MSI P67A-C45 / G45 B3 or Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 - choice?
Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:39 am
MSI P67A-C45 / G45 B3 or Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 ?
Please help me with decision on a 1155 budget board for i5 2500K (possibly i3 2100 at first)
Goals: easily a dozen hours daily on, of which about 1 hour gaming; mild OC up to where default Vcore is needed or with just a slight voltage bump if the CPU for gaming; undervolting options very welcome; lo lo price.
From what I gather the MSI looses its ability to properly lower voltage in idle (x16) once Vcore is manually set. This is what the good folks at Xbit Labs wrote when reviewing a hi-endish P67A by MSI - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainbo ... html#sect1 – so I’d assume a vanilla MSI is very likely to have this problem, too. Also, I read a bit of info on that on an obscure local forum – guys claimed that once they upped Vcore to go over 4.5 GHz the mobo would lower the multiplier but keep the unreasonably high > 1.3 V in idle. Yuck.
Still, for all I know, you’re fine as long as you keep voltages in auto. “Fine” being not really the proper term, as folks claim that auto voltages (as can be expected) set by the mobo are on the high side. We don’t want that either.
AFAIK the GB board can downclock & downvolt properly, its BIOS working fine. However, some ppl claim that GB P67A series sport quirky vdroops and that generally they will need much more hassle to achieve a decent overclock.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many reviews of these boards out there, for obvious reasons. And the reviews I’ve found are like “we were able to achieve 4.8 GHz @ 1.4 V on air – a great board!”.
Let’s just focus on these two boards for now. I’m very well aware of Asrock Pro3 B3 and want to leave it out, at least for now. I can simply get a much better deal on the MSI than Asrock.
I’m especially eager to hear more about the MSI, as there are v few reviews of it. I've tried to browse thru several MSI P67A topics on various sites, but as always ppl are more interesting in squeezing the extra 100 MHz out of the board, rather than optimizing for hi performance at low power.
Thanks in advance!
Please help me with decision on a 1155 budget board for i5 2500K (possibly i3 2100 at first)
Goals: easily a dozen hours daily on, of which about 1 hour gaming; mild OC up to where default Vcore is needed or with just a slight voltage bump if the CPU for gaming; undervolting options very welcome; lo lo price.
From what I gather the MSI looses its ability to properly lower voltage in idle (x16) once Vcore is manually set. This is what the good folks at Xbit Labs wrote when reviewing a hi-endish P67A by MSI - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainbo ... html#sect1 – so I’d assume a vanilla MSI is very likely to have this problem, too. Also, I read a bit of info on that on an obscure local forum – guys claimed that once they upped Vcore to go over 4.5 GHz the mobo would lower the multiplier but keep the unreasonably high > 1.3 V in idle. Yuck.
Still, for all I know, you’re fine as long as you keep voltages in auto. “Fine” being not really the proper term, as folks claim that auto voltages (as can be expected) set by the mobo are on the high side. We don’t want that either.
AFAIK the GB board can downclock & downvolt properly, its BIOS working fine. However, some ppl claim that GB P67A series sport quirky vdroops and that generally they will need much more hassle to achieve a decent overclock.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many reviews of these boards out there, for obvious reasons. And the reviews I’ve found are like “we were able to achieve 4.8 GHz @ 1.4 V on air – a great board!”.
Let’s just focus on these two boards for now. I’m very well aware of Asrock Pro3 B3 and want to leave it out, at least for now. I can simply get a much better deal on the MSI than Asrock.
I’m especially eager to hear more about the MSI, as there are v few reviews of it. I've tried to browse thru several MSI P67A topics on various sites, but as always ppl are more interesting in squeezing the extra 100 MHz out of the board, rather than optimizing for hi performance at low power.
Thanks in advance!