Product Listing

MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Motherboard - The March of the Dragoon Army

By Wong Chung Wee - 1 May 2013
Launch SRP: S$329

Conclusion

Conclusion

The general performance of the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard was reasonably good as they were in line with our expectations of high-end Intel Z77 motherboards. From an aesthetic viewpoint, the board is attractive as it sports the red and black color scheme of MSI's gaming line, together with the Dragoon Army styling on the board's chipset heatsink. With reference to our overclocking experience, we figured that it was better to modify the CPU ratio settings, and its corresponding parameters values, in order to achieve the most performance gains in its overclocked state.

For the main target audience of gamers, they would be pleased to know that the board features the Killer E2200 Intelligent Networking Platform in the form of a Qualcomm Atheros Killer NIC E2205-B Gigabit controller chip. Based on our previous experience with it, this feature will certainly come in handy for reducing online gaming latency to a small degree.

The MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming board is targeted squarely at gamers with its Killer Gigabit networking chip to reduce network latency while gaming. With support for overclocked DDR3-3000+ memory modules and its software utilities for system tweaking, overclockers and power users will definitely not feel left out of the party. Furthermore, the board has pretty good overall performance, including overclocking capabilities.

The bundled software in form of the Control Center and Click BIOS II were adequate and the latter did its job well; however, we felt that in order to differentiate the Gaming board from the rest, MSI should have included a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networking module. This additional piece of hardware would have fully fleshed out the system control capabilities of the Control Center application.

In summary, the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard is meant for discerning gamers, and it sports sufficient features to keep overclockers and power users happy. Its price tag of S$329 makes it just slightly more expensive (by about S$30) than most high-end mainstream motherboards that are currently priced at around the S$300 mark or thereabout. As such, we felt that it is a small price to pay in order to own the flagship Intel Z77 gaming board from MSI that has good all round performance, usability, and features for its target user group.

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8.5
  • Performance 9
  • Features 8
  • Value 7.5
The Good
Consistently good performer across all tests
Very overclockable
Killer Gaming networking controller
The Bad
Lack of bundled Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity which its competitors offer
More PCIe lanes for multi-GPU configuration would have made this the best gaming board
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