Product Listing

MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35)

By Zachary Chan - 24 May 2007

MSI P35 Platinum

MSI P35 Platinum

The P35 Platinum is based on the P35 and ICH9R chipset combination, which gives the board AHCI SATA and RAID capabilities in addition to its regular features. MSI makes use of the eSATA feature of the Southbridge though and uses two ports as dedicated eSATA connectors in the rear panel, leaving only four ports to be used as internal HDD connectors. As the ICH9R also does not have any IDE support, MSI uses a Marvell 88SE6111 controller to make up for one Ultra ATA port and one extra SATA 3.0Gbps port. There is one Gigabit LAN port onboard powered by a Marvell 88E8111B PHY and two FireWire-400 ports via a VIA VT6308P controller. The most interesting component here is the use of the Realtek ALC888T HD Audio CODEC, instead of the standard ALC888 we saw in the preview. You see, the ALC888T has a special VoIP switching functionality that can automatically switch between VoIP and PSTN connectivity in event of a power failure. This of course requires some kind of VoIP add-on card, a handset and a phone line to take advantage of since the board doesn't have one built-in. MSI will actually be introducing such an add-on card very soon that works with Skype, called the SkyTel, but we have an impression that the SkyTel card will have its own audio chip, so how it interfaces with the ALC888T has to be seen.

These are DDR2 DIMM slots.

Realtek ALC888T could mean MSI has optional VoIP peripherals in store for the P35 Platinum.

For MSI, the P35 Platinum is a take away from their previous motherboards as it embraces a radical new cooling design that is a first in the industry. In the past year, heat-pipe cooling has become a necessity as a motherboard solution due to the amount of heat that today's chipsets emit, especially in the high-end bracket where enthusiasts are assumed to be overclocking their boards. We've seen the evolution of simple single piped designs to the huge multi-piped blocks today, but the P35 Platinum is the first to utilize circular pipes that are independently cooled to increase cooling efficiency. In what undoubtedly looks like a roller-coaster, MSI's design is also thin and lean, which we think is a great plus to the chunky heatsink blocks used by many other manufacturers (Gigabyte comes to mind here). The board also fully utilizes solid capacitors to improve component lifespan and reliability, much like how most high-end boards have been the past few months.

Roller coaster of a ride, the MSI Circu-Pipe is a very effective chipset cooler for the P35 chipset.

The design of the PCB is quite clinical though, and almost everything comes in matching pairs. From the expansion slots, to onboard headers to storage connectors, everything is cleanly planned out. There is however, an out-of-place block of extra USB connectors in the rear I/O panel though that spoils the clean look of the board as it looks tacked on.

Neatly arranged slots.

For enthusiasts, the P35 Platinum comes with a total of six onboard fan connectors, an quick CMOS clear button and a small row of Debug LEDs. MSI has in the past made use of their D-Bracket debug system, which is still a component of the board, but this new row of LEDs are so much more useful. You can check out the row of mini debug LEDs just next to the blue SATA connector on the PCB.

Additional set of LEDs that look like operational debug codes.

Oooh the lights! What do they mean? You'll have to correspond it to the listing in the manual as you troubleshoot within the interior of your system. Still, it beats using the D-Bracket that's situated at the system rear.

Overclocking

  • FSB Settings: 266MHz to 600MHz
  • DDR2 Settings: 533/638/667/800/886/1066MHz
  • PCIe Settings: 100MHz to 200MHz
  • CPU Voltage Settings: 1.2750V to 2.0625V (in 0.0125V steps)
  • Memory Voltage Settings: 1.80V to 2.86V (in 0.10V steps)
  • NB Voltage Settings: 1.250V to 1.625V (in 0.025V steps)
  • SB I/O Voltage Settings: 1.50V to 1.80V (in 0.10V steps)
  • SB Core Voltage Settings: 1.05V, 1.15V
  • FSB VTT Voltage Settings: 1.175V to 1.550 (in 0.025V steps)
  • D.O.T. Control: PCIe Only, CPU Only, PCIe+CPU (User configurable 1%-20% 3-step overclock)
  • Multiplier Selection: Yes (unlocked CPUs only)


For a high-end board, the P35 Platinum has a decent range of overclocking controls. The board allows FSB increments up to 600MHz, standard memory multipliers up to DDR2-1066, and a good set of memory timings and voltage options. This iteration of MSI's Dynamic Overclocking Technology (D.O.T.) also allows users to manually select the D.O.T. overclocking percentage increments in the BIOS. These values range from 1%-20% and is user configurable in a three-step control. Unlike the previous fixed options, the new configurable D.O.T. system should allow novice overclockers some semblance of control as well.

We did encounter a small anomaly with the CPU multiplier controls during our overclocking tests. The board was unable to drop down to a 6x multiplier on a Core 2 Extreme X6800, but works fine on an E6300. Other multiplier options still worked fine with the X6800 though. This minor issue aside, the P35 Platinum's FSB overclocking ceiling seemed to be 470MHz. Even after pumping up the chipset voltages and relaxed memory timings, 470MHz was its final stop. Based on these results, we would say that the P35 will at least be able to overclock just as well as the P965 series. MSI isn't exactly one of the big overclocking names in the motherboard market of recent times, so we're hoping to see a higher overclocking ceiling on other P35 boards. Remember, both the P965 and NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI are capable of post 500MHz frequencies if implemented right.

CPU-Z overclocking snapshot. Click for full size image.

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