well. These interfaces lose their acuteness day by day, you just have to keep it in mind. Buttons are a definite advantage, but the fact that they are placed so close to one another poses a problem. Another great feature is a discrete sound card based on Creative technology. We are rather neutral when it comes to GreenPower Genie and D-LED2 indicator panel: it is good to have them, but it’s OK if we don’t. The LED indication system is very well thought-through and illustrative. If you are annoyed by the super bright LEDs, you can easily turn them off, which is an indisputable advantage.
Summing up everything we have just learned about MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard, we would like to offer you a detailed spec sheet from the official MSI web-site:
By the way, MSI has a lot of web-sites in different languages supported by local representatives that is why they may differ in design and convenience of use. But the MSI Global web-site definitely sets a great example for everyone.
The top row of tabs will save you time searching and offer BIOS and driver updates, utilities and manuals for a specific mainboard model from the server closest to you. The menu below will help you move quickly around the page or entire web-site. Function and technology icons in descriptions work as direct links to more detailed explanation. All info is easily accessible and well structured, so it is easy and convenient to work with this web-site.
The BIOS of MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard is based on AMI microcode and has a number of peculiarities that we haven’t come across before. That is why we are going to talk about it in a bit greater detail.
The first section in the menu is “Standard CMOS Features”:
It is very pleasing to see an unusually long list of Serial ATA devices, but the screenshot is primarily intended to draw your attention to the date: April 21, 2009. You will understand later one when we get to “System Information” subsection.
You can learn more details about the system CPU in other sections as well. Here we are mostly interested in the BIOS version – V1.0 from 04.21.09. Do you recognize the date? Unfortunately, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard is still suffering from an issue, which has become pretty common lately. When you clear CMOS, which was exactly what we did before taking the screenshots, the system resets the date and time setting the date of the BIOS as current. It is pretty inconvenient and causes some additional problems during initial system configuring and search for optimal overclocking settings.
The next section in the list is “Advanced BIOS Features”.
A little later we will see that almost all parameters crucial for successful system optimization and overclocking are gathered in “Cell Menu” section, however, for some reason they have forgotten about “CPU Feature” subsection.
In the meanwhile, only in this subsection you can disable Hyper-Threading and C1E power-saving technology. There is also a strange parameter called “Overspeed Protection”. Judging by the description, it monitors the CPU power consumption and if it exceeds a certain level, the frequency will be lowered. They recommend disabling this function during overclocking, however, during our experiments we didn’t notice any difference, unfortunately. We will talk more about it in our chapter devoted to overclocking.
We are going to skip the sections called “Integrated Peripherals” and “Power Management Setup”, as there is nothing new there. Our next stop will be in “H/W Monitor” section:
The rotation speed of the CPU cooler fan will be adjusted automatically, we just need to set the maximum temperature in the interval from 40 to 70°C with 5°C increment. Too bad that only four-pin fans are supported, just like on most other contemporary mainboards. Moreover, you can set the rotation speed of three other fans at 50, 75 or 100% from the maximum and it will be maintained constantly. Here we can also find out the current rotation speed of these four fans, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that the rotation speed of the remaining two fans cannot be monitored or adjusted in any way. MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard also can’t boast anything special in terms of monitoring temperatures and voltages. We only know processor Vcore, and in order to monitor all other voltages that can be adjusted on this board, we will have to use special utilities.
“Green Power” section allows enabling MSI’s brand name power-saving technologies, turn off LEDs, control the current, power consumption and energy efficiency.
Finally we have arrived into “Cell Menu” section that contains a lot of parameters worth our particular attention.
There is an enormous list of parameters here; by default you see just part of it. To make it easier to navigate among them, they are split into several groups with horizontal lines. The first group is informational – it reports the current parameters that the system booted with. The next group is connected with the CPU operation and the first sub-section there is called “CPU Specifications”:
We see detailed CPU specs and all technologies supported by our processor are moved onto a separate page.
All this is very interesting, but it could have been much better from a practical standpoint, if “Cell Menu” section also contained “CPU Feature” sub-section from “Advanced BIOS Features”. Besides, you can check the CPU specs and supported technologies at any time from any part of the mainboard BIOS by pressing F4.
