by Doors4ever
07/06/2007 | 04:52 PM
I don’t think Micro-Star Company needs a special introduction on our site. Founded in the far away 1986, MSI belongs to the largest Taiwanese computer hardware manufacturers, who have been successfully diversifying their business. At this time they are offering a wide range of products including notebooks and servers, mainboards and graphics cards, networking equipment, optical drives and consumer electronics.
And it is not surprising that shortly after the launch of the Intel P35 Express chipset the company rolled out a series of mainboards based on it. We are going to check out the official company web-site to introduce the whole line-up to you, before we move on to the top product of the family – the MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.
The entry level solution is MSI P35 Neo (MS-7360).
The picture above helps us get a general idea of the solution’s functionality: passive chipset cooling, three-phase CPU voltage regulator circuitry, one PCI Express x16 slot, a few additional controllers. We will most likely be right if we say that MSI P35 Neo is a true workhorse, without any sophisticated features, but sufficient to satisfy the needs of a mainstream user.
The same PCB design was used for another mainboard, MSI P35 New Combo (MS-7365).
Both mainboards look almost the same, only the “Combo” word in the model name and multi-color memory slots indicate that the board supports two types of memory. At this time the users will most likely work with the traditional DDR2 only, but later on they will be able to switch to DDR3 SDRAM.
And the top solution in the family, MSI P35 Platinum (MS-7345) is very different from its two younger sisters.
The chipset cooling system built with heat-pipe technology, reinforced processor voltage regulator circuitry, two PCI Express x16 slots, only solid-state capacitors – all these features indicate very clearly that it is a flagship product that would be of primary interest to us today.
MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is shipped in a carton box of standard size. The front of the package depicts some creature trying to reach for the mainboard through a metal plate covering it, while the back of the box contains a photo of the mainboard and a brief feature list.
The accessories bundle doesn’t surprise us with anything original in it, but at the same time it is pretty rich. The board comes with a small pack containing brief installation instructions, a user’s manual, two CD disks with the drivers and utilities – one for Windows XP and another for Windows Vista, a rear panel I/O Shield, four SATA cables, a bracket with an IEEE 1394 port, beautiful red FDD and IDE cables decorated with the company logo and “Innovation with style” slogan, and two power converters for SATA devices.
The mainboard user’s manual also mentioned an ATX Extender, but I figured out what it is intended for only later, when I took a closer look at the actual MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.
I believe that the first thing that will catch everybody’s eye when they first see MSI P35 Platinum mainboard will be its extraordinary chipset cooling system. Let’s start with it as well.
The chipset cooling system consists of four heatsinks connected with heatpipes: two running at the lower level and two at the upper level. This whole system looks very much like a typical roller coaster from Magic Mountain:
The first heatpipe from the lower level has been flattened out in order to increase the heat dissipating surface area. It starts at the base of a small heatsink on the chipset South Bridge.
The heatpipe is twisted in a very sophisticated manner between electronic components so that the retention holes on the mainboard PCB stayed easily accessible. It leads to the base of the chipset North Bridge heatsink. This time it is not flattened out, but lies in a special round groove in the heatsink base. It comes out of the heatsink on the other end of it and curves in a semi-ring shape:
The second lower level heatpipe begins with the same semi-ring above the chipset North Bridge heatsink. It also goes through the heatsink base, next to the first one and leads to a heatsink installed onto some MOSFET transistors of the four-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry. Another two heatpipes, those of the upper level, come out of this heatsink.
One of them connects the transistor heatsink with the North Bridge heatsink. The other one goes through the North Bridge heatsink and leads to the heatsink installed next to the memory modules.
It is interesting to see that this latter heatsink has two threaded holes, as if they wanted to be able to upgrade the cooling system, by providing additional airflow for the memory, for instance.
The heatpipes have very good contact with the heatsink plates: they are not only pressed against the heatpipes, but soldered to them. As a result, the cooling system turned out not only original but also very efficient.
