MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II Review

[siopao1984]

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Today we take a look at MSI's flagship X79 motherboard. This feature packed overclocking board is aimed at anyone who wants something extreme. A 22 phase VRM coupled with quad SLI capability and every OC feature from direct OC buttons to manual PCI-E switches this board packs a strong punch, but does it live up to all the hype?

Read more: MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II Review by VR-Zone.com

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Introduction:



The MSI X79 BigBang X-Power II (X79 BigBang) is MSI's top dog motherboard. Combine a very rich and abundant set of components and team it up with some cool overclocking features and then add some sugar and spice and you'll have something nice. The X79 BigBang doesn't cease to impress, whether it be in raw performance or innovation, MSI has done their best to put out a very special board within its own respects. If you are an overclocker this board really hits all the main points, yet it also has features for gamers and hardcore workstation people as well.



The X79 chipset has all the goodies one could ever imagine, except for a few things. First off it is missing USB 3.0, something we hope to see with Intel's Z77 chipset. Second it is missing all of those additional SAS or SATA6GB/s ports we saw on earlier X79 prototypes. That was a lot of SATA/SAS ports and now we have none of it, so we basically have a redo of the Z68 chipset just without SSD Caching and iGPU support.

What is more interesting about the LGA2011 platform is what is the CPU has in store for us. Even though the current LGA2011 CPU's lack virtualization and PCI-E 3.0 certification, they still have many features. Quad channel memory controller with supreme overclocking abilities is a plus as is PCI-E 3.0 which can't be claimed until the second stepping gets PCI-SIG certification. We seem to take for granted the 40 PCI-E lanes and native Quad SLI/CF support. With LGA2011 we have Intel moving back to satisfy the overclocker, of course not how we would like, but BLCK straps are nothing to push to the side. Today we will take a look at MSI’s top LGA2011 board for overclockers, gamers, and enthusiasts, let’s see how it does.


Specifications:

[siopao1984]

MSI doesn't cut any costs when it comes to their Big Bang series, what many manufacturers haven't yet realized that is users look the the top of the line to see how the entire line-up stacks up. Nice picture of what someone thought the actual big bang looked like.



The accessories in this board are pretty plentiful, but we were under the impression that MSI was going to provide a USB 3.0 or OC Genie front panel. We do however get an extra USB 3.0 bracket for the back of the case. MSI also didn't include the hard to find 4-way SLI bridge, which is a bit odd to be missing from a board which supports it.

8x SATA6GB/s Cables (half angled)
2x eSATA Cables
eSATA bracket
eSATA bracket SATA power cables
2x CrossFireX Bridges
1x SLI Bridge
1x Extra Long SLI Bridge
I/O Panel
USB 3.0 Braket
Voltage Read Wires
2X M-Connectors



MSI has provided a lot of documents. The X79 overclocking guide included is extremely basic, however it does show that MSI has used a modified clock generator buffer to enhance BLCK Divider OC, which users have proved to be over and beyond that of any other X79 board.



This is the first MSI board we have seen which has an actual black PCB, no brown from copper traces as we see on many previous MSI boards. MSI has made the X79 BigBang really big. It's the full ATX-XL length, longer than the X79-UD7(also ATX-XL) by an inch or two. You will need a full-size ATX-XL compatible case to fit this behemoth. The heatsinks are a bit overdone in our opinion, the Gatling Gun would have been enough but the golden bullets are over the top. If it can be angled MSI has done it when it comes to connectivity, this is the first board with a right angled USB 3.0 internal header. All of the overclocking features are positions pretty much at the bottom of the board, with some features like BIOS switches and power switch scattered across the board. You will immediately notice large amounts of PCI-E 16x slots, yet practically only 4 of them support GPUs.



6x USB 2.0 ports
PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse
Clear CMOS button
S/PDIF optical and digital
1x 1394A IEEE
2x 1GBit RJ-45 LAN
4x USB 3.0
7.1 Audio



We can see that MSI has implemented 8 DIMMs which support up to 128GB of memory and colored them all black. They have special clips on the side facing the VRM heatsinks so that only one side needs to be unlatched. Basically they have the clips in the opposite orientation of that of the Rampage IV Extreme as the DIMMs are close to the VRM heatsink. Dual 8-Pin 12v CPU power connectors can provide more power than your CPU can ever pull for extreme overclocking. A power button is located all by itself in the upper right corner and voltage read points are located below the 24-pin connector. There is a large heatsink in the center of the board, it doesn't cool anything other than two phases for the VCCIO, it is major overkill and serves minimal practical purpose.



