nVidia GeForce GTX 480M, The King of Notebook GPU

source: hothardware.com
Lately, it seems like Desktop Replacement notebooks don't get any respect, at least in our humble opinion. The trend for thin and light mobile computing is massive these days, with good reason. However, there is a market and usage model for these beefier, significantly more robust machines the deliver the multimedia horsepower, gaming prowess and a general computing experience usually found in a desktop, but in a form factor that can easily be moved from room to room and a variety of environments. Take the use case of a Home Theater PC, for example. Instead of an emaciated media streamer, current generation Desktop Replacement notebooks can connect to a stereo media receiver or HDTV over HDMI and offer a ton more gaming and HD video performance. Drop in a USB wireless keyboard/mouse and media center remote and you're set. And that's not to mention the wireless HDMI technologies coming to market in the very near future that will enable coffee table control from across the room. You get the idea. There's a market niche' for the Desktop Replacement notebook, one that most power users can appreciate, but the thin-is-in crowd isn't exactly buzzing about.

It's a similar scenario to what can be observed in the flagship graphics card market segment, where performance bars are set high along with pricing, but the vast majority of sales volume shakes out to more mid-range product offerings. NVIDIA is a market juggernaut in this high-end arena and when it comes to notebook GPUs, the company religiously fires a cadence of mobile graphics product to follow-up their desktop counterpart releases.

In March of this year, NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 480, aka Fermi desktop graphics card and though this new killer GPU is both big and hot, there was little question it offered record-breaking performance. Almost shockingly, only a calendar quarter later, they're now ready with that card's notebook-targeted variant, the GeForce GTX 480M. We have one of the very first notebooks to hit the market in-house with the new GeForce GTX 480M under its hood. Fittingly, NVIDIA turned to Clevo to ODM a machine that would house their new mobile gaming frame-rate crusher and it took residence in the Clevo D900F quite comfortably.

GeForce GTX 480M Urban Assault Vehicle - Clevo's 17.1" D900 Gaming Notebook

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M Notebook Graphics Processor Specifications & Features

GPU Engine Specs:

CUDA Cores	352
Gigaflops	598
Graphics Clock (MHz)	425 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	18.7
Thermal Design Power	100 Watts TDP

Memory Specs:

Memory Clock (MHz)	600MHz (2400MHz Data Rate)
Memory Interface Width	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	76.8

Feature Support:

NVIDIA SLI®-ready	2-Way
NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready	Yes
NVIDIA PureVideo® Technology	HD
NVIDIA PhysX™-ready	Yes
NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology	Yes
Microsoft DirectX	11
OpenGL	3.2
Bus Support	PCI-E 2.0
Certified for Windows 7	Yes

Display Support:

Maximum Digital Resolution	2560x1600
Maximum VGA Resolution	2048x1536

As is the case with ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5870, the GeForce GTX 480M is much more akin to NVIDIA's mid-range desktop GPU, rather than the 480-CUDA core equipped GeForce GTX 480 desktop chip. In fact, if you look closely at the specs, you'll note that the GeForce GTX 480M is in reality a clocked-down version of the GeForce GTX 465. Whereas the GeForce GTX 465's core speed is 607MHz, the GTX 480M's core speed is 425MHz, though both chips employ 352 CUDA cores. The GeForce GTX 480M's memory interface speed (data rate) has also been scaled down a bit from 3206MHz on the desktop GeForce GTX 465 chip, to 2400MHz for the notebook-ready GeForce GTX 480M.

The net result is a notebook GPU solution that is currently unmatched in terms of high level specifications versus competitive notebook graphics chips, but also draws a lot less power than the nearest desktop equivalent chip in NVIDIA's line-up. TDP for the GTX 480M is 100 Watts, versus the faster clocked desktop version GeForce GTX 465 at 200 Watts. In comparison, AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 5870 has a 50 Watt TDP and offers a higher texel fill rate (28 Gtexels/sec versus 18.7 for the GTX 380M) but less memory bandwidth (64GB/sec versus 76.8GB/sec for the GTX 480M). But enough with the speeds and feeds, let's give you a closer look at the goods.

To say the Clevo D900F is a desktop replacement notebook would be an understatement. The machine is based on a 17.1-inch display and weighs in at nearly 12 pounds (11.9 to be exact) of pure badassedness. This notebook is really a desktop machine in notebook skins and is actually built upon Intel's X58 Express chipset and with a standard LGA 1366 CPU socket under the hood. It's bulky for sure and you can't stay untethered from the wall for very long, but if you really want your gaming rig to follow you around your domicile, this machine definitely serves up quality and performance.

