MSI X79 Big Bang XPower II Review

‘For Xtreme only’. Join with us as we take a look at just how Xtreme MSI’s new flagship X79 motherboard is – enter the Big Bang XPower 2.

Product on Review: MSI X79 Big Bang-XPower II

Manufacturer and Sponsor: MSI
Street Price: £TBC

MSI make some damn good products and their motherboard range is going from strength to strength. The P67 Big Bang Marshal and more recently, the X79 GD65(8D) motherboards received Gold and Silver awards respectively here at Vortez so it goes without saying that they know how to string a few components together on a PCB to offer the ultimate in electronic design. I was impressed with the MSI GD65(8D) both for its looks and more importantly, its performance. There’s always room for improvement though and so I was eager to get their flagship model on the test bench.

It’s been a few days since the products release but rather than rush out a review in time and skip vital information, I held back and gave the board a thorough testing, stripping the package down to its guts, disembowelling it of heatsinks and then burning the remains on our overclocking test bench so you can view the autopsy we have today. After all, being a flagship product this piece of equipment is not going to be cheap and deserves a detailed review. While we do not have any concrete information on pricing, I would expect the board to be priced similarly to other flagship X79 motherboards such as the G2 Sniper and Rampage IV Extreme; this boards two main competitors.

Did I mention this was a flagship motherboard? If you weren’t already sure then maybe Quad SLI/Crossfire capability along with a 22 Phase power design and the obligatory support for 128GB of ram would be enough to convince you that this motherboard is a force to be reckoned with. No? Well carry on reading as there’s so much more to this mainboard that can be covered in just a few paragraphs…

About MSI

MSI is proud of its more than 20 years experience in designing and manufacturing high performance IT products.
The product lines of MSI are mainboards, graphic cards, notebooks, consumer electronics, barebones, networking and server products, and fully integrated add-on peripherals. With its ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 qualified facilities, MSI products provide the best performance, reliability and value-increasing productivity.
We distribute our products through offices located in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, India and Australia. MSI markets its products to distributors, computer system manufacturers, and system integrators. For more information about the company go to www.msi.com

Specification & Features

Specifications

Compared to the specification of our last three motherboard subjects based on the X79 chipset, the Big Bang Xpower II looks quite a formidable opponent having the lion’s share of on-board features. Like the board itself, the most striking feature is the seven PCIe slots! Quite who would require such connectivity I can’t imagine. With the X79 chipset supporting 40 PCIe lanes MSI have had to work some magic to allow 4x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots along with 3x PCIE 2.0 x16 slots, more on this later.

Of lesser interest (but interest nonetheless) is the inclusion of XFI sound and a first that we know of: a dual LAN system. As you would expect from a top of the range motherboard, there are a plethora of SATA and USB ports and with 8 DDR3 DIMM slots supporting quad channel memory of up to 128GB and you have one seriously powerful mainboard.

How does it compare with the competition though?

More power phases theoretically should equate to a cleaner, more stable power however as we have seen, the ASRock Xtreme4-M mATX board we reviewed previously actually clocked higher than the GD65(8D) so while this is an indication of power, it shouldn’t be chosen on this factor alone. The ASRock cannot compete with the big 3 in the VGA stakes as it cannot physically support 4 dual slot graphics cards and both the ASRock and ASUS ‘RIVE’ neither have direct OC buttons or a fanless design so the MSI wins out here too.

Overall the MSI mainboard, on paper at least, appears to have the accolade of motherboard king in the bag already with a feature rich specification and enough grunt to power Silicon Valley (almost). As we have seen previously though, what is written on paper does not always translate to real-life performance.

One of the main attractions to the X79 chipset will be the huge bandwidth available courtesy of 8 DIMM slots capable of delivering up to 128GB. Couple this with PCIe Gen 3, 6Gb/s SATA and USB 3.0 along with the usual array of multimedia connectivity and X79 becomes a very complete proposition.