“Intel C-STATE tech” parameter is disabled by default. If it is enabled, we can change power-saving modes. In particular, the new “C State package limit setting” parameter sets different power-saving regimes when for idle mode.
We have also noticed one more peculiarity: if we set “C State package limit setting” to C3 or C6, then the Intel Core i7-920 processor clock frequency multiplier will increase by two points – to 22 - during single-threaded load and with Turbo Boost technology enabled. If we set this parameter to C1, then the multiplier will only increase to 21. However, “Intel C-STATE tech” parameter is automatically disabled on MSI Eclipse Plus during overclocking. It may have been done to ensure “safe” overclocking, i.e. to make sure that those users who don’t know about this feature could overclock successfully and avoid BSOD caused by excessively high CPU frequency as a result of multiplier increase to 22.
We have already mention “OC Dial” function that allows increasing or decreasing base frequency using a special onboard knob. “OC Dial Step” parameter sets the increment for frequency adjustment. “OC Dial Reset” remembers the set value and saves it during system reboot or resets it.
The next group of settings is connected with the memory subsystem. “MEMORY-Z” option opens a sub-page where you can check the specifications of each module in the system.
The “X.M.P. SUPPORT Information” submenu will display the contents of the first X.M.P. profile, if your memory modules support Extended Memory Profile technology that records advanced memory settings, such as timings, frequency and voltage.
Just like with the CPU specs, you can access memory specifications at any time and from anywhere in the BIOS by pressing F5.
Unfortunately, although MSI Eclipse Plus read absolutely correctly all parameters recorded in the first X.M.P. profile of the two available in Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX memory modules that we use, the board couldn’t boot when this profile was selected. When we selected the second profile, it offered to set some unrealistic memory frequency of 2796MHz. We can’t get this frequency in a traditional way by selecting an appropriate multiplier using “Memory Ratio” setting. Even with 133MHz base frequency the maximum memory speed will be 2133MHz.
As for the memory timings, “Advance DRAM Configuration” parameter will open a sub-page where you can manually set all primary timings.
If we enable “Advanced Memory Setting”, we will get access to all secondary timings as well.
The next group of parameters in the “Cell Menu” section deals with chipset configuration. And then follows a large group working with voltages. You can set them above as well as below their nominal values.
It is very cool to see that there is “CPU Load Line Calibration” function that prevents processor voltage from dropping under heavy load. MSI Eclipse mainboard didn’t have this feature. Moreover, note that when “CPU Voltage”, “QPI Voltage” and “DRAM Voltage” parameters are set to Auto, they get highlighted. We didn’t find any official explanation to that phenomenon, but we suppose (and our practical experiments confirmed that) that the mainboard highlights the voltages, which it will increase during overclocking on its own, if necessary.
The last group within “Cell Menu” section contains only one single parameter called “Spread Spectrum”. It should better be disabled during overclocking, because unfortunately, the board can’t do it itself. It isn’t an issue or a bug, just a little thing that could show extra attention to overclockers’ needs on MSI’s part.
Overall, “Cell Menu” section boasts very good functionality. Informational sub-sections, such as “CPU Specifications” and “MEMORY-Z” may seem a little excessive. They could have been moved painlessly to some section like “System Information”, for instance. Especially, since their contents can be partially accessed by pressing F4 and F5 at any time. However, “CPU Feature” sub-section is something that’s really missing here. It’s a pity that X.M.P. technology doesn’t work in automatic mode and that “Intel C-STATE tech” parameter and all options connected to it get disabled during overclocking. These are pretty much all the suggestions we have about improving the “Cell Menu” section.
“User Settings” section allows saving and loading four full BIOS settings profiles. It is very convenient, although too bad that there is no way to name these profiles or provide a detailed description for them.
The functionality of “M-Flash” section is also of extreme interest to us. Finally, MSI also has a built-in utility for storing and reflashing the BIOS. The marketing materials claim that it is very easy and intuitive to use. I have to disagree. In my opinion, the simplest, easiest to work with and most informative utility is ASUS EZ Flash. Moreover, it also allows saving updates onto devices with NTF file system, which M-Flash can’t do yet. However, the most important thing is that this utility works fine.