The fit and finish of the D900F is excellent and it comes with a myriad of connectivity options including HDMI and mini-Display Port outputs, 4 USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, an Express Card slot, SD/SDHC Flash card slot and of course Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi and modem networking capabilities. The D900F has a full sized keyboard with numpad, a spacious touchpad and high gloss, almost "urethane-like" finish to it that does attracts smears but polishes up easier than most notebooks with a quick swipe of a soft cloth.

Caution High Temperature Parts - Ya think?

Under this glossy exterior is where all the magic happens however and once the magic gets revved up you know keeping it all cool took some creative engineering. In this case, three barrel or "squirrel cage" fans, as they are commonly known, cool an elaborate network of copper heat pipes and fine-pitched finned radiator heatsinks. Then fans draw air in underneath the system and push it out over the heatsinks. The far right side assembly in the shot above is in place to cool the CPU, while the other two fans cool a pair of heatsinks/pipes that keep the GPU cool. With a 100 Watt TDP chip in a notebook, you need this sort of exotic cooling.

Left: GPU, Chipset, Core i7 - Center: NVIDA's Mammoth GeForce GTX 480M - Right: Intel X58 Chipset

What's perhaps even more surprising is that this GeForce GTX 480M MXM module came equipped with a full 2GB of GDDR5 memory on board. As you can see, the rest is a fairly organized and cleanly laid-out design, with X58 system controller and memory in the middle, feeding the two data-hungry beast processors to either side of them. Excuse the thermal paste on the Core i7 940 chip. We figured you've seen one of those before and we wanted to leave the application in tact.

For testing purposes, we've focused our system cross-reference numbers on two primary machines, both with somewhat different configurations but directly competitive GPU (NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480M and AMD's ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870). As a result, the view here is not a direct correlation but rather a reference point for you to consider. In our gaming test, systems are heavily GPU-dependent, so the emphasis on other subsystem components and the CPU is much less pronounced. In these tests, we have assembled as close to an "apples-to-apples" comparison as we could deliver, given the test systems available. For the PCMark Vantage, we've provided one additional reference system to give you a general view of system performance relative to Intel's previous generation CPU architecture.

HotHardware's Test Systems A quick look at reference systems and specifications

Eurocom M98U XCaliber Core 2 Extreme QX9300 (2.53GHz) 8GB DDR3-1333 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M 120GB SSD Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Asus G73JH-A1 Core i7 720QM 2.8GHz Turbo Mode 8GB DDR3-1333 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 2X500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Clevo D900F Intel Core i7 940 2.93GHz (Turbo Mode Disabled) 6GB DDR3-1333 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M 2X320GB 7200RPM Hard Drive Windows 7 Ultimate x64

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The CPU-Z and GPU-Z shots we have for you below show our dynamic duo in action, though the Core i7 940 processor in this notebook is throttled down in idle mode.

As you can see in the left screen capture, the Core i7 940 stock frequency identified in the spec field is 2.93GHz though its multiplier has been dropped to 12 idling on the desktop here. In the right-hand shot, details of the GeForce GTX 480M can be seen, with its 352 unified shaders, 32 ROPs, 256-bit memory bus width and a whopping 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

Futuremark PCMark Vantage Synthetic General Purpose Application Performance

This benchmark suite creates a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of general purpose computing workloads, including HDTV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, in order to take advantage of the additional resources offered by multi-core processors. This is the only benchmark in this article, however, that doesn't really stress the graphics processor much. Regardless, we'll offer this metric in order to set a baseline for overall system performance of the Clevo D900F notebook configuration we tested.

This test result is one you should take note of, just for a frame of reference. Bear in mind that the CPU, chipset and memory platform architecture of the Clevo D900F is that of a standard Intel X58 chipset-based system, while the Asus G73, for example, is built upon a standard notebook architecture based on the Intel PM55 Express chipset. As a result, there's no question the Clevo D900 has a distinct advantage in terms of its CPU and system memory bandwidth. However, in the heavily GPU-intensive, high resolution gaming benchmarks as we'll be covering in the pages ahead, the D900's system-level advantages would only amount to a few percentage point gain at best and perhaps in some cases where the GPU is the limiting performance factor, no measurable gain at all.

Next we fired up 3DMark Vantage, which also has a bit more dependency on CPU performance, since it does have a module in the test suite specifically for software based rendering. Regardless, since this test is so widely known, we thought it made sense to throw it into the mix. From here on out, we'll be dialing up the eye candy full tilt on real game titles, which will place virtually all the emphasis on the GPUs being tested.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Vantage

The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, is specifically bound to Windows Vista-based systems because it uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10, which y isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, in addition to support for the latest PC hardware.

