Product Listing

MSI P45D3 Platinum (Intel P45)

By Vincent Chang - 29 Jul 2008

Conclusion

Conclusion

MSI's DrMOS will be found in all of its P45 motherboards, but as it refers to more than just the actual Driver-MOSFETs, some of these additional components that appear to be grouped under the DrMOS name will not be present on the lower-end models, e.g. the MSI P45 Neo will not have the Circu-Pipe 2 cooler. In any case, you can be assured that the hardware DrMOS chip will be on all these P45 boards, though whether it directly leads to lower temperatures and greater power efficiency, that is harder to tell.

MSI has a very decent performing P45 board with some unique features but the BIOS could do with some more polish.

No doubt, we have seen quite relatively low temperatures on this board, probably one of the lowest you can find on a P45 board from any of the big three manufacturers using the conventional heatpipe cooler solution at least. Yet, this advantage is a slim one that may not be as significant as the vendors hope. After all, when all the boards we tested were hovering less than forty degrees Celsius, a couple of degrees less doesn't seem that important anymore. This aspect may however play a more important role when overclocking is brought to the equation, in which case, lower is always the better to get you more megahertz or more stability.

As for the power efficiency aspect, the Green Power energy saving technology on this MSI board works, to a certain extent. Our testing showed that there was some difference, if limited, upon enabling it. The only good thing is that performance did not seem to have suffered anything from doing so, so there shouldn't be any reason not to use it, unless you're overclocking of course. And we also think that hiding the Green Power Center utility within MSI's Dual Core Center is not a good way to get users to start playing with this feature. Still, this board is the only one of the big three vendors that has implemented a BIOS-level power saving feature, which doesn't require the mandatory assistance of a Windows utility.

In terms of benchmark performance, the MSI was basically tied with the ASUS PQ5E Deluxe in our scores and both were slightly ahead of the Gigabyte GA-EP45T-EXTREME. In short, it's about as good as we have experienced with an Intel P45 board. However, that was with an pre-release BIOS from MSI; earlier retail versions like the 1.1 and 1.2 BIOS produced scores that varied from our final result. We believe that MSI is still working on the firmware and we expect at least a few more revisions before things get settled and mature enough to be trouble-free. As it is now, the BIOS looks to be the weakest link of this board, as we have experienced the occasional lockups (albeit with a beta version), while quite a few of the newer features did not have sufficient explanatory text in the BIOS.

Overall, the hardware and feature set on this MSI P45D3 Platinum reflect its price of just under US$200 at online retailers, placing it as a notch above the typical mainstream board. It's not as expensive and as extreme as some of the really high-end boards and should be a good fit for enthusiasts who want the features but not the full 'royal' treatment, like quad Gigabit Ethernet and all that extras. It's far from perfect and there are some MSI quirks that you may have to get used to, but the board has potential. If you're set on this board, we highly recommend that you keep a lookout for the latest BIOS. It could well improve your board's performance and stability.

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