Intel X79 Express Chipset Block Diagram

Features

PCI Express Gen 3
PCIe 3.0 affords twice the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 (up to 32GB/s). Supports 4 dual-slot graphics cards along with support for 4-way SLI/Crossfire.

Xtreme Power Design
Extra power sockets for extreme overclocking. Dual 8pin for CPU along with an extra 6-pin connector for VGA’s. Powered by a 22 Phase PWM design along with Hybrid digital power makes the MSI mainboard one of the most powerful boards we have tested to date at Vortez.

Military III Class Components
The MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) features the third incarnation of the Military Class series which features Solid Capacitors throughout, Super Ferrite Core chokes, Hi-C CAP, DrMOS II all tested, as the name suggests, the military standards receiving MIL-STD-810G Certification.

DrMOS II Thermal Protection
A handy LED will light up on the motherboard when the MOSFETs are approaching a critical temperature. IF you don’t see the LED then a pop-up message will be displayed (via Control Center II). Should the temperature exceed the high temperature point, the system will automatically shutdown.

Click BIOS II
Another claim by MSI is the world’s first Unified UEFI GUI based interface. Rather than the old 8bit BIOS display we are all used to, the new UEFI setup allows the end user to adjust settings with the use of a mouse. The Click BIOS II module in windows works exactly the same way although a reboot is required for the settings to take effect.

THX TruStudio Pro
A Hollywood-grade high-fidelity sound reproduction standard which accurately reproduces the fullest audio experience of movie, music and game soundtracks for PC platforms

Multi-BIOS II
Multi-BIOS II provides the convenience to switch to the backup BIOS for system failure protection. Extra BIOS for LN2 overclocking needs.

Control Center II
This utility allows realtime monitoring of system devices and also allows system performance tuning of the CPU Baseclock, ratios, voltages and memory frequencies.

Super Charger
Rather than using a standard USB port, the Super Charger allows users to make use of 3x faster charging courtesy of 1.5A being pumped through the on-board USB port.

U3/S6
USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s are built in as standard allowing upto 5GBps bandwidth for USB devices and 6Gb/s on the SATA III devices.

Packaging & Contents

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Package Front

The outer box is as attractive as it is large. The black background is joined together with metallic gold text and covered throughout with a rainbow gloss. Surprisingly the product title ‘Big Bang’ is small however the large golden explosion gives the name quite enough emphasis! Beneath the flip-up lid is the XPower II moniker and towards the top of the package are the obligatory ‘supports’ emblems from Intel, NVIDIA and AMD. Uppermost, box has a carry handle for ease of transportation. I do wonder who actually carries a motherboard box around like a suitcase but nonetheless it’s a nice addition and most other flagship product packages include this feature.

Package Rear

Flipping the box over we get a glimpse of the mainboard with some close up shots of the feature set including Superpipe, OC Genie II and XFI MB2. There’s also an I/O overview with a full breakdown of the connectivity both at the I/O plate and PCIe areas.

Flip Lid

By opening the lid we get a window which shows the mainboard hidden behind. Adjacent to this window, MSI delve a little deeper into the feature set and show off the motherboard’s Xtreme features such as the power design, components used and overclocking.

Inside the box there are a further two boxes, one containing the motherboard itself and the other holding all of the accessories. The compartmentalised accessory box is good, not great. I found that after minimal use the cardboard began to collapse which was a shame as after repeated use it would soon deteriorate. Other than that, I was happy they decided to totally separate the accessories from the mainboard by placing both items in their own box.

MSI have gone to great lengths to ensure you have everything you could want with a plethora of manuals, Driver CD and even a certificate of authenticity for the Military Class III components. The list continues with the following items: I/O Backplate, 3x SLI bridges (for upto 4-way SLI), Crossfire Bridge, Multimeter adaptors, USB 3.0 bracket, eSATA Brankets, eSATA power cable, eSATA data cable, M-connectors, and 8 SATA cables.