Besides, M-Flash supports a very interesting feature: loading the BIOS from a USB flash-drive. If you set “M-Flash function as” to “BIOS Update”, we will be able to select a BIOS image for further reflashing. If we set it to “Boot”, the board will not reflash the BIOS but will boot with the selected BIOS image on the flash drive and will ignore the current one saved in the BIOS chip. It is a very interesting feature! You can check out a new or beta version of the BIOS without risking to lose all the settings. Theoretically, this function could also step in once the BISO chip fails, but in this case M-Flash function needs to be enabled by default and the board should be able to boot with any suitable BIOS image it can locate.
And now a few sad things. The list of BIOS settings of MSI Eclipse mainboard is very similar to the BIOS settings of MSI Eclipse Plus and it also has an “M-Flash” section with the same functionality. I found several BIOS updates for MSI Eclipse on the official company web-site, however, I couldn’t download any of them. I was advised to use Live Update Online or Live Update 3 utilities.
I don’t know the real reason behind this, but being a pretty mistrustful person I suspected that “M-Flash” reflashing function could be causing some issues on MSI Eclipse mainboard that is why they wouldn’t let you actually use it. As for MSI Eclipse Plus, there is only one initial BIOS version 1.0 available for download on the official site at this time. Therefore, we can make an optimistic conclusion that they managed to eliminate all problems on the MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard successfully. However, my experience wouldn’t let me celebrate just yet, because it could be that the problems simply haven’t been revealed yet, as the board is very new and not that widely spread in the market. That is why I used online tools to reflash the BIOS on my MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard and didn’t check out the “M-Flash” function to make sure that I would not accidentally damage the board.
We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 OS and ATI Catalyst 9.4 graphics card driver.
We didn’t experience any difficulties during assembly of our MSI Eclipse Plus based system. We also encountered no problems during work in nominal mode, the board acted exactly like many other mainboards. The processor clock frequency multiplier and core voltage went down in idle mode; under heavy load the clock multiplier increased to 21 and rarely to 22 thanks to Turbo Boost technology. The memory worked at 1067MHz with 8-8-8-19-1T timings by default. Many mainboards report the current CPU clock frequency during system boot-up. However, we haven’t yet seen any mainboard that would display the frequency correctly taking into account working Turbo Boost technology. We really liked that MSI board did it.
Since MSI Eclipse Plus behaved just as many other systems we tested, we suggest proceeding to the performance benchmarks results. We are going to compare the performance of our today’s hero, MSI Eclipse Plus, against the last mainboard we reviewed – Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P. The mainboards set almost all parameters themselves, and as we have expected, their performance numbers differed minimally.
You may have noticed that on the box as well as the back of the mainboard itself there are stickers with MSI Eclipse Plus name printed on them and “013” numbers written by hand. It is probably the number of the board sample that we received for review. There was also a sheet with the same number on it with the benchmark results for this particular board, the system configuration, date and time when the tests were taken as well as signatures of people performing and controlling the testing.
I doubt that a sheet like that will be part of every mass production bundle, but it was very interesting to check it out. For example, we noticed that with beta BIOS versions the memory worked at 1333MHz in optimized mode, while with release BIOS versions the frequency was set at standard 1067MHz.
While in nominal mode we didn’t have any problems and didn’t notice anything specific, we did encounter numerous peculiarities during overclocking. It was a very diverse experience that took us from success to some failures and then back up to victory again.
First let’s check out the ability of MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard to work at high base frequency settings. For that purpose we lowered processor clock frequency multiplier to the minimal possible setting of 12, set the lowest memory divider and raised the base frequency to 210MHz. The system booted the OS and passed a brief stability test successfully. At 215MHz base frequency we managed to boot, but had some errors pop up during stability tests. However, we didn’t try too hard to get the system to work at 215MHz anyway. Even 210MHz was more than enough to overclock our Intel Core i7-920 processor sample to its maximum and MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard would obviously be no bottleneck in this case. Great result!
