MSI shows off LGA1166 motherboard

Posted at: 5:12pm 6th March 2009 by Richard Swinburne

G7P55-DC features new LGA1166 socket for budget Nehalem based CPUs with integrated GPUs

The 2009 CeBIT tradeshow is currently on in Hannover, Germany, and while it's quieter than in previous years, we have found some interesting pieces of hardware on show. MSI has motherboards based on Intel's upcoming P55 chipset which uses Intel's new LGA1166 socket. CPUs for this socket will be cheaper versions of the Core i7. They will still be based on the Nehalem core, and so have an integrated memory controller, but be limited, among other things, to dual channel memory.

The board in question is the MSI G7P55-DC. MSI has upped its DrMOS count from six to ten, although in total the board has 15-phase VRM circuitry. This isn't MSI playing the numbers game either, rather, the CPU, GPU, PCI-Express and memory controller needs that much more to power everything. CPUs with non integrated-GPUs are expected to fit in the same socket, just with the display outputs disabled, and the extra phases of power circuitry could make for excellent overclocking.

The board also features four slots of DDR3 for dual channel memory, 'optimised' QPI, and a standard rear I/O with VGA and DVI outputs – not two digital outputs. It's unknown if this is a limitation of the Intel CPUs with integrated GPUs, or if it's specific to the MSI board.

Three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots are also present, and MSI expects the board to support both SLI and CrossFire. In addition there are PCI slots and PCI-Express x1 from the Southbridge chip. As motherboards for Nehalem based CPUs feature only a single chipset, there's more space for PCB designers to play with as regards cooling and component placement.

Three 'Turbo' buttons intermingle with the typical power, reset and Clear CMOS buttons on the PCB. These control MSI’s recently introduced auto overclock feature, which runs an algorithm to automatically overclock the CPU and other features. MSI admits it won’t be as good as a skilled overclocker fine tweaking the values but it’ll get the more inexperienced, or those with limited time, up and running a lot quicker.

MSI couldn't confirm release dates and prices - at this stage, much depends on when Intel is ready with the CPUs.