Overall, a very well, attractively presented product which should reach you in perfect condition thanks to the great packaging used. Let’s move on to the mainboard itself…

Closer Look

Big Bang XPower II

First impressions are this looks to be a stunning ATX-XL format motherboard. The black PCB and black components scream class. Aesthetically, the only problem I have apart from the magazine of bullets heatsink (more on that later) are the blue/silver solid caps scattered around mainboard which dilutes the awesome looks somewhat. ASRock use gold caps and while I’m not for minute saying MSI should take ASRock’s lead but it is a shame the caps are not less pronounced.

I have little to complain about the overall layout. Everything is where it should be with all of the connectivity positioned towards the edges and the 6 fan headers spaced quite well.

Motherboard Rear

The rear of the mainboard is relatively uninteresting save for the backplate to the VRM module. I was pleased to see MSI have used spring loaded screws throughout to hold the heatsink assembly in place rather than the fragile plastic push-pins so often found on cheaper mainboards.

Worthy of note is the lengths of the PCIe solder signifying that only the 1st and fifth ports are 16 speed with the remaining ports being limited to 8x. At present, only the dual GPU cards have any significant restrictions by using 8x so unless you intend on running masses of dual GPU cards this will have very little affect.

CPU Socket Area

While appearing rather cramped, MSI have done a very good job in keeping it relatively free of solid caps. The main VRM unit has Hi-c CAPs which replace the ugly solid caps we are used to seeing. The Tantalum core Hi-c CAPs reportedly last up to 8 years longer than solid caps and have a higher thermal stability. An added bonus to this is that you will not capacitor squeal. Sadly there are still solid caps around the socket area so while it is relatively clean, Xtreme users who will be insulating the motherboard will still have to take care.

Framing the LOTES CPU socket are 8 DIMM slots capable of holding up to 128GB of GDDR3 in at up to 2400MHz speeds in quad channel format. I have been asked if 2 sets of dual channel would work and my answer is yes but as these have not been tested together a quad channel kit would be a better choice as some dual channel kits, especially if they are not from the same batch, may present difficulties. For the most part you should be fine but for ultimate compatibility, a quad channel kit is your best bet, especially as memory is so cheap at present.

PCIe Area

Count them. Yes, seven PCIe ports. From top to bottom, slots 1, 3, 5 and 7 are PCIe 3.0 compatible with the remaining 2, 4 and 6 slots PCIe 2.0. As noted earlier, the 1st and 5th ports are full fat 16x lanes with the remaining being 8x. Most apparent is the Big Bang II’s capability of running 4-way SLI! Previously only motherboards with the cost prohibitive NF200 chip allowed this so this is sure to be appealing to those who plan on breaking some 3DMark world records!

Magazine Heatsink

I don’t understand the thinking behind having such a stunning, domineering mainboard and then spoiling it by having a magazine of kiddies Crayola crayons…I mean bullets! Honestly, what were you thinking MSI? Sure the gold/copper contrasts well with the overall black theme but ‘features’ such as this may well be enough to prevent a few sales as, for me at least, it does little for the aesthetics of the mainboard. My only hope is that it cools much better than it looks. This is not the first time we have seen novelty heatsinks. GIGABYTE have also taken a step in this direction so if anyone from manufacturers are listening – stop this shenanigans now, it’s not big and it’s not clever!

Gatling Gun

Please make it stop! Seriously though, the VRM heatsink is much less noticeable thanks to the all black affair and truth be told, it’s growing on me (oh the shame!). Maybe MSI were having a dig at GIGABYTE’s pistol heatsink when designing the Gatling gun heatsink? Either way it had better keep the components cool otherwise the egg will be on MSI’s face!

I/O Area

The I/O area is pretty much par for the course as far as top-end motherboards go. Here you will find connectivity for 6x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, Firewire, PS2 Keyboard and mouse port combo, CMOS clear button, 3.5mm audio ports along with Coaxial and optical S/PDIF out ports. A first from what we have seen from X79 motherboards thus far is the inclusion of an extra RJ-45 LAN port.

