We recently published our review of the Core i7 920 940 and 965 Extreme processors - and for the review, Intel was kind enough to supply their Intel DX58SO Socket 1366 motherboard. While it was a great motherboard, I could not help but get the feeling that the i7 920 might overclock higher on a third party motherboard -- and today looks like the day we will find out.
Today we look at MSI's latest and greatest: the MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard.
Once you open the front panel of the box, you get a lot of details on what features the board provides - and you get to see thru the box and catch a glimpse of the copper heatsink, and the "GreenPower Genie".
SLI and CrossFire on one board...! Our graphics guy, Kevin, is already drooling. Before the X58 chipset, this wasn't possible in all but the most specialized platforms, such Intel's Skulltrail.
The back of the box is quite understated by comparison.
Here are the specifications, straight from MSI's global site:
| Socket |
1366 |
| CPU (Max Support) |
i7 |
| FSB / Hyper Transport Bus |
6.4GT/s |
| Chipset |
Intel® X58 |
| DDR3 Memory |
DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600 |
| DIMM Slots |
6 |
| Max Memory (GB) |
24 |
| PCI-Ex16 |
3 |
| PCI-Ex1 |
2 |
| PCI |
2 |
| IDE |
1 |
| SATA |
10 |
| RAID |
0/1/5/10/JBOD |
| LAN |
10/100/1000*2 |
| TPM |
1 |
| USB ports (Rear) |
8 |
| Audio ports (Rear) |
5(Creative® SB X-Fi Xtreme) |
| 1394 ports (Rear) |
1 |
| eSATA |
2 |
| Form Factor |
ATX |
| DrMOS |
Y |
| SLI |
Y |
| 3-way SLI |
Y |
| CrossFire |
Y |
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