Here the GeForce GTX 480M-infused notebook punches out a roughly 20% higher 3DMark score versus the Mobility Radeon HD 5870-enabled Asus G73 notebook. Though the NVIDIA GPU has its PhysX advantage in this test as well and again, we'd caution in this test that there is a system-level advantage factored into the scores. So, we'll journey on to real-world, GPU-intensive game tests next.

The Unigine Heaven Benchmark v2.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark, when run in DX11 mode, also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion), and it also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering. In other, non-geek speak lingo, cutting-edge DX11 graphics are on display in this test.

In this test, we've set the Unigine engine to employ a moderate level of tessellation effects when rendering its scenes. Tessellation functions are a strong suite for NVIDIA's Fermi architecture and in general NVIDIA's tessellation engine in GeForce GTX 400 series GPUs is significantly stronger than that of AMD's Radeon HD 5000 series. Though this test only employs a moderate level of tessellation, the GeForce GTX 480M offered ~ 25 - 30% higher frame rates versus the AMD's fastest mobile GPU currently.

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X DX10.1 Flight Simulator Benchmark

H.A.W.X.

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is an aerial warfare video game that takes place during the time of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Players have the opportunity to take the throttle of over 50 famous aircrafts in both solo and 4-player co-op missions, and take them over real world locations and cities in photo-realistic environments created with the best commercial satellite data.

H.A.W.X. is more of a straight-up DirectX 10 title and AMD specifically spent time tuning it for its DX10.1 rendering path as a showcase for their early lead in the technology. As a result, this specific benchmark shows a much tighter spread with only a minor, frankly negligible edge afforded to the new GeForce GTX 480M.

Far Cry 2 is the sort of test that separates the men from the boys, or so to speak, when it comes to crushing GPU performance. We dialed this test up high to watch the GeForce GTX 480M sweat a bit.

Far Cry 2 DirectX Gaming Performance

FarCry 2

Like the original, FarCry 2 is one of the more visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Courtesy of the Dunia game engine developed by Ubisoft, FarCry 2's game-play is enhanced by advanced environment physics, destructible terrain, high resolution textures, complex shaders, realistic dynamic lighting, and motion-captured animations. We benchmarked the notebooks in this article with a fully patched version of FarCry 2, using one of the built-in demo runs recorded in the "Ranch" map.

In reality, the Clevo D900 and GeForce GTX 480M didn't sweat these test settings much at all and maintained completely playable frame rates even at 1080p HD resolutions with 8X AA settings enabled. At lower 720p resolution with higher AA settings, the GTX 480M offered 60% higher frame rates. However, at 1080p res with lower 2X AA image quality settings, the gap was only measured at a 36% advantage for the new NVIDIA mobile GPU. It's apparent here, that the GeForce GTX 480M's higher memory bandwidth is coming into play and perhaps to a smaller extent its larger 2GB frame buffer as well.

For notebook GPUs, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat could very well be "the new Crysis". It was punishing on both of our competitive notebook configurations.

S. T. A. L. K. E. R. - Call of Pripyat DX11 Gaming Performance

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Call of Pripyat is the third game in the STALKER series and employs DX11 rendering in its game engine. This benchmark is based on one of the locations found within the latest game. Testing includes four stages and utilizes various weather conditions, as well as different time of day settings. It offers a number of presets and options, including multiple versions of DirectX, resolutions, antialiasing, etc. We conducted our testing with DX11 enabled, various resolution settings, and different image quality levels. Tessellation was also enabled as well.

With the built-in game test and benchmark tool dialed up to 1920X1080, frame rates for either GPU are basically unplayable. That said, the GeForce GTX 480M offered 25% higher frame rates in general and over 30% higher frame rates with higher levels of AA turned on.

Dirt 2 is another game title that AMD has spent a lot of time showcasing, so it should be interesting to see how the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 stacks up against the GeForce GTX 480M in this DX11-based racing sim.

Dirt 2 {Title} DX11 Gaming and Racing Simulation

Dirt 2

Dirt 2 was released in September 2009 and provides a sequel to the original Colin McRae: Dirt racing game. Codemasters delayed the PC version of Dirt 2 so that they could enhance their Ego engine with DirectX 11 effects. The engine displays certain bleeding-edge rendering technologies like hardware-driven tessellation, which is used for a more detailed audience, tessellated clot as well as a more realistic water that has lifelike ripples, waves and splash effects. DX11 also affords the game more impressive post-rendering motion blur, filtered soft shadows and lighting effects. Dirt 2 is also a solid benchmark for multi-core processors since DX11 is designed to take advantage of multi-threaded system architectures.