Then we decided to check if the board could make the memory work at high frequency, too. If we simply selected an X.M.P. profile in the mainboard BIOS that set the memory frequency at 1867MHz, MSI Eclipse Plus tried to boot but without luck. It was not good, but not too bad either, because the board could boot just fine and passed all tests when we set the 1867MHz memory frequency manually. Generally, this was all we needed to know at that point. The board supported high base frequency settings and high-frequency memory. Now all we needed to do was combine these two features of MSI Eclipse Plus and make them work to our advantage.
At first let’s check out how well MSI Eclipse Plus can overclock without any processor Vcore increase. We enable “CPU Load Line Calibration”, set the base frequency at 181MHz, memory frequency is 1810MHz and timings – 8-8-8-22-1T. We have checked out these settings multiple times on other mainboards before; however, MSI Eclipse Plus starts but is unable to load the operating system, not to mention passing any sort of tests. Frustrating. Let’s try to find out what is going on. We lower the memory frequency and the board loads Windows just fine. I get it! It must have been the memory! We are going to get back to this matter later, and now we have to make sure that at 181MHz base frequency the CPU remains stable. No way, the BSOD appeared almost immediately after we started the test. So, it appears that not only the memory hinders overclocking success but also the CPU is unable to work stably with the base frequency increased to 181MHz. Very frustrating!
At first I thought that it could be “CPU Load Line Calibration” function that wasn’t working properly. It was supposed to prevent processor core voltage from dropping under heavy load keeping it around the nominal 1.225V. However, during our tests the CPU core voltage dropped to 1.128V and with disabled “CPU Load Line Calibration” it dropped even lower – to 1.1V. Of course, the CPU can’t work stably at a low voltage like that when it is overclocked to 3.8GHz. This is exactly the frequency that we get with the base frequency at 181MHz and 21x clock multiplier provided by Turbo Boost technology. It turned out that the reason for all of this was specific implementation of Turbo Boost technology during overclocking on MSI Eclipse Plus.
In our case, when the CPU is not overclocked, its frequency multiplier is increased to 21x under any workload. During overclocking, the board will continue to act the same way only under relatively low load of four threads or less. The processor core voltage in this case stays around 1.216-1.22V, which is very close to the default 1.225V. It means that “CPU Load Line Calibration” is working. If we load the CPU heavier, with five or more computational threads, the clock multiplier doesn’t increase, it remains equal to 20. The processor Vcore is way below the nominal value in this case, staying around 1.128-1.132V with “CPU Load Line Calibration” enabled and drops even more if we disable it. In fact, the processor clock frequency multiplier could increase to 21 guaranteed only under relatively low load of 1-2 threads; at 3-4 threads the multiplier will mostly be at 21, but will also go down to 20 causing corresponding drop in processor Vcore.
This is when we should remind ourselves what the idea of Intel Turbo Boost technology is to begin with. If the power consumption and temperature of an overclocked processor are within acceptable limits, its clock frequency multiplier can be increased by one or even two. Of course, this situation occurs when the workload is fairly low. If all four processor cores are busy and each is working on two threads due to Hyper-Threading technology, then the power consumption of a CPU with an increased clock multiplier will most likely get beyond acceptable maximum and the multiplier will go back to its nominal value. Looks like MSI Eclipse Plus demonstrates the “correct” implementation of Turbo Boost technology. Unlike many other mainboards that increase the clock frequency multiplier under any load and disregard the power consumption altogether, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard monitors the workload level and corrects the processor clock multiplier accordingly. The only disadvantage here is that we lose some of the performance due to supposedly “correct” implementation of Turbo Boost technology. While on most other mainboards the CPU always works with increased clock multiplier, the CPU on MSI Eclipse Plus has a nominal multiplier and hence lower operational frequency.
We tried to lock the multiplier at 21x by disabling “Intel EIST” in the BIOS. No luck, the CPU multiplier was at 21 in idle mode and didn’t change, but then immediately dropped to 20 under multi-threaded load. “Overspeed Protection” parameter from “CPU Feature” sub-section could theoretically help here. According to its description, it lowers the CPU frequency under heavy load. However, even when we disabled it, the mainboard still acted the same. As a result, you can only push the base frequency as far as 176MHz without losing processor stability. But this is not the end of it yet. Unfortunately, during overclocking MSI Eclipse Plus doesn’t work with memory as well as some other boards.
