MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Pro Reviews

MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) looks good at first sight. It comes with a lot of accessories and features a user-friendly PCB design, efficient cooling system, and up-to-date functionality. The Military Class III components contribute to making it one of the most energy-efficient products among all LGA2011 mainboards we’ve ever tested in our labs. With so many advantages, MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) might aspire for a leading position in its class but, like many other MSI products, it is let down by its BIOS. As we have already pointed out multiple times in our reviews MSI hasn’t implemented the same functionality as the competitors, such as the option to undo the parameter changes in the BIOS by pressing a hot key or to increase CPU voltage in offset mode. MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) works normally and causes no problems as long as you do not change any settings. After that, the more you tweak it, the more issues and little inconveniences pop up here and there in the BIOS. Here are some of the most prominent ones: non-operational BIOS recovery system; disappearing settings profiles; spontaneous disabling of the MSI’s exclusive ASP and other CPU-related power-saving technologies; incorrect use of memory modules’ XMP information when the automatic overclocking feature OC Genie II is involved.

We here at HardOCP have been huge fans of MSI’s GD65 line for more than a couple of chipsets. MSI has once again been hitting R&D and design hard. If I had to rank the motherboard builders today, I would likely put those companies in this order: ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte. A lot has changed in the last couple of years. I just took a Gigabyte board out of my own personal system (Kyle) and replaced it with an ASUS board very recently, but the choice for me came down to ASUS or MSI product. The final decision was based on the feature set of a previously reviewed board I had on hand, so it was sort of chance that I went with ASUS instead of MSI. Now to MSI LGA2011 boards. I have had so many issues over the last few months trying to review this product that I am a little gun shy of it right now. Hopefully MSI has gotten a hand on its Sandy Bridge E issues. If I would have started my MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) review after the final BIOS, I would have given this motherboard an award. Given the problems I saw with it that were not addressed for months, it would make me a little uneasy putting it on my own chassis.

Sturdy build, excellent overclocking tools and dual BIOSes. Not the prettiest board, however.

This is my first review of an X79-based motherboard and it showcased how vendors are incorporating the LGA 2011 socket and X79 chipset into their products. The availability of SATA3 ports, RAID options, and additional PCI-E 3.0 lanes will entice many enthuasists to upgrade their graphics workstations and high-definition gaming systems to Intel's latest platforms. There is always a steep price with upgrading to the newest processors and motherboards, and this is where the X79A-GD65 (8D) may have difficulties against other competitively-priced offerings from Gigabyte and ASUS. Users with deep pockets won't blink an eye at dropping $300 on a motherboard, but combine that with purchasing quad-channel memory and an i7-3820 and the entire upgrade could cost close to $800 for only three components. However, if you didn't make the jump to Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge, the latest Sandy Bridge-E motherboards like the X79A-GD65 (8D) have unique features for power users looking for high-end performance features at high-end prices. PC Perspective gives the MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) its Gold Award for its unique overclocking options, triple PCI-E 3.0 support, and bundled software package.

There just isn’t much that I can really say once you take a look at our benchmark scores. This is just an amazing product that represents an incredible value. This board also has some really nice features, not the least of which is their Military Class III set of features. There is no question that this board was designed to be pushed to its limits and remain totally stable. This board was built to last.

The latest Intel launch brought the Intel X79 chipset and Sandy Bridge architecture to the Extreme side of the fence and out of the mainstream. With it came all the efficiencies and performance improvements garnered with the mainstream products to drive performance up to new levels. MSI has built on the base they have with their Z68 lineup and carried all of the features onto the X79A-GD65. MSI has built this board using its Military Class II build philosophy that includes dynamic switching Super Ferrite Chokes, Solid State tantalum-based Hi-C self-repairing capacitors, DrMos II and parts that meet Mil-STD 810G. What these components allow is for some spirited overclocking as well as long term stability or any combination in between. The original BIOS needed a little work and was quickly swapped for a newer version that smoothed everything out. It seems my 3960X is limited to just under 4.8Ghz and the X79A-GD65 was able to get me there without too much work. Just the same standard for the Sandy Bridge platform: bump the multiplier, tweak the bclock, set the volts, and go! Simple! If that little bit of work is just too much to tweak, there is MSI's fully functional OC Genie II One-touch overclocking tool. On an Intel platform, the OC Genie II is almost too easy to use and is the easiest one-step process to get an overclock out of the system. I found with the headroom available on the 3960X that the OC Genie II was a little conservative when the Turbo-Boosted speeds of the Core i7 3960X are 3.9Ghz. The OC Genie II delivered a solid 4.0GHz overclock, and just like every Intel MSI board I have tried over the past four years has proven perfectly stable under load. It really is a feather in MSI's cap that this tool has been so good for so long.

When testing the MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) we figured it would be a nice board, but didn't have strong hopes for it to run with the much higher priced overclocking-based boards. We were (pleasantly) surprised. The GD65 surpassed the best OC boards in a few cases, which is saying a lot for a board that is much lower cost than the others in the comparison. Having the ability to run 8 DIMMs gives an excellent opportunity to run very high amounts of higher speed memory without needing higher density modules which could suffer in performance. Whether this is helpful is more subjective, depending upon the usage. It is not as simple as cramming in as much memory as we can fit. The overclocking on the GD65 is quite easy, and did not require a huge amount of fine tuning to get stable. This is great as the Gigabyte X79-UD7 required much more tuning to achieve near the stability that took only a few minutes on the Rampage and the GD65. The GD65 is capable of 3-Way SLI and CrossFire, which is honestly more than enough for most users as the amount of users running 4-way SLI is not very high. The GD65 should suit pretty much any gaming build put in front of it. If building the ultimate gamer, video editor or even photoshop speed demon, the GD65 is worth the consideration, as it is a very cost-efficient board packed with performance.

Our first impression of the board is that is looks similar in terms of its layout to the other X79 boards which we have had sneak previews. The list of features on-board is not terribly impressive but it is interesting to note that MSI has catered a backup BIOS in case of corruption to the BIOS ROM in use. The sheer number of LED indicators for debugging purposes is a nod to rig builders and enthusiasts who would want to fine tune the performance of their systems. We will be running tests on this board in near future to gauge its performance with a pairing of a Sandy Bridge-E processor, so do watch this space for more exciting details.

The MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) comes with a few advantages and several disadvantages compared to its main competitor, the Gigabyte X79-UD3. On the positive side, it has eight memory sockets, two FireWire ports, a POST diagnostics display, better components in the voltage regulator circuit, and the handy “OC Genie” button. However, the list of drawbacks is quite extensive. This motherboard has five PCI Express x16 slots, but you can only install three dual-slot video cards (the competing model from Gigabyte accepts four). These slots are configured as x16/x16/x8/x1/x1, while on the Gigabyte motherboard the four available slots are configured as x16/x16/x8/x8. What is the point of having five PCI Express x16 slots if you can only use three of them? For some reason we can’t understand, MSI used a mainstream audio codec (Realtek ALC892) on a motherboard targeted to high-end users. If you are going to work converting analog audio sources (e.g., LP records, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, etc.) to the digital format, you will need to pick a different motherboard, as the input signal-to-noise ratio of this codec is 90 dB, which is too low for this application. (Translation: You will inject a lot of noise into your work.)