MSI P35 Platinum

Zitat

This is our first P35 retail motherboard we have tested and we have only tested a pre-release board in our P35 preview article, which didn’t overclock at all due to early silicon. MSI’s P35 Platinum is the first motherboard we managed to overclock, it didn’t reach the speed P965 has reached but this is real early days for the P35, with chipsets about to go into full production from Intel, we can only hope to see speed increases as the platform matures. Nevertheless, at stock settings, the P35 has a small performance lead over the P965, which is a great sign. Even the new ICH9 Southbridge is able to improve HDD performance a little as well.

MSI’s implementation of the P35 chipset is extremely good, with only a few layout problems to speak of. The overall look of the board is extremely creative and uses high quality components such as all solid Japanese capacitors which increase stability and overall lifetime. The cooling design for the heatpipe is not only attractive and stylish but very effective providing great cooling performance. It is the first design we have seen that actually cool the memory voltage regulators on the board in the same cooling solution that does the rest of the primary components.

Overclocking results were impressive for an early series P35 chipset, its early days but MSI’s board does show promise, it may not be the high-end monster that we are hoping for but its extra features are quite impressive such as its dual PCI Express x16 slots and future proof support for new 45nm processors from Intel as well as full 1333MHz quad-pumped FSB support.