First of all I was very surprised to see that the board set 9-9-9-24-2T timings for high-frequency memory. Other mainboards also set 9-9-9-24, but with 1T. I cannot remember a single time when I had to replace 2T with 1T on any Intel X58 Express based mainboard. However, it is no big deal. Remember the X.M.P. technology that doesn’t work properly on MSI Eclipse Plus in auto mode, but you can still set high memory frequencies manually without any problems? Here is the same thing: you can manually set 1T and MSI Eclipse Plus will work just as good as any other mainboard. Too bad, though, that we will still have to increase the primary timings.
We first tested Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX memory modules on Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard. This memory has been participating in our mainboard tests since then and the results obtained before get confirmed over and over again. Namely, with the base frequency increased to 181MHz this memory can work at 1810MHz frequency with 8-8-8-22-1T timings or even 8-8-8-20-1T timings. When we increase the base frequency on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard to 176MHz,t eh memory frequency can only be increased to 1760MHz, but even in this case we can’t set CAS Latency 8. We could only achieve stability with 9-9-9-24-1T timings.
Not too good, as it will make our CPU work at 3.7GHz only under small workload and as soon as the number of threads exceeds 5 the clock multiplier will immediately drop to 20x.
The fact that all Intel CPU power-saving technologies remain up and running is a weak compensation for lower CPU frequency, lower memory frequency and higher timings on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard compared to other solutions.
After a pretty disappointing start we have to see if the board can overclock better with increased processor Vcore. And this is where a very nice surprise was waiting for us. It turned out that unlike many contemporary mainboards, MSI Eclipse Plus doesn’t disable Intel processor power-saving technology when the CPU Vcore is increased. In idle mode not only the multiplier, but also the core voltage will be lowered, though not as much as it would in case we didn’t touch the voltage setting, but proportionally to the increase. It is excellent!
Our Intel Core i7-920 processor can work at 188MHz base frequency with 21x multiplier, i.e. overclock to 3.95GHz, if we increase its core voltage. We managed to achieve the exact same result on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard. However, the peculiarities of Turbo Boost technology implementation wouldn’t let its multiplier increase to 21 under heavy load, so it would only work at 3.76GHz. Things may again seem not so good at all, but maybe there is a way of making this situation work for us? We didn’t manage to overclock our processor any higher on other mainboards, because it couldn’t bear the load of 8 computational threads at frequencies over 3.95GHz. But MSI Eclipse Plus will have processor frequency lower in this case, because the multiplier will stay at 20x in case there are many threads involved. The clock frequency multiplier will only increase to 21x under relatively low load, which the CPU may be able to handle. And it did! We managed to push the base frequency to 190MHz. Unfortunately, the memory didn’t make us too happy again. According to the results of our previous tests, it was supposed to work with 7-7-7-20 timings up until 1530MHz frequency. However, we had to increase the timings to 8-8-8-22 already at 1520MHz on MSI Eclipse Plus.
But the performance comparison is not so hopeless anymore. Our processor installed in Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P was overclocked to 188MHz base frequency. Under any load its clock frequency multiplier increased to 21 and its frequency reached 3.95MHz. The memory in this case worked at 1504MHz with 7-7-7-20-1T timings. When we increased the base frequency on MSI Eclipse Plus to 190MHz, the memory was working at 1520MHz with 8-8-8-22-1T timings. As for the resulting CPU frequency, it stayed at 3.8GHz under heavy load and more than four computational threads, but when the workload dropped its frequency reached 4GHz.