SATA Ports

There are a total of 10 SATA ports on the main board comprising of 6x 6GB/s (2x Intel, 4x ASMEDIA) and a further 4x SATA 3GB/s ports connected to the X79 chipset.

Let’s delve a little deeper…

Closer Look Pt.2

ATX Power

The MSI Big Bang XPower II utilises a 24pin power socket as you would expect. While the VRM comprises of a 22 phase hybrid digital power design it will be interesting to see just how much power is consumed later in the review. Next to the ATX24 pin socket are multimeter voltage read points that enable real time monitoring of CPU Vcore, PCH, both DDR3 channels, CPU SA, CPU IO along with ground.

Dual 8pin power

The dual 8-pin sockets provide upto 300W of extra power to the CPU, perfect for the SB-E 6 core monsters. Having this extra juice on tap should make for some good overclocking results.

6 pin power

Rather than use a SATA or MOLEX connector, MSI have opted to use a 6pin PCIe power port to provide extra juice to the GPU(s). Having 4-way SLI/Crossfire will take a great deal of power from the PCIe ports so adding this port will optimise the power flow and afford a little extra power for those wanting to ramp up the voltages.

On-board buttons

Along with the main power button towards the top right of the main board, MSI have included a set of other buttons, aimed specifically at the overclocker. The OC Genie button allows a preset 4GHz overclock when pressed (reboot required) for an instant overclock, ideal for those less familiar with the overclocking dark arts. The Multi BIOS II button allows users to switch between one of the on-board BIOS’s or to use the removeable BIOS (below). It will also act to reflash a crashed BIOS resulting in less RMA’s because of a failed BIOS flash or corrupt BIOS.

Removable BIOS

Although not a new idea, it’s great to see MSI implement this feature on there overclocking motherboards. LN2 users will especially find this appealing as if there were not enough BIOS options already, a custom BIOS with perhaps less restrictions to the voltages could be flashed to the replaceable unit with no fear of killing the board as there are also two other BIOS chips soldered in place. As a caveat, should all of the board’s BIOS fail then a replacement chip is much easier to send through the post than an ATX-XL motherboard.

Ceasefire

The Ceasefire switches are a God send for watercoolers who have all of their GPU’s in-situ. Being able to decypher which GPU is causing issues along with overclocking individual cards without having to disassemble a watercooling loop will certainly appeal.

Debug LED

A common misconception is that the debug LED will only be used by overclockers. While it is true that a debug LED is most useful for fault finding in an overclock, system builders should also take note of the codes displayed during non boot scenarios as they can direct you to a faulty/incorrectly installed component. There are also the traditional beep codes of course but having a diagnostic LED readout with the manual to hand is much easier than trying to get on the internet with a broken PC to search for the beep code interpretation!

Let’s take a look at some of the on-board components…

Closer Look Pt.3

SATA Controller

Above we see that MSI have used ASMEDIA ASM1061 SATA controller which natively supports 6GB/s devices.

16 to 8channel multiplexer/demultiplexer switch ASM1480

The switching chip with HiZ outputs is also courtesy of ASMEDIA and is certified to be PCIe 3.0 compliant.

GPU temp sensor

Here we see the Fintek temperature sensor diode, the same version found on the Big Bang Fuzion. Sensors such as these are interpreted by monitoring programs such as Speedfan and Everest.

Four Output differential buffer for PCI-e Gen 3

The 9DB433 zero-delay buffer supports PCIe Gen3 requirements, while being backwards compatible to PCIe Gen2 and Gen1.

SMBus GPIO Controller

The Winbond W83L604G IC is a general purpose input/output IC with SMBus providing SMBus address setting pins to set the address during power on reset or from external resets.

Intel Ethernet

Above we see that the MSI’s two ethernet ports come courtesy of Intel 82574L and 82579V controllers. A first for an X79 motherboard!

Phase Buck controller

The MSI motherboard makes use of a uP1618 6+2 Phase buck controller to reduce input/output filter ripple.