With Dirt 2 we see a relatively similar performance profile for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M and the Clevo D900F gaming notebook. The GTX 480M clocked in with roughly a 30% performance advantage over the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 but there was a decidedly different picture painted with respect to anti-aliasing performance. At higher 8X AA settings, the gap narrowed to around a 22% edge for the GTX 480M. Regardless, all settings we tested for the new notebook-targeted NVIDIA power plant were well within playable frame rate limits.

When we considered that the new GeForce GTX 480M notebook graphics processor has a specified TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 100 Watts, we almost cringed at the thought of measuring battery life on this Clevo machine. Call us masochists but we're suckers for good data. We even put the machine on the other end of a power meter, just to get a sense of power draw off the D900F's rather honkin' large power brick.

Battery Life and Power Consumptions Testing with Battery Eater Pro

The Clevo D900F's battery is no joke. It's a 12-cell 6600mAh smart lithium block that would otherwise power a standard notebook for a week (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration). We've compared the machine to a few more notebooks we have in our battery life database and the D900F brought up the rear by 5 minutes less available time. In fact, the 9-cell powered Asus G73 offered 10 minutes more battery life with a battery that is 33% smaller. Finally, we should note that while this test is a "worst case scenario" that actually exercises the GPU continuously, the D900F also down-clocks the GPU a bit on its battery power setting (as do the other systems in the above performance graph).
Of power consumption, heat and noise -
So how much does this machine draw under full load? In short, a lot; as in almost crazy amounts of power for a notebook. After all, the D900F is pretty much a full-fledged desktop PC stuff into a notebook form factor. We measured the machine's power brick drawing 135 Watts at idle on the desktop and a little over 200 Watts under full gaming load. Obviously, this isn't what you'd call a "laptop," that is unless you prefer your lap rather uncomfortably warm. The D900F, with the GeForce GTX 480M within the confines of its notebook shell, needs to breath freely on a desk or table top. In fact, the machine's intake vents on the underside of the chassis are easily blocked, cutting off air-flow, if you place this notebook on your lap even for a moment, causing its cooling fans to spool up to much higher speeds.

Speaking of those fans, the D900F, at idle on the desktop, is a reasonably quite machine for a DTR notebook, but under heavy load, its cooling system is noticeably louder than many notebooks of this class that we've tested. We wouldn't say it's dramatically louder but enough that if you're looking for quieter machine of this class, you definitely will want to consider something with less juice coursing through its veins.

Performance Summary: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480M mobile GPU turned out to be the fastest notebook graphics processor we've seen to date, which is no surprise considering NVIDIA currently holds the single-GPU title on the desktop front as well. The GeForce GTX 480M was significantly faster in nearly all gaming benchmarks we performed with the one exception of H.A.W.X., where the chip clocked in barely ahead of the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 by a negligible margin. In every other case, from cutting-edge DirectX 11 titles like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat and Dirt 2, to demanding DX10 titles like Far Cry 2, the GeForce GTX 480M was on the order of 30% faster on average, with much larger gains shown in Far Cry 2, where the chip was up to 60% faster than its counterpart from AMD. All of this performance, however, does come at a cost of power consumption, heat and a bit of noise; which also was expected of course. The GeForce GTX 480M's thermal footprint (100W TDP) is also 2X that of the Mobility Radeon HD 5870.

Taking stock in the final analysis of the NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 480M, we're not shy about falling back on a tired, old cliche'. The GeForce GTX 480M notebook GPU "is what it is." This mobile GPU is a direct derivative of the desktop GeForce GTX 400 series, specifically the GeForce GTX 465 with its 352 CUDA cores, but with aggressive power gating when idle and top core clock speed 180MHz+ lower than its desktop-targeted sibling. Comparatively, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is more akin to the Radeon HD 5750 on the desktop for AMD, with it's 700 stream processors. Whereas AMD delivers less than half the GPU in their flagship mobile part versus their top desktop chip, NVIDIA is delivering a device enabled with 75% of its compute resources but with a dramatically slower clock speed.

The net-net here is that NVIDIA's new mobile chip is decidedly bigger, stronger and faster but also seriously more power-hungry and more challenging to cool. Comparing the two offerings is kind of like comparing a punishing, up-the-gut running fullback to a wide receiver; both get the job done, just in decidedly different ways. The fullback might need to take every third play off but the wide receiver might get drilled into the dirt by an outside linebacker, on a short route. In notebook speak, one of these GPUs is built for longer term, moderate-duty workloads, while the other is built for shorter bursts of intensity. Though if the machine is tethered to a wall outlet, you don't have to worry about taking many plays off, you just have to contend with a bit more heat and noise.