We can see 7 PCI-E 16x slots.

PCI-E 3.0 @ 16X
PCI-E 2.0 @ 8X (1X)
PCI-E 3.0 @ 8X
PCI-E 2.0 @ 8X (1X)
PCI-E 3.0 @ 16X
PCI-E 2.0 @ 8X (1X)
PCI-E 3.0 @ 8X

MSI says that slots 2,4,6 are PCI-E 2.0 slots that support only 1x cards, but from what we have seen all three are connected to the PLX bridge provided, so if you have a 4x card it will work if you only use one of those PCI-E 2.0 slots. The PCH only has 8X lanes, and the PLX Bridge used can output 8X lanes, so it is probable that even an 8X device might work but the performance might be very low. The reason is that the PCH only has 8X PCI-E 2.0 lanes for connectivity and there are 8 chips that provide various functions like USB 3.0 and each of them uses a single PCI-E 2.0 lane. That leaves zero lanes for the 1X slots, but we will discuss how MSI can avoid this later.



We see that all the connectors for SATA and Internal USB 3.0 are all angled off to the right. We even have an extra 6-pin power connector for the PCI-E slots when running 3-Way or 4-Way SLI/CF. MSI used the highest quality connectors as well. This is the first board we see using a right-angled USB 3.0 connector as the technology is new because of USB 3.0 signal limitations.



The features are really cool however, the BLCK buttons are a wonderful addition as the PCI-E ceasefire is excellent for watercoolers and extreme benchers, but they are almost in a counter intuitive position. Here we see a nice POST code display, but we are unsure as to who thought out the positioning of different onboard components when they designed this board. The POST code display is facing right, the buttons are all facing down, and the power button is off in the middle of nowhere, and the ClearCMOS is on the back panel. This would all be okay if they were in functional positions as the power button is, but all the OC features like the PCI-E disable switches and BLCK increase/decrease switches are easily blocked by a GPU in the last slot when running 4-Way SLI. This might not be a major issue for the majority of users, but gamers don't usually have 4-way SLI. Extreme overclockers use it more often, so that begs the question as to why these features were positioned this way.



The heatsinks are very heavy, and they add a tremendous amount of weight to the board. This is probably one of the heaviest motherboards ever built. They also use a very large heatpipe to cool down the PCH, this would have been important when the PCH had the SAS ports, but since they are disabled the PCH runs cool enough not to need extra cooling such as fans.

[siopao1984]

With the heatsinks removed we can see some of the cool technology MSI has used on the X79 BigBang, most of it is pretty impressive. We see that MSI kept the PCH very close to the CPU, and this is probably one of the reasons (along with modified clock-gens) for its unexplainable ability to do more BLCK compared to any other X79 board. The VRM is also double stacked, the MOSFETs are half on top and half on the bottom, and the inductors are differently positioned. Intel had greatly reduced the area for the CPU VRM while at the same time increasing the power requirements, something which requires high quality high density VRM technology. However MSI is doing it the old fashioned way, using doubled phases with good components as they have on previous Big Bang boards.



If we look at the VRM we see DrMOS (Driver MOSFETs) which are tested and comply with "military" specifications. The tantalum capacitors (MSI calls them Hi-C) and aluminum can-type capacitors are also tested to military specifications. Military Class III Isn't just all marketing, there is some truth to it, and MSI backs it up with a certificate as well. MSI is using 35A Renesas DrMOS for each phase along with 18x470uF tantalum capacitors with very-low ERS for better performance. The potential power output on this board is very high.



So how does MSI get 22 phases? Well they use a 6+2 phase analog uPI PWM, the same one as found on many of their GPUs and other motherboards. MSI calls it hybrid-digital, but it’s as digital as all of the P67/Z68 MSI, GIGABYTE, Foxconn boards that used analog PWMs on Z68 and P67. MSI is able to say something about being digital because of the PWM's ability to use SVID, which would make it a mixed signal PWM. MSI takes 5 of the PWM's 6 phases from the main PWM, and routes the 5 to 2x PWM doublers, it seems that these doublers are able to output a total of 10 PWM outputs and then two DrMOS use the same output. There just aren't enough pins on the doublers to explain it any other way. However that is our best guess, as we don't have any conclusive data on the doubler chips, and only two are used. We have seen these chips used before however, but we are still trying to see how the current monitoring is conducted per each phase with only 2x 20-pin doublers. The System Agent voltage is derived from the +2 PWM phases from the main 6+2 phase PWM. This board has a total of 22 phases from a single main PWM, 20 for the CPU Vcore and 2 for the VCCIO.



