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First Look: MSI P55 GD65
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 10th August 2009
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Comments 1 to 26 of 42
Like the color scheme, though all-black still would be my favorite. Layout seems good, OC Genie pretty useless for us here but good for Joe Average who doesn't know/care much about overclocking.
Performance will be inferior due to that crappy SATA/IDE controller chip but it won't be really bad so I think it'll all come down to the price [once more].
There's always writing on boards :P Have you never seen a Gigabyte in the last two years?
All black = boring :P
Tbh, I'd use OC Genie for an everyday PC because I'm lazy. It's the almost same thing as the "Crazy" mode in Asus RoG BIOS' which we've used before.
I do keep telling MSI to stop using JMicron.
So what happens for the vast majority of sensible people who are environmentally, (and safety) concious and switch their PC off at the mains at night? They're supposed to unscrew their case's side panel, delve inside their machine and start faffing about with the motherboard? Every time they switch their PC on?
Doesn't seem very novice friendly to me - why not have it remembered until manually switched off? Or at least have the button on the back panel where it's accessible...
I'll double check when we come to use it but to be honest, how many of us bother to turn it off at the mains? I just put my PC to sleep because it boots faster.
No more standby powerdrain.
And yes, having to physically push a button on the motherboard is a bit silly, just as lighting it is.
Most people don't have their hardware in a test station on their desk, and most dont even have a window for that matter ;-)
And how much more you pay in electric bills for that privilege (PC+Monitor(s)+Speakers+Router+...)?
That would be good for a BitTech article.
If that overclocking "feature" depends on the mains it is useless. Maybe it depends on the MB battery.
Thought this was typical behaviour , for Intel boards at least.
But what we really want to know would be price. Even an educated guess would be appreciated.
I would say, it depends. For me, those 1 minute you say, could easily means 15 minutes (or more) because I usually have a lot of softwares opened at the same time, not to mention that I usually browse the internet with 40+ Opera windows so I don't really like to reopen all of those windows everyday, because each time, I will have to wait for Opera to finish reloading all the caches and page updates and with my 256 kbps connection, it is not something you really like to do everyday, believe me :P So I usually just let it goes to sleep (in STR state) instead of switching it off.
lol I've never understood that line, it can't possibly take that long, I'm on a crappy IDE HDD and both XP and ubuntu 9.04 boot in under 30 seconds (around 20 for ubuntu :)), surely vista can't be that bad on a SATA?
Firstly, Bindibadgi, I can't believe you just set your PC to standby and don't even shutdown let alone switch off at the plug - that's MASSIVELY wasteful! Standby is for lunch-hours or long meetings, not for 15-odd hours a day.
Like Xir and impar, I, and pretty much everyone I know, switch off from the plug.
Just to see how wasteful it is I just powered my PC down & plugged in one of those energy testing devices into the wall socket. My PC, running in idle, burnt 149 watts. I put it in standby mode & it only went down to 118. Now, I appreciate the PC I'm testing it on is a few years old & running XP, so maybe other machines are more effiecient in standby mode, but I doubt if it's that much.
If I did what you did with this PC, assuming working hours from 8am to 6pm, (ignoring days off & such) that's 14 hours wasted on a weekday, 24 at the weekend.
14 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks x 118 watts = 429.5 kilowatt hours (approx)
24 hours x 2 days x 52 weeks x 118 watts = 294.5 kilowatt hours (approx)
That's an absolute minimum total of 724 kilowatt hours, (ignoring holidays etc) burnt for simply for not bothering to bend down and flick a switch, or not wanting to wait 60 seconds for a PC to boot.
Ignoring the cost, (724 kilowatt hours at an aggregated average of 3p each is £21.72 a year - pretty much double if you do the same with both home and work PC's) imagine if everyone in the country did that: How many extra coal-fired power stations need to be up and running just for sixty million people not being arsed to flick the 'off' switch?
I'm not some 'tree-hugger' type eco-mentalist not wanting people to use energy, but just burning it while not even using it 'because you can' is a pretty crass attitude...
(As for 'needing' 40+ webpages running at all times, well, best I don't go there probably...)
At least two of us, apparently. I don't find it sensible to waste all that power for about 1 minute saved each day either. I just go to the kitchen to grab a drink while this beast comes alive when i don't have the patience to sit through the boot process..
Ok, now to the mobo. I like MSI, I brought the 650i Platinum board when I built my brothers PC a few years back and have had absolutely nothing go wrong, it allowed me to push his E6600 to 3GHz and I have had no stability or quality issues at all. I'm liking the layout and colours on this board, will be good to see how it performs.
No that I come to think about it: There was a Sapphire board that was completely white with red connectors... that was awesome!
cant wait for a proper review, I think i might be upgrading once theres some reviews/benchmarks to look at ;)
HOW?!?! I'm a 2 bed flat, new build so all the wiring is new, and I'm paying almost £100 a month!
Im looking forward to the ASUS RoG P55 motherboard. Nice to see SLI and Crossfire still with these boards.
No idea! I thought it was a massive mistake but i checked the meters when the bill came in and they where correct, the cooker hob and heating are gas.
I might try and get through a whole quarter switching it off just to see how much difference it makes.
The more i think about it the more im leaning towards a significant upgrade in the very near future hopefully more info on the nxt gen gpu will be out by then
Seeing the 'quote' button perplekks, the 'edit' button appears to be hiding from me...
HourBeforeDawn, you're absolutely right mate. I wasn't trying to drill into Bindibadgi, (honest!) just make the point that it all adds up over time and with numbers of people - which is something that most people don't really consider.
Boy 4rm Oz, I understand what you're saying, but PC's use a lot more energy in standby than TV's and leaving my PC on standby when not using it would power your 500w TV 24hrs a day for a month solid, (and cost AUS $43.25) - which is a little more than some momentary 'surge' once a year...
I understand it's not huge sums of money we're talking about, but it's not really about the money is it - although I'd still rather £20 was in my pocket than my electric company's. Besides, how many people go to work while purposely leaving the kitchen sink tap running all day? It's essentially the same thing.
Anyway, no more lecturing from me. :)
And if the OC button doesn't use the CMOS battery to retain it's memory then I still think it's stupid. And in the wrong place.
The white Sapphire board was gorgeous - lets have a little style and flair at least because it can be afforded!
A PC on standby or sleep is all of a few watt, and if you're that concerned about every watt used: WHY ARE YOU OVERCLOCKING?? Burning an OC'd, overvolted PC for several hours surely uses as much as leaving it on overnight on standby.
Anyway, I'm still double checking about the settings - power thing. I could be wrong and was mis-informed.