The cooling system leaves a lot of free space around the processor socket for large CPU coolers. For example, a relatively large Zalman CNPC9700 LED cooler fit easily onto this board. Although not all the coolers can get installed that simply. Tuniq Tower 120 cooler will also fit perfectly well onto MSI P35 Platinum mainboard, but you will not be able to fasten it, as only two side screws will be within reach. We all know that a fan installed onto some tower coolers may often hit against the memory modules. On MSI P35 Platinum there is a heatsink between the memory and processor socket that will inevitably be in the way of a fan like that.
Now I have finally figured out what is the purpose of the mysterious ATX Extender. The arrival of this unusual accessory was inspired by the massive chipset cooling system designed for MSI P35 Platinum mainboard. Eight-pin processor power connector is stuck between three heatpipes and is very hard to reach. They had to find a way to make this connector taller for easy plugging/unplugging of the power cable.
There are no components hanging beneath the processor socket on the reverse side of the mainboard PCB. Those few elements that do exist along the imaginary line connecting the retention holes in the board will hardly prevent you from installing cooling solutions with a backplate, so there is no need to worry about it.
Let’s take a look at the schematic layout of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard, which will help us evaluate the design peculiarities even better:
Two PCI Express x16 slots are a definite advantage of MSI P35 Platinum board. The second PCI Express x16 slot works at 4x speed and the two of them are placed at a sufficient distance from each other to accommodate graphics cards with massive cooling systems onboard. By the way, MSI decided to remind us of the good old times when we controlled the FSB frequency not from the mainboard BIOS but using jumpers. There are two jumpers between the PCI Express x16 slots that serve to set the desired FSB speed:
However, when it comes to clearing CMOS, there is no old-fashioned jumper but a much more convenient button. I only had to use it once: to check if it was working at all :) Every time the mainboard would freeze or wouldn’t start because I over-overclocked it, it would reboot on its own. At first it would boot and shut down three times or so, and then start offering to press any key other than “Del”. After that I could either save the current settings or restore defaults.
Another advantage of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is very conveniently located power and six fan connectors. Speaking of the drawbacks, we should warn you that if your system is equipped with a long-PCB graphics card, it will block the memory slot clips. Besides, they chose not the best spot for the FDD connector.
The sound on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is implemented via an eight-channel Realtek ALC888 codec, and Fintek F71882FG is in charge of input and output operations. There are another two controllers next to the South Bridge in the lower right part of the mainboard PCB. One of them is VIA VT6308 that provides two IEEE1394 ports, and another one is Marvell 88SE6111 that brings one IDE Ultra DMA 66/100/133 connector and one SATA connector in addition to another four and two eSATA implemented in the chipset.
The mainboard rear panel carries the following connectors and ports:
I was about to praise MSI Company for keeping the PS/2 mouse connector, unlike ASUS. But unfortunately, I couldn’t, really: the mouse wouldn’t work with the freshly installed Windows Vista OS. Strange as it might seem, but it worked just fine with Windows XP. Even the Microsoft DOS driver works perfectly well with contemporary PS/2 and USB mice, so I am not cure that it was an OS issue. At least, I have never come across a problem like that with the same mouse in Windows Vista before.
Another peculiarity of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is a great number of light emitting diodes on the PCB:
Two of them, LED1 and LED3, indicate if the mainboard receives no power. The LEDs next to expansion slots light up when there is a card installed in the corresponding slot. The remaining LEDs around the chipset South Bridge serve to report possible malfunctions. The problem can be identified with 16 different LED combinations described in the user’s manual. This LED system serves as a specific POST-code alternative.
Everything we have just said about the features of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard can be summed up in a table from the user’s manual:
Unfortunately, MSI P35 Platinum doesn’t have any built-in tools for BIOS updating. There is a utility for updating from Windows, but the mainboard refused to boot from a boot CD disk displaying a list of symbols instead of the menu. We had to resort to a not very convenient to use AFUDOS utility without any graphics interface in order to update the mainboard BIOS to the latest version 1.1 available at the time of the test session.
The mainboard BIOS is based on AMI code.
