Product Listing

MSI P965 Platinum (Intel P965)

By Zachary Chan - 27 Sep 2006

P965 Platinum Examined

Features

Compared with its little brother, the P965 Platinum features a better equipped chipset combination by pairing the P965 MCH with the ICH8R Southbridge. This gives the board more storage functions like RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 support for its main SATA 3.0Gbps ports and better performance as well with AHCI and NCQ support. This is an expected feature, along with the secondary JMB361 controller that provides an extra SATA port as well as one IDE port for device compatibility. Remember, the newer ICH8 series from Intel no longer has IDE support natively.

Strong storage support and performance, but the secondary IDE and SATA locations are really out of place.

The board also has an updated network controller, offering PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111B) instead of the bandwidth limited PCI version found on the P965 Neo. Audio support has remained the same on the two boards. The Realtek ALC883 HD Audio CODEC can be found on the P965 Platinum, but instead of just having analog audio jacks, the board also features coaxial/optical S/PDIF output as well. Another additional feature that can be found on the P965 Platinum is FireWire-400 support. The board uses the common VIA VT6307 controller for this.

FireWire-400 support available onboard.

One of the main features of this board is its support for ATI CrossFire technology. If you remember, the last Intel chipset that was officially CrossFire ready with proper dual PCIe 8x lane switching was the 975X Express. While ATI and AMD have gone into unholy alliance, it seems that ATI is less strict about CrossFire implementation than NVIDIA is about SLI. So, we're still seeing many PCIe chipsets modded to support CrossFire with a PCIe x16/x4 configuration - the P965 chipset being the latest with MSI's P965 Platinum. Remember, the secondary slot's PCIe lanes are provided by the ICH8R Southbridge chip and thus there's limit quantity. So if you do plug in a secondary graphics card for more displays or for CrossFire performance boosts, take note that both PCIe x1 slots would be deactivated.

P965 motherboard with CrossFire support through a PCIe x16/x4 interface.

Layout

Design-wise, the P965 Platinum does certain things better than the P965 Neo, but some things aren't too ideal either. This board has better ATX power connector positioning with the main 24-pin connector at the front edge of the board. Solid capacitors can be seen around the CPU socket for longer lifespan, and the board includes the newer 8-pin ATX12V standard rather than a 4-pin one. As expected, one of the expansion slots had to be sacrificed to include the second PCIe x16 slot. Thus, we've got only two PCI and two PCIe x1 slots on the board and probably one each after graphics card installation.

Spacious CPU socket area with solid capacitors.

DIMM slots are color coded by channel.

Premium board this may be, but the P965 Platinum sports regular passive cooling.

Overclocking

  • FSB Settings: 200MHz to 500MHz
  • RAM Frequency: DDR2-533, DDR2-667, DDR2-800, DDR2-709, DDR2-886, DDR2-1067
  • PCIe Frequency: 100MHz to 133MHz
  • CPU Voltage Settings: Up to +0.7875V (in 0.0125V steps)
  • Memory Voltage Settings: 1.85V to 2.45V (in 0.05V steps)
  • NB Voltage Settings: 1.21V, 1.25V, 1.28V, 1.32V, 1.35V, 1.39V, 1.42V, 1.49V, 1.56V, 1.63V, 1.69V
  • Multiplier Selection: CPU dependent

There aren't any overclocking restrictions on the board like there were on the P965 Neo. FSB clock goes all the way up to 500MHz, memory divider supports DDR2-1067 and available CPU voltage options are at your disposal. However, we still feel that the board doesn't really have a comprehensive or complete overclocking BIOS. Yes, the main options are now available, but there are no additional memory tweaks and CPU multiplier selection is still very flaky.

New Dual CoreCell feature, but the board isn't too enthusiast friendly.

Using a Pentium Extreme Edition 955, we've noticed that the board defaults to a 12x multiplier even if 13x was manually selected. We've also tested the board with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 and Core 2 Duo E6300. Both these processors booted with their correct speeds, but there was no manual CPU multiplier option for the E6300. The multiplier option returned when the X6800 was used, but we were only able to reduce it. Though most boards too only allow reducing the multipliers, we do know a select few that allow increasing the X6800 CPU's multiplier too.

When we finally got down to overclocking the board, the results weren't all that encouraging either. The MSI P965 Platinum only managed a maximum stable overclock of 360MHz using a Core 2 Extreme X6800, up from the 333MHz that the P965 Neo. While it's not in the same league as the top overclocking boards we've reviewed, it would still appeal reasonably to moderate overclockers who neither want to break their bank or cause their investment to expire prematurely. Remember, the lowest speed your memory can operate is equivalent to your FSB clock as there aren't any multipliers smaller than 1:1 on this chipset. With memory prices spiraling upwards, more would tend to side with the mainstream memory modules of the DDR2-533 or DDR2-667 class than splurge for high speed ones that command a much higher premium. Couple that with the MSI P965 Platinum and a mid-class Core 2 Duo processor, and you're on your way for some 'safe' overclocking that can match the Extreme Edition and maybe even better it. Overall, it's no FSB demon as you can see and though we were also expecting more from the Platinum, your mileage may vary from various processors and different memory speeds used, but from the components we've used for testing, the ceiling is 360MHz.

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