Where do MSI motherboards stand? Any good?

[tweakboy]

Good in price for budget build.

IMO get Gigabyte or ASUS ...... and make those your only 2 options.... gl

 

[Shephard]

ok great to know.

does anyone have the GD55? Someone here must have it.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

MSI is much better than both Gigabyte and ASRock IMO. The GD55 got a good review from HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/11/19/msi_z77agd55_lga_1155_motherboard_review/1.

 

[Shephard]

I read one review on the board and it was good. I will read that one too thanks. :thumbsup:

the one thing I don't get about this board is that it has 2x PCI-E 3.0 16x and 1x PCI-E 2.0 16x.

what is the point of the 2.0? I don't think you can do 3 way crossfire or sli.

do you guys think $130 after tax and ship is a good price?

my other option is D3H and It gets very good reviews too.

 

[PingSpike]

I've owned a lot of motherboards over the years, most of them from budget manufacturers, but I always had quote a few ASUS and Abit boards. During that time I have bought maybe 5 or 6 MSI products that I can remember. I have literally never owned one that didn't have problems. They lure you in with their cheap price combined with desirable feature set versus other budget boards. I broke my self imposed ban last year when a great deal on a e350 combo came up. The board had a flaky lan controller that would lock the whole PC up during large file transfers. As I was going to use the board for a file server it might as well have been DOA. I used different drivers and even had other machines with the same controller that didn't have the issue. They tricked me again. I lost the restocking fee on that thing just getting rid of it. The issue was nefariously hard enough to cause that I had no confidence it was just a quality control issue with that particular board and not a design issue with the entire line.

 

[Shephard]

did you own the GD55 or similar? G43, GD65?

 

[dmoney1980]

I've owned a lot of motherboards over the years, most of them from budget manufacturers, but I always had quote a few ASUS and Abit boards. During that time I have bought maybe 5 or 6 MSI products that I can remember. I have literally never owned one that didn't have problems. They lure you in with their cheap price combined with desirable feature set versus other budget boards. I broke my self imposed ban last year when a great deal on a e350 combo came up. The board had a flaky lan controller that would lock the whole PC up during large file transfers. As I was going to use the board for a file server it might as well have been DOA. I used different drivers and even had other machines with the same controller that didn't have the issue. They tricked me again. I lost the restocking fee on that thing just getting rid of it. The issue was nefariously hard enough to cause that I had no confidence it was just a quality control issue with that particular board and not a design issue with the entire line.

Interesting, especially the part about the flaky LAN controller. Upper tier MSI boards use intel LAN, while the cheaper boards use the same Realtek LAN chip other board makers (like Asrock, ASUS, and Gigbyte) use.

I built a pc for friend not too long ago with the GD55 board, rock solid from day one.

 

[Shephard]

thanks Dmoney.

does anyone have Gigabyte D3H? I want to compare those 2.

 

[dmoney1980]

thanks Dmoney.

does anyone have Gigabyte D3H? I want to compare those 2.

The D3h uses a VIA chip for audio and Atheros for LAN...don't know if thats good or bad

 

[Absolution75]

I tend to use MSI/Gigabyte boards when I can. I've never had a problem with either of them.

Honestly at this point it comes down to price and features for me. I haven't had a bad build in a long time. I do know my Asrock Q77 board is on the frits though (won't reboot to OS, says there are no bootable disks...).

 

[Shephard]

The D3h uses a VIA chip for audio and Atheros for LAN...don't know if thats good or bad

Well a guy I talked to says the VRM is much better on the Gigabyte D3H board. He says it has quality mosfets.

I don't get it though because it only has 4 pin cpu connector? He said the board still overclocks really well.

The GD55 has 8 pin and looks good to me. It got good reviews.

If the Asrock would go on sale I would get it. These are my 2 options right now I think. The ASUS p8z77-V LK doesn't look so good anymore.

 

[dmoney1980]

Well a guy I talked to says the VRM is much better on the Gigabyte D3H board. He says it has quality mosfets.

I don't get it though because it only has 4 pin cpu connector? He said the board still overclocks really well.

The GD55 has 8 pin and looks good to me. It got good reviews.

If the Asrock would go on sale I would get it. These are my 2 options right now I think. The ASUS p8z77-V LK doesn't look so good anymore.

whats the price on the MSI and the gigabyte boards?