And here is proof that all Intel processor power-saving technologies work at their full potential in idle mode, even though the processor Vcore has been increased. Not only the processor clock multiplier, but also its core voltage is lowered in this case:
So, what if for some reason we are not happy about the correct but a nevertheless slightly lower performing Turbo Boost technology implementation on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard? Could we give it up? We could, but our experiment failed right from the start. When we disabled Turbo Boost and increased the base frequency to 195MHz, the system reported an error in the beginning of stability tests almost right away. However, it worked fine at 190MHz base frequency. So what have we ended up with? We disabled Turbo Boost technology and now the CPU always works with 20x clock multiplier at 3.8GHz frequency. But before that, at the same base frequency and under relatively low workload the CPU worked with 21x multiplier and reached 4GHz speed. So, Turbo Boost technology helps achieve higher results, so should keep it up and running. Now let’s proceed to performance comparison during maximum CPU overclocking:
I think it is not bad at all! Of course, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard does lose to its competitor in a few applications because it doesn’t increase the multiplier to 21x under multi-threaded workload and because of its higher memory timings. However, the loss is not that big. However, in some cases it even outperforms the rival due to higher memory frequency and higher CPU speed under low workload. Although, again, the gain is not too big, either. As result, both mainboards appear pretty much equally fast during maximum processor overclocking. Not bad!
Nevertheless, we all know from our previous reviews that maximum processor overclocking doesn’t always produce maximum results in performance tests. Namely, when we increase the base frequency to 188-190MHz we have to lower the memory frequency quite significantly, which negatively affects performance. That is why, overclocking to 181MHz base frequency seems to be the most optimal for majority of mainboards out there. We do lose in maximum CPU frequency, but we don’t have to raise the core voltage and have all Intel power-saving technologies up and running. Besides, 181MHz base clock suits perfectly for our Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX memory modules. In this case system memory can work at 1810MHz, which is exactly the value when we could lower CAS Latency to 8. At higher memory frequencies CAS Latency needs to be increased to 9.
Unfortunately, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard cannot compete against Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P during system overclocking to 181MHz base clock. I won’t even provide the results, because I stopped testing half way through. Made simply no sense. It was a total defeat, because MSI Eclipse Plus would only remain stable at 176MHz base frequency without any core voltage adjustment. It meant that in this case the CPU worked at a lower frequency under any workload, especially under multi-threaded one, with lower memory frequency and worse timing settings. No advantage anymore, even no parity, only a pretty serious lag…
However, we could once again make the peculiarities of MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard work to our advantage, or at least eliminate the negative effects. Who said that we have to run the tests at 176MHz base frequency? While other mainboards partially disable Intel processor power-saving technologies when we increase the CPU Vcore, MSI Eclipse Plus doesn’t have this problem and these technologies stay up and running at all times. So, why don’t we push it up as far as we need, within reasonable limits, of course. As for the fact that the memory doesn’t work with CAS Latency 8 at higher frequencies, there is nothing we can do about it. It means we have to find the most optimal mode for our testing conditions. We need to find the base frequency, at which we won’t need to lower the memory frequency – just like during maximum CPU overclocking. Namely, we need to reach the maximum memory frequency at CL2, which we achieved at 185MHz base clock.
Of course, we will only be able to hit 3.9GHz CPU frequency under relatively low workload, because in all other cases the clock frequency multiplier will remain at 20x and the frequency will be only 3.7GHz.
And here is another proof of how the voltage in idle mode reduces proportionally to the initial increase. Without any initial processor core voltage adjustment, it lowered to 1.056V in idle mode. When we added 0.09V during overclocking to 190MHz base clock, it lowered to 1.152V. This time we increased the CPU Vcore by 0.05V and got an intermediate value of 1.104V. Everything matched perfectly.
Now that we have the most optimal overclocking settings for each mainboard, the comparison becomes more or less fair again. The CPU on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard always works at 3.8GHz frequency, while on MSI Eclipse Plus – 100MHz higher or lower depending on the load. The memory on Gigabyte mainboard works at 1810MHz with 8-8-8-20-1T timings. On MSI mainboard the memory frequency is higher – 1850MHz, but so are the timings - 9-9-9-22-1T. So how will the two compare?