The memory VRM consists of a 2-Phase analog uPI PWM along with two DrMOS. There are a total of 2 of these VRMs, one of each set of 4-DIMMs.



The VCCIO is powered by the same VRM parts as the memory VRM. We know that this outputs the VCCIO instead of the VCCSA because of the accuracy of the System Agent voltage in the BIOS compared to that of the VCCIO in the BIOS. The System Agent has much more precision as it has a much more complex PWM which also provides the VCore with the same precision.



MSI is using a pretty cool 3-BIOS design. Two of the BIOSes are hard soldered to the board, and have a small switch for a user to select which to use. if both of them fail then there is a Multi-BIOS switch, and if it is pressed then the third (replaceable) BIOS ROM is used. This type of redundancy is over the top excellence.



The PCH is positioned as far north as possible, and the PLX bridge is centered where the PCH would usually be. The PEX8608 can output 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. We think that the PCH routes 4 of its PCI-E 2.0 lanes to this bridge chip, and then this bridge chip can output up to 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes when needed to different devices including the PCI-E 1x slots. PLX bridges are excellent for consolidating and allocating bandwidth to different ICs as needed. The other 4 PCI-E lanes from the PCH might be directly routed to critical connectivity ICs like SATA6GB/s and/or USB 3.0. This positioning of the PCH is optimal for BLCk and PCI-E signals to hit the CPU at the same time for better BLCK overclocking. Two phases provide power for the PCH, same setup as the memory and VCCIO VRMs. We do see two ASMedia 1061 SATA 6GB/s controllers which provide 4 extra SATA6GB/s ports. We also have a single NEC D720200 USB 3.0 controller which provides output for the internal USB 3.0 header. Finally we have a Fintek SuperI/O which also provides PS/2 and fan/temp/voltage monitoring.



Two clock generators, one of which is believed to be custom made, are both made by ICS. One of these provides DMI/PCI-E clock of 100MHz and the other is said to produce the multipliers of 1.00, 1.25 and 1.67.



The Audio has its own un-needed heatsink, which says X-Fi on it.



Surprise! No Creative audio codec, instead we have the Realtek ALC898 which is typical on most X79 boards. This is a very good audio chipset though, the only issue is that it isn't working with the Creative X-FI software bundled with the board. We saw that MSI has listed the model of the audio codec as ALC892 which is the previous generation codec, maybe MSI used the wrong chip or the software isn't updated to use this chip.



Here we have a plethora of connectivity ICs. We just looked at the ALC898 for audio, next is the VIA VT6315N which provides IEEE1394A, and then we have an Intel 82579VPHY which compliments the NIC inside the PCH. We also have an Intel Ethernet controller the Intel 82574L which provides the second NIC. Two NEC D720200 provide a total of 4 USB 3.0 ports.



Here we have a cold boot jumper which will help extreme overclockers boot under the coldest conditions.



Finally some LEDs for the phases. There are 20 LEDs for the CPU and 2 for the System Agent. They can be turned off in the BIOS or Windows.

[siopao1984]

BIOS

Here we have MSI's second generation of UEFI for the Sandy Bridge CPU. This Click BIOS two is pretty well laid out, but it does take some getting used to. You won’t immediately know where everything is.





This UEFI allows the user to do anything they would want with any setting they would want to change.



System Fan Control has unambiguous options.



The overclocking menu is nice, but it is not fun to have to scroll down to put in voltages. You cannot type in voltages like on motherboards from other brands.





Users can even see their memory status and save OC profiles.

[kenox]

nice color =)

[siopao1984]

Software:

MSI's bundled software is plenty, as there are all types of small programs that do different things. However it is a pain keeping track of them, we wish companies would consolidate, times are changing and there is more than 512MB of system memory and 5GB of HDD space now.



MSI's ControlCenter is for overclockers.



This is the Realtek Audio manager, so far the only software that controls audio on this board. We tried to use the Creative X-FI and even the THX, but neither could detect a compatible device.



Overclocking:

Overclocking was very straight forward on this board, settings were easy to use and worked well.

Our max OC on water:



Our Max Stable OC:





We were easily able to reach 5GHz for the maximum OC, however stability came at 4.8GHz, and memory OC was surprisingly good for an MSI board. We were up to 2400MHz in no time. This board's OC was smoother than that of the X79-UD7, and memory OCed higher easier. The OC recovery was very smooth and worked well. We did however hit a snag with BLCK. We believe the issue is within our own CPU, as it is a C0 stepping ES and this board seems to not have any BLCK multipliers other than 1.00 that work with C0 stepping ES CPUs. However on the UD7 the BLCK multipliers work with our CPU, but here they do not. Other users have reported very high above average BLCK overclocks with the 1.67 BLCK multiplier with this board. It is also advertised in the OC guide has having crazy BLCK potential. One other advantage is that this board didn’t require as high as a voltage for the CPU’s max stable OC as the X79-UD7 did, and we liked that factor.