Hardware monitoring

The Fintek F71889AD chip allows for voltage monitoring, controlling fan speeds along with temperature monitoring.

Closer Look Pt.4

Motherboard Cooling

The motherboard’s extravagant heatsinks are all held in place via spring loaded screws. The main heatsink covers both the X79 and PLX chipsets along with a small VRM module while the ‘Gatling gun’ heatsinks cools the main VRM module. Contact on all components was excellent so there should be no problems keeping temperatures under control.

X79 Chipset

Above we see the X79 chipset contact. The paste used was very dry but as you can see, made good contact with the heatsink. I have yet to find any of the motherboards chipsets getting very hot, rather it is the VRM module if anywhere that requires active cooling. Fortunately, the MSI flagship board does not have active cooling thanks to the large ‘Crayola’ heatsink.

VRM module

When we first cast eye on the preview shots of the XPower II, we were all aghast regarding the 22 Phase power unit. Impressive it certainly is as not only will it provide clean, stable power but thanks to the Military Class III components used such as Hi-c CAPS, Super Ferrite Chokes, DrMOS II and Solid CAPs. Coupled together, this VRM has the capacity to output 770A which compared to a 9 phase power design equates to 2.4 times more power. Because this is a also a digital hybrid design, temperatures of the VRM are reduced on average by 14%.

Voltage Regulation

Renesas provides voltage regulation via 20655 chips which incorporate a high-side MOS FET, low-side MOS FET, and MOS-FET driver. It’s all very well having a massive VRM but if you do not have the quality regulators to address that power then you are asking for trouble. Thankfully, MSI have used the same quality components we saw on the MSI X79 GD65(8D).

Phase LED’s

Hidden beneath the Gatling gun VRM cooler are a set of 22 LED’s depicting the amount of power in use at any one time. These LED’s are joined by other LED’s scattered around the mainboard, each having its own use.

PCIe Gen2 PCI Express Switch

Here we see how MSI have implemented their Gen 2.0 PCIe lanes by using the PLX PEX 8608-BA50BC-G controler. The ExpressLane PEX 8608 device offers PCI Express switching capability enabling MSI to add scalable high bandwidth non-blocking interconnection to a wide variety of applications while running at 5.0 GT/s.

Audio

Despite the XFI plate atop of the audio chip we see that the audio is created by the Realtec ALC898 chip, common among today’s motherboards. So where does X-FI come into it? Well that is simply the software suite used to recreate EAX HD 5.0 sound effects in games.

Overall viewpoint

The MSI Big Bang XPower II certainly looks the part. Despite the heatsinks initially being cringe worthy, they are starting to grow on me. Whether I would choose them over more traditional designs I cannot say but one might suggest that MSI should be credited for their innovation as whether you like the heatsinks or not, they certainly are different!

So it talks the talk, looks the part but how does it perform? I think it’s time we found out…

Test Setup

When we decided to put the test bench together for X79 we wanted a system that would not only perform well but also last the test of time given that X58 has been around for some 3 years now so we saw no reason to believe that its successor, X79 would not be able to do the same.

Some of the components for our test bench were kindly donated by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them. Thanks also go to MSI who donated their NVIDIA GTX560Ti.

Motherboards on test:

MSI X79 Big Bang XPower II

ASRock X79 Extreme4-M
GIGABYTE X79-UD5
MSI X79A-GD65(8D)

X79 Test Setup
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX560Ti
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Corsair TX750M 750W
Hard Drive – Hitachi SATA II 250GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks

Cinebench 11.5 – CPU Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2011 – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 – Convert 145MB MP4 to avi
PCMark 7 – System Benchmark
3DMark 11 – Performance and Extreme preset Overall and Physics Score
Games – Crysis 2, DiRT3, Metro 2033

Other Software
Core Temp 0.99.5
LinX stress Test
CPUID HWMonitor

Overclocking

As with any new release, BIOS revisions come thick and fast. Even while writing this review there were four updates! We settled on using B10E which seemed to provide the best results after an enormous time spent testing each BIOS.