It is very convenient that most of the overclocking-friendly settings are all placed into Cell Menu section. This is a very compact section, almost all options fit into the first screen. The photo below doesn’t show only two parameters: D.O.T. Control and EIST:
D.O.T. (Dynamic Overclocking Technology) Control is disabled by default. This technology can be enabled for CPU overclocking, VGA overclocking, or simultaneous overclocking of both of them. However, D.O.T. features will hardly keep you interested for long: you can only achieve 1%, 3% or 5% performance improvement with this technology.
You can adjust the clock frequency multiplier if you disable Intel EIST (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep). This option allows you to reveal the potential of the board and the CPU you are using. By reducing the CPU clock frequency multiplier, you can get higher system bus or memory frequency to improve the performance. You can also skip the FSB Hole (non-operational FSB frequencies), if there is one. However, if you change the multiplier in the BIOS, the power-saving technologies may not work correctly, as they reduce the CPU frequency multiplier and processor Vcore in idle mode. So, if your CPU is loaded to 100% all the time, we wouldn’t recommend adjusting the multiplier at all.
As fore the frequencies adjustment, FSB can theoretically be pushed up to 600MHz with 1MHz increment, the PCI Express bus frequency can vary between 100MHz and 200MHz with the same 1MHz increment, and the memory frequency can be set using one of the following FSB:Mem dividers: 1:1.25, 1:1.5, 1:1.66, 1:2, 1:1 or 1:1.2. You won’t have to calculate the resulting memory frequency on your own: it will be displayed in the Adjusted DDR Memory Frequency info line.
The memory timings can be set on a separate page. Unfortunately, there is no individual Auto setting for each parameter. You can either set all timings to Auto, or adjust all of them manually.
During our practical experiments with MSI P35 Platinum mainboard we found out that it locks the major memory timings, while secondary timings may change on their own depending on the selected FSB frequency and other timing settings. So, it is a pretty complicated task to firmly set the desired timings on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.
Another inconvenience is the absence of drop-down lists for some of the adjustable parameters. The desired FSB frequency can be entered with the keyboard, but in most cases you just have to scroll forward and backward. However, it was a very smart idea to highlight high voltage settings in red, which will warn you against going a little bit too far.
Since we came to speak about voltages, I would like to say that the CPU can receive up to 0.7875V above the nominal with 0.0125V increment. The maximum for our test processor was the impressive 2.0625V. The supported interval for the memory voltage is also quite remarkable: from 1.8V to 3.3V. You can use 0.05V increment until 2.1V and then the increment increases to 0.1V. The nominal memory voltage setting is at 1.9V. VTT FSB Voltage can vary between 1.175V and 1.55V with 0.025V increment. The chipset North Bridge voltage can be adjusted in the interval from 1.25V to 1.65V: with 0.025V increment until 1.6V and then the only supported value will be 1.65V. The South Bridge I/O Power can be set between 1.5V-1.8V with 0.1V increment. The South Bridge voltage can be set either to 1.05V or 1.15V.
During our practical overclocking experiments performed on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard we noticed that at 383MHz+ FSB frequency the board would increase NB Voltage from the nominal 1.25V up to 1.45V. At first I thought that it was the way an “intellectual mainboard concept” was working, just like on ASUS mainboards that know to manage a lot of BIOS settings on their own, without any user interference. However, later on I changed my mind about it. Sometimes, the change in the FSB frequency would cause NB Voltage to drop back to the nominal value, moreover, no value in between the nominal and 1.45V could be set manually. For example, I set this parameter to 1.35V, saved the settings, rebooted the system and then went back to the BIOS Setup to see that the voltage setting was again increased to 1.45V. So, it looks like it is not the mainboard AI but just a BIOS flaw, like unstable settings of the secondary memory timings, the board’s inability to run from a boot CD disk, and maybe also the issue with PS/2 mouse in Windows Vista described above.
H/W Monitor section is mostly informational. It reports CPU and system temperatures, controls rotation speed of three fans out of six that can be connected to the board, and displays major voltage settings.