You need to OC with EIST/Turbo enabled
In CPU Configuration Menu, power options should be custom setting
LLC has 7 levels with 7 being strongest and ok to use
Direct OC buttons have to be enabled, but work very well
Memory has to be in certain slots for the baord to operate correctly
CPU Engine Speed refers to PWM switching frequency, it will increase heat and performance when increased.

[siopao1984]

Test Setup:

CPU Intel 3960X
Memory G.Skill Ripjaw-Z DDR3 2133 8GB Quad Channel Kit
Cooler Corsair H100
GPU GTX 570 Refernce
PSU Corsair AX1200
OS Windows 7 X64 No Tweaks
All benchmarks performed at stock speed. Both board's confirmed same turbo effect.



CPU Benchmarks:













Memory Benchmarks:







GPU/PCI-E Benchmarks:

[siopao1984]

Audio Tests



The audio codec performed as most ALC898 codecs perform. It did pretty good, and probably wouldn't change with the Creative software. The RMAA 5.5 tests state to turn off all Creative sound enhancements as they will make the audio device score lower. Everything looks good except for harmonic distortion, which is still good.



SATA



We used a 90% full 64GB Samsung 830 SATA6GB/s SSD, this board did great for all the files on the drive as you can see in the picture. The sequential numbers could be a bit higher, but everything else is as if the drive was new. We had a lower score on the UD7 with the drive in the same state, about 100MB/s lower on the sequential read compared to the X79 BigBang.



DPC Latency



Here we have DPC latency, while playing a YouTube video. Everything is perfect. DPC latency usually spikes when a third party app is causing a conflict. We see it with EasyTune6 and G1 series boards, and it correlates with the polling rate of the program. When we opened MSI's ControlCenter which is the same type of program, we had huge DPC latency spike, but they didn't come back after it was opened, only while it was being opened. So MSI's software seems fine.

[siopao1984]

Conclusion

MSI has produced a world class board, from the 22 phase power to the endless connectivity and overclocking features, MSI has really delivered a top notch motherboard. It overclocks with ease and doesn’t have too many complicated settings for overclockers to deal with. We were able to achieve 5GHz very easily, and our max stable OC was also done with ease. What impressed us is that MSI has memory overclocking setup very well, as it was so simple to get 2400MHz while on other boards it isn’t.



The hardware design is very interesting, with more than 8 devices that need to use the PCI-E lanes from the PCH, MSI used the PLX bridge to help consolidate bandwidth. The use of dual Intel NICs is very tempting for many users. The amount of USB 3.0 is also very nice, more than most X79 boards. The right angle of the USB 3.0 connector is pretty cool, yet we were hoping to see a nice front panel USB 3.0 bay included to take advantage of it. The X79 Big Bang also has some very interesting OC features; the Direct OC buttons work flawlessly and so does the PCI-E ceasefire, the voltage read points are positioned well and the 3 BIOS ROMs are a very nice touch.

This board has everything any overclocker would want, and MSI didn’t miss any of the basics, except for positioning. We find it a bit ridiculous how the OC features are scattered, but more so that they can be obstructed when a user wants to run 4-way SLI. I think MSI should have put more thought into it, for instance shouldn’t the POST code display be facing the position of the overclocker? The board is also ATX-Xl which makes it tough to find a case, but if you are going to drop the money it takes for this board, then you can buy a nice case to put it in. We also don’t know whether we like the heatsinks or not, they are very over the top in appearance, but seem to have some substance to them and seemed to cool very well.



The board did perform very well, in the benchmarks it seems that it is more efficient when it comes to CPU benchmarks and performance, and in PCMark is blew the UD7 away. However there are some points, such as memory in which the X79-UD7 performs slightly better. All in all the X79 Big-Bang won more benchmarks. The Audio benchmark we ran showed us that the audio used is just a typical high-end Realtek codec, which is actually very good. However the Creative software wouldn’t have improved that score, but it can improve your experience. The board was smooth every step of the way, and the OC recovery was also very impressive as well. We do however think the price is a bit high, at $490 USD the X79 Big Bang will set you back a few dollars, but we think it is worth it if you like the styling and need the feature set.