Above is a shot of how you will find the MSI motherboard operating in ‘stock’ format (Turbo Boost 2.0 Enabled). This automatically overclocks the CPU by three dividers to 3.6GHz (100×36) as opposed to 3.3GHz (100×33). For the purposes of equality though we run our ‘stock’ speed benchmarks with Turbo disabled to ensure the CPU is running at a constant 3.3GHz on all of the motherboards tested.

The UEFI BIOS of MSI is wonderful to work with. Not only is it visually appealing but now many of the bugs have been ironed out, it is very easy to navigate either via mouse or keyboard. There were occasions when the mouse failed to operate though although that was resolved with a reboot.

Going straight for the kill, I decided to set the motherboard up for 5GHz. Regardless of what I attempted the motherboard refused to boot past the x48 divider. As I now know this was not a CPU limitation I spent a little longer fiddling with the voltages attempting to find the best configuration between the CPU SA and IO voltages. Eventually I struck gold and the motherboard sprung to life. The key to my success was to ensure that the power limitations in the CPU features are set to their maximum!

Now that the board was playing nicely I was not content with a ‘measly’ 5GHz and craved for more so I set about adjusting the baseclock frequency. Sadly I encountered no luck here and after many hours constantly anticipating where it would crash on the windows loading screen, I gave up overclocking in the BIOS. The boot strap settings of 1.25 and 1.67 would not allow any progress either so I dialled back in the pre-saved settings on one of my profiles to 5GHz and attempted to overclock via the on-board buttons.

Hey presto! The board gave a little more thanks to the overclock buttons which increased the baseclock by 0.1 MHz every push. The highest overclock we achieved capable of any form of stability was 5.05GHz – the highest we have achieved yet out of this CPU!

Still not content I went for broke and pushed the board as hard as I dare and managed a maximum CPU-Z screenshot of 5.075. I have little doubt that this would be benchable under extreme cooling with a few more millivolts of power but the silly voltage already in use and the resulting scorching CPU temps meant that I dare not push things any further nor punish the (rather expensive) CPU any more. I did hit 5.1Ghz once but the CPU was not stable enough to even grab a CPU-Z screenshot and to add even more fuel to the fire would mean certain suicide for a CPU under basic watercooling so for the purposes of our benchmarks I backed the processor down to a more stable and temperature controlled 5GHz.

‘For the Xtreme’ say MSI. I’m inclined to agree!

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the same basic components for each motherboard on test. Readings are then taken from the wall both in stock (Optimised defaults loaded) and maximum overclocked (Voltages may vary).

Surprisingly the biggest motherboard on test consumed the least power when in idle state, with the whole system consuming just 114W! Even when clocked to 5GHz with the most Vcore used on test, the MSI board was still very competitive. This is a fantastic achievement and testament to the power efficiency improvements of the VRM and Military Class III components.

Under load, the MSI Big Bang XPower II was still very good although less impressive than when in idle. When you consider the additional voltages used for the 5GHz overclock though, the results do show what a very power efficient motherboard this is.

Let’s see how the motherboard performs in our suite of benchmarks…

Sisoft Sandra 2012

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

AIDA64

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

x264 HD V4.0

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently. The test uses multiple cores efficiently to give a good representation of real world performance.

Cinebench 11.5

Based on the MAXON animation software CINEMA 4D, Cinebench is a test suite that uses the system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene. This makes it an excellent benchmark to measure CPU and motherboard performances.

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

Futuremark PCMark 7

PCMark 7 is a tool provided by FutureMark that tests the PCs ability in general office and everyday use. It produces a number that reflects the all-round performance of the PC and is useful to compare between differing setups. For more information, visit the FutureMark website.