And the results turned out almost the same as before, when we ran the tests with maximum CPU overclocking. None of the boards can claim a convincing victory. In some tests MSI Eclipse Plus is faster due to higher processor and memory frequency, in some tests it yields to the competitor because of higher memory timings. There is no real winner, but most importantly, there is also no loser in this race. And I have to confess that at first I thought that MSI Eclipse Plus would stand no chances against Gigabyte solution, but luckily, I managed to find optimal settings, and take advantage of the board’s strengths. The power consumption tests also turned out very exciting, so let’s move on to them now.
We used Extech Power Analyzer 380803 for our power consumption measurements. This device is connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measures the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used LinX to load the CPU and FurMark utility to load the graphics card and recorded the maximum readings.
We are not surprised to see high power consumption readings off MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard in the nominal CPU mode. We do remember about the relatively hot additional PCI Express controller - NVIDIA NF200. We see the same pretty expected situation in idle mode and in VGA burn mode during overclocking. Even though Intel processor power-saving technologies stop working on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P at 188MHz base frequency and keep running on MSI Eclipse Plus. However, the power consumption readings during overclocking in CPU burn mode somehow stand out. During optimal overclocking of both systems to 181MHz and 185MHz base frequency respectively, their power consumption becomes almost equal, although we increased the CPU Vcore on MSI mainboard, but not on Gigabyte. Moreover, during maximum CPU overclocking, MSI Eclipse Plus board appears much more energy-efficient than Gigabyte. You probably suspect that there must be some mistake in our measurements, don’t you?
But there is no mistake. Everything is absolutely logical if we recall that when the processor workload is high – and this is exactly what LinX does - the processor on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard works not only at a lower frequency but also at a considerably lower Vcore. As a result, the “savings” turn out even greater than the negative effect from the hot Nvidia NF200 PCI Express controller. Nothing changes even if we lower the CPU workload and get down to four computational threads, for example. The CPU clock frequency and Vcore increase in this case, but since the workload is lower, the resulting power consumption is even smaller than before. So, it turns out that we compare the mainboards’ power consumption in different testing conditions and this is when MSI’s “win” is absolutely justified. The CPU works at lower speed and with lower voltage setting, it is slower, but more energy-efficient.
We are going to charge our teeing methodology for power consumption tests very soon. Namely, we could try and measure the work it takes the boards to complete a certain task. MSI mainboard consumes less power, but it will it longer to finish that is why the total amount of energy required to complete this task may end up being higher. We’ll see. And today we have to admit a seemingly paradoxical result: during overclocking and under heavy processor load MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard will be relatively energy-efficient, although in all other cases it will consume more power.
I think it is obvious that MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard is not an ideal solution. There is a number of more or less serious drawbacks that we revealed today in our review. However, the more we learned about this board, the more I started to like it. And by the end of the review I can admit that I consider it a very good solution.
Before the test session, I assumed that the biggest drawback of MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard would be Nvidia NF200 PCI Express controller. Then I decided that the worst issue was different implementation of Turbo Boost technology during overclocking. However, now I tend to believe that the biggest drawback is poor work with the memory subsystem. Most users do not need Nvidia NF200 controller today. But later on it may do some good. The current Turbo Boost implementation may actually be even “more correct” than on most other mainboards. We managed to make this peculiarity of MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard work to our advantage due to another great feature – fully operational Intel processor power-saving technologies that remain up and running even if we adjust the CPU Vcore.
Of course, it would be nice to have the option to get back to more familiar Turbo Boost implementation. For example, DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 mainboard allows it. Especially since MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard will lose to its competitors in multi-threaded applications dealing with 3D models, sound, images and video as well as creation and processing of multimedia content. And that is exactly the type of work that Intel Core i7 processors are best cut for. However, this drawback won’t really matter for a regular mainstream user. Our example shows that with a little more effort you can actually turn it into a benefit due to higher overclocking results. If we could only add here the good work with the memory subsystem of most other mainboards, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard would look way more attractive.
In conclusion I would like to say that despite our unfortunate experience with MSI Eclipse mainboard 6 months ago, I was very pleased to see that the new MSI Eclipse Plus managed not only to compete successfully against its rival in our today’s test session, but even to outperform it in several tests. We hope this is a sign of steady improvement and look forward to seeing even better MSI products.