We can adjust rotation speed only for two fans. For the first processor fan, you have to set the desired CPU temperature in the interval between 40ºC and 65ºC with 5ºC increment and the minimal fan rotation speed from 0% to 87.5% with 12.5% increment. If your CPU cooler connector is a four-pin one, the fan rotation speed will be adjusted automatically depending on the processor temperature. The second fan you can adjust is one of the system fans: you can set its rotation speed to 50, 75 or 100%.
MSI prepared a special two-page illustrated overclocking guide on their company web-site for those users who purchased their new MSI P35 Platinum mainboard. This guide is called “How to Overclock P35 Platinum?”. Summing up, they recommend raising all voltages that can be adjusted. Our tests showed that the processor voltage is not the only important voltage setting on MSI P35 Platinum. Significant increase in the NB voltage is another critical parameter for successful overclocking on MSI P35 Platinum. And, of course, you shouldn’t also forget about the memory voltage.
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor we used for our tests can overclock to 490MHz FSB with the Vcore raised to 1.45V. MSI P35 Platinum mainboard increases the processor voltage, so we only had to set CPU Vcore to 1.425V.
However, when it came to chipset North Bridge voltage, we had to push it to 1.55V, otherwise the system wouldn’t pass the tests. So, the advanced cooling system of our MSI P35 Platinum proved very useful in this case.
Once we got our MSI P35 Platinum mainboard to run stably at 490MHz FSB and pass some tests, we decided to investigate how efficient FSB adjustment with the jumpers could be. You cannot really reduce the FSB frequency with the jumpers, as even if you set it to 200MHz, the board will still boot at the nominal 266MHz FSB. Once the jumpers have been set to 333MHz FSB, things remained unchanged at first glance, only the CPU bus frequency increased from 266MHz to 333MHz, i.e. got 67MHz higher. The CPU remained stable until we hit 490MHz, however, the results of the Everest tool showed that with the jumpers set at 333MHz the read speed was 1.5 times higher than at 266MHz setting, provided that all other parameters including the memory timings remained unchanged.
We decided to check out the read speed in the entire supported interval between 333MHz and 490MHz with 10MHz increment. Our tests showed that there is no performance drop whatsoever, the obtained results are lining up ideally. Almost the same results were obtained on Asus P5K Deluxe mainboard – no performance drop (for details see our review called Asus P5K Deluxe Mainboard: Second Encounter). After that we set the jumpers to reduce the FSB frequency to 266MHz and repeated the tests, this time in the interval between 266MHz and 490MHz. The results turned out astonishing.
Look, the change of the FSB frequency through hardware has no effect on the performance – both lines coincide ideally. However, between 440 and 450MHz FSB the system performance crashes down if the FSB jumper is set at 266MHz, although in case of 333MHz FSB jumper setting, the system performance keeps growing stably. More thorough investigation revealed that the breaking point is the transition from 447MHz to 448MHz. Read speed equals 8538MB/s at 447MHz, but drops to 5594MB/s at 448MHz.
Keeping in mind that hardware FSB switching only increases or reduces the starting frequency with 67MHz increment, we assumed that the maximum frequency when the performance of the memory subsystem drops down dramatically, may also be shifted with the same increment. In other words, it is possible that when you overclock CPUs with the nominal 200MHz FSB speed, the performance will also drop so dramatically at around 381MHz frequency (448-67=381). We confirmed our supposition during the tests with Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 processor. The read speed reached 7091MB/s at 381MHz FSB, but dropped down to 4732MB/s at 382MHz.
Actually, there is nothing catastrophic about the above described cases. For CPUs with 200MHz bus that can overclock to 382MHz FSB and higher, you just need to set the FSB frequency jumper to 266MHz in order to push the dangerous limit a little farther. The same is true for CPUs with the nominal frequency of 266MHz: you have to set the jumper to 333MHz FSB and you can stop worrying about overclocking beyond 447MHz frequency.
However, there is another danger that awaits us here. Our experiments proved that by changing FSB setting from 266 to 200MHz we lower the threshold from 448MHz to 382MHz. Therefore, by changing the FSB setting from 266 to 333MHz we can obviously expect this notorious threshold not to vanish anywhere but to get shifted to 515MHz (448+67=515). Unfortunately, at this time we don’t have a CPU at our disposal that could overclock to 515MHz and up, so we cannot confirm this supposition experimentally. However, the probability of such outcome is pretty high.