 

[Shephard]

whats the price on the MSI and the gigabyte boards?

The MSI GD55 is $131 AFTER taxes + free shipping. Regular price is $164 before taxes.

The Gigabyte Z77-D3H is $137 after taxes and shipping. I may be able to price match it for $120 with memory express. The deal says instore only so I am not sure if they will do it.

so $131 MSI and $137 Gigabyte.

Canadian prices. What do you think?

 

[dmoney1980]

I'd get the MSI board just for the fact that you get Intel LAN and realtek sound.

 

[Shephard]

I'd get the MSI board just for the fact that you get Intel LAN and realtek sound.

Does that even matter?

I had both Realtek for my AMD and my current Gigabyte board ethernet. What makes Intel better?

For audio I have Realtek on my Gigabyte and it's so quiet even at max volume. Where as on my old AMD board I think it was AC97 and it could get really loud which was nice.

 

[dmoney1980]

Intel Lan for superior driver support and lower CPU utilization. I'm not sure about ac 97 and what that has to do with realtek, but I hardly see or know of anyone that uses via audio... up to you though

 

[Shephard]

I did not know that thanks dmoney1980.

I am saying I think my AMD board had ac97 audio, I think I am not positive. All I am saying is the quality was good and my headphones could get loud.

The Realtek on my gigabyte board is so quiet. All volumes maxed and headphones. Sometimes parts of movies are too quiet. Games are fine though.

Does anyone have the MSI or Gigabyte board?

 

[coffeejunkee]

MSI made a good effort to increase their quality around the time of the P55 chipset, basically when they started using the black/blue colorscheme. Before that time I wouldn't rate them very highly.

They are especially good in regards to powerconsumption. What's not so good is the unorganized bios and the lack of an offset setting for the vcore. So I would get MSI for htpc or server but not for overclocking. Their lower-end AMD boards don't come recommended, lots of blown vrm's even running stock: http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

Personally I think the Intel NIC is a bit overrated. Maybe useful in a real network under heavy use.

 

[Shephard]

well the review above says the GD55 is a very good overclocker. the only bad thing he said was the mouse in the bios.

good to know they improve their quality.

I want to hear about the Gigabyte too since it's in the same price range.

 

[tweakboy]

MSI is much better than both Gigabyte and ASRock IMO. The GD55 got a good review from HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/11/19/msi_z77agd55_lga_1155_motherboard_review/1.

A good review because I bet it comes with a nice bundle , free full version games and low price.

LOL keep dreaming MSI is a better company then giga or asus LOL
The price difference should tell you whats good whats budget or whats the best.

At the end they are all using the same GPU .... they just make a board to slap it on. The quality of PCB. Next thing I know your going to tell me BFG is better then Asus lol.......

 

[Muse]

Dunno, my MSI nforce3 250 K8N Neo-FSR/ V V2.0 motherboard killed my video card and PSU. Of course, I tossed it.

 

[Shephard]

I think it is hard to get a good answer because everyone has a good or bad experience.

nforce3 is like 2005 and everyone said the bad caps were problems for all the motherboards.

I am considering gd55 because the price and features are very good.

 

[2is]

I'm not a fan of MSI personally. Not a fan of their motherboard utilities, mainly because they don't actually work much of the time (that's been my experience) I was building a budget AMD setup about a year ago and was attracted to the MSI brand because it was a little cheaper than the competition. First board was horrible, returned it for a slightly more expensive one, and it wasn't any better. Spent the extra $20 on an ASUS and was pissed at myself for not doing that to begin with and saving myself a whole lot of time in the processes. I probably spent that amount in gas going back and forth to Fry's

 

[Rvenger]

Only thing that is bad about MSI motherboards is the lack of voltage offset. You can't adjust voltage and expect the voltage to throttle with clock speed. This is a deal breaker for me. This has been going on since the P67 and I doubt they even care about this issue.

 

[Shephard]

Only thing that is bad about MSI motherboards is the lack of voltage offset. You can't adjust voltage and expect the voltage to throttle with clock speed. This is a deal breaker for me. This has been going on since the P67 and I doubt they even care about this issue.

what does this matter? The review said the board overclocks no problem and can clock as high as all the other boards.