Gaming Benchmarks

Crysis 2
Crytek took an internet beating from its loyal fans due to the fact that they pandered to the console masses and dumbed down the graphics to DirectX 9. Fortunately, fans of the PC version of Crysis managed to force Cryteks hand and they have since developed a DX11 patch and have also enhanced the textures with added tesselation. It is for this reason that we have decided to include it in our suite of benchmarks.

DiRT3
As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.

Metro 2033
Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

Conclusion

Bang and the dirt is gone! Well not quite but it certainly put the other motherboards on test into the shade. It has to be said the ASRock put up a valiant fight but the two boards are like chalk and cheese when the overall features are compared. The ASRock could be forgiven though as the two highest performing boards are aimed at totally different markets. The MSI Big Bang XPower II is an all out, balls to the wall extreme performance motherboard that has it all, power efficiency when you want to save on electricity, extreme performance when you need it; performance by the bucket load!

The packaging is almost perfect with only the accessory box needing tweaking but that is a very minor point in what is overall a very tidy, well presented product. Aesthetically, the motherboard looks fantastic. Sure the heatsinks may not be everyone’s cup of tea but give them time and they do grow on you. Despite the Marmite looks of the heatsinks there can be no doubting that they perform very well. Under normal circumstances, the CPU core expander which alters the PWM speed can be left at auto but even when the speed is doubled, the heatsink kept the MOSFET temps under control. The ASRock Extreme4-M needed external cooling at full overclocked speeds. I’m no kid but the bullets and guns theme becomes appealing after awhile and they are subtle enough not to detract from the overall theme of the motherboard. If you don’t like the bullet heatsink you could always cover it up with 4(!) dual slot graphics cards. Not only that but the four cards can hail from either of the big two, AMD or NVIDIA as the MSI Big Bang XPower II has 4-way SLI capability along with CrossfireX which for all intents and purposes is perhaps the biggest attraction of the mainboard.

Speaking of BIOS settings, the Click BIOS II is very good, perhaps now it has matured it could be said that it is one of, if not the best on the market at present. The Big Bang XPower II’s BIOS has some very neat features too, none more so than the power protection/limitations which can be adjusted to best suit your uses. These features (disabled or increased) enabled this motherboard to hit the highest overclock we have achieved yet with our i7 3960X topping out at 5075MHz. While this is an astounding achievement in itself, I couldn’t help feeling frustrated by the test setup’s closed loop watercooling as there was clearly more left in the tank should CPU temperatures have been more adequately controlled.

There are a few little niggling design errors that do tend to irk and while nothing major, slightly spoil the overall products appeal, especially when in use. Why MSI thought it would be a good idea to place the reset switch at opposite ends of the board to the power button I simply cannot fathom. It’s also worth noting that while the CPU socket will be perfect for watercooling or indeed extreme cooling, air coolers may have a more difficult time due to the size and proximity of both MOSFET heatsinks which are situated above and below the CPU socket area. With this board supporting up to 8 DIMM’s, heatsink orientation may therefore become an issue, especially oversized heatsinks and let’s be honest here, who is going to run this motherboard with a small CPU heatsink? It is therefore recommended you have a tall heatsink able to clear the MSOFET heatsinks or purchase low profile memory. You could of course always invest in watercooling or a cauldron of LN2, which is what this motherboard is really screaming out for!

Overall then, the MSI Big Bang II XPower II is a magnificent motherboard; it has everything you could want from a top of the range product. Perfect it isn’t but it is the motherboard that has come closest thus far in our testing and therefore is deserving of our Gold award – very well done MSI!

Pros:
+ Fantastic overclocking ability
+ User friendly UEFI BIOS
+ Great aesthetics
+ Excellent on-board Features
+ LED Debug
+ 4-way SLI
+ Good packaging
+ Cool running

Cons:
– Power/Reset buttons oddly placed
– Gimmick heatsinks may be an issue for some
– Air cooling may be problematic with large heatsink and all DIMM slots populated

*Note* Pending further reviews of the Big Bang XPower II’s main competitors, today’s review sample could also receive our top ‘Elite’ award – please check back regularly.