Overclocking on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard puts a lot of popular processors into the so-called risk group. These are the CPUs with 7x clock frequency multiplier, because they are the ones that can hit 515MHz+ frequencies, such as Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, Intel Core 2 Duo E6320and the new Intel Core 2 Duo E6550. This is a serious drawback of the new MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.
Numerous performance comparisons in our previous reviews showed that the performance of Intel P35 Express based mainboards is not very much different from that of the Intel P965 Express based ones in nominal work modes. The detailed performance analysis of the Asus P5K Deluxe mainboard in our recent review showed that this is true up until we overclock FSB to 400MHz. Of course, the performance would be about the same only if you compare Asus mainboards. Mainboards from other manufacturers may shift the balance in any direction.
However, we know that the performance of Asus mainboards on Intel P965 Express drops down dramatically starting with 401MHz. How will the situation change if we compare the systems overclocked to 490MHz FSB. Besides, it would be also interesting to find out how the drop in the memory subsystem performance affects the overall system speed when we get beyond the notorious 448MHz threshold on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.
For our experiments we assembled a few test platforms using the following hardware components:
The tests were performed in Windows Vista OS. We overclocked the CPU to 490MHz FSB in two ways on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard: by setting the FSB frequency jumper to 266MHz and to 333MHz.
The memory was working in synchronous mode with the 1:1 divider. Since it is hard to adjust the memory timings on MSI P35 Platinum in a desired way, all of them were left at defaults. After that we set the memory timings on Asus Commando board to the same values.
MemSet utility doesn’t read the correct memory frequency on Asus Commando: it actually equals the same 490(980)MHz, as on MSI P35 Platinum.
The performance of a system with Asus Commando mainboard and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor overclocked to 490MHz bus is marked as “Intel P965”. Even Asus mainboard on Intel P965 Express suffers a noticeable performance drop in this case. We tested MSI P35 Platinum with the CPU overclocked to the same 490MHz bus in two modes: with the jumper set to 266MHz and 333MHz marked as “P35 FSB 266” and “P35 FSB 333” respectively. In the first case performance dropped at 447MHz, while in the second case performance didn’t get any lower.
So, let’s start with the read speed that changes so impressively:
The difference is pretty big. You should remember, however, the memory speed is not the only thing affecting the system performance here. The CPU speed and processor bus frequency that were set at relatively high equal values and remained unchanged, as well as the type of the graphics card installed also influence the result. So, the negative effect from the slow memory subsystem was not so evident, but still noticeable, as in the following two tests:
There is hardly any difference at all in some cases, especially when the processor or graphics card speed determine the results.
However, sometimes Intel P965 based platform would run even slower than MSI P35 Platinum after the performance drop at 448MHz.
The next diagram may explain a few things here. Memory latency of the Intel P965 based mainboard is pretty high, which cannot help affecting the result.
Other benchmark results do not need any commentary on my part, because they fall in one of the three above described situations:
As you see, the performance drop depends a lot on the application type. It may be significant if the system performance depends on the memory speed, or hardly noticeable if the results are determined by the graphics card type of CPU frequency.
I called this article a “roller coaster experience” on purpose. Of course, the chipset cooling solution on MSI P35 Platinum may remind you of a well-known American attraction. But it is also the similar feeling we experienced when working with MSI P35 Platinum mainboard in our lab. We admired the beautiful design and silent operation of the unique cooling solution, but then got very upset when the board failed to accommodate our favorite cooler. We were very pleased with the rich features of the mainboard BIOS, but then got very upset with some frustrating flaws we discovered in it. The practical experiments showed that the performance doesn’t drop because of FSB strap, and then the speed came crashing down without any real reason for it…
Of course, we all like to get extra boost of adrenalin on a roller coaster every now and then, but I would definitely trade constant ups and downs for stable and predictable operation of my system. So, hopefully, MSI team will improve their P35 Platinum mainboard and make it an even better solution.