All told, the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M is an impressive notebook graphics processor that's not for the faint of heart. If you're not concerned with being DX11 capable and don't mind a multi-GPU setup, there is better performance to be found in a previous generation GeForce GTX285 SLI-enabled notebook or the just announced but yet untested combination of Mobility Radeon HD 5870s in CrossFire we just showed you here. In addition, we've also been informed that build-outs from Eurocomm and others will also include a pair of GTX 480M chips in SLI as well. However, costs scale up significantly with dual-GPU notebook designs and there is always added complexity with multi-GPU setups from a software standpoint. So, in short, if you're the type that is a die-hard NVIDIA fan or you just want the fastest single notebook GPU configuration you can find that also supports the latest in DX11 rendering features, then the GeForce GTX 480M and the Clevo D900F is for you, provided you don't mind a notebook that draws power like a desktop PC. Then again, in this class of machines, that's why they're called "desktop replacement" notebooks.

Fastest DX11 mobile GPU currently Nearly 2X as fast as Mobility Radeon HD 5870 in some cases 3D Vision Ready Strongest Tessellation engine for DX11 titles	High power consumption High 100W TDP for a notebook chip Previous gen SLI/Crossfire solutions offer better performance but lack DX11

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MSI Big Bang Trinergy

source: anandtech.com
MSI Big Bang - Trinergy

What we really wanted to show you at this point was MSI's BIG Bang Fuzion, the eagerly anticipated motherboard based on Lucid's Hydra technology. Fuzion is not quite ready yet unfortuantely. In the meantime, we've been sent another board to review from MSI's Big Bang series called the P55 Trinergy. Not quite as exciting on paper, the Trinergy is basically the MSI P55 GD-80 on steroids. The testosterone in this case is supplied by a slew of tantalum capacitors and overclocking gadgetry topped off with NVIDIA's NF200 multiplexing features to provide additional PCI-E lanes for multi GPU setups.

MSI's angle for these additions is that they want to be seen as a high-end vendor, so they are ramping board features in a bid to be seen as a bona-fide entity that can deliver class leading products. One can't begrudge the aspiration, although high-end typically means high price too. In keeping with that tradition, the Trinergy has an MSRP of $349. Yes, that's right, $349 for a P55 board! That's the kind of money that will buy you a bells and whistles X58 motherboard that can do CrossFire X or Triple SLI natively. Not to mention that X58 boards in this price range tout similar overclocking centric features. We don't think much more needs to be said really.

The primary focus will be gaming performance in multi card configurations against other P55 boards and of course the elephant in the room called X58. We're going to stick with the article format we first introduced in the MSI-GD 65 review. You get everything you need in terms of quirks and merits right here on the front page together with the final conclusion.

Overview/Conclusion

Those of you that read our MSI GD-65 review will recall a couple of things that Gary highlighted as needing improvement. First of all, sleep mode recovery at higher BCLKs not working on the GD-65 (190 BCLK and over). We're happy to say the Trinergy does not share this trait. S3 sleep mode recovered all the way to 215 BCLK (manual overclocking) for us on this board, which is as high as anyone will likely need it to work.

One of the more serious issues on the GD-65 was also the inability for OC Genie to work properly with some of our lab PSUs. It seems things have improved on this front too; repeated tests on the Trinergy have not shown any issues with our PSUs thus far. While we're on the subject of OC Genie, MSI's voltage defaults for automated overclocking routines came in very close to what we actually needed while using manual settings. Automated overclocking took our CPUs to 197 BCLK x 19 (3743MHz effective) with minimal fuss. This makes things quick and easy for those of you who don't like fiddling around with the finer sides of the BIOS; you just push one button and the board does the rest.

Our major concerns during the test period centered on MSI's bundled overclocking software misapplying and misreporting voltages. This is a situation that has plagued all of MSI's P55 boards to date. We finally received a fix early this week and are happy to report that the problem (on the Trinergy at least) has been isolated and "fixed".

Memory overclocking was another area needing attention; again we roll back to the GD-65 exhibiting similar issues. The problems mostly involved memory sub-timings failing to respond to manual changes and misreporting the actual value. MSI tells us they have managed to isolate this problem and should have a BIOS fix for it shortly.

Gallery: MSI Trinergy

Lastly, we're still seeing a huge Vdroop enabled offset for processor VCore. Full processor load voltage is sometimes 0.13V below what you've set in BIOS (Voffset is around 0.03V while Vdroop is 0.1V). Most boards that follow Intel guidelines manage to keep this figure to around 0.05V, which one would expect the Trinergy and its over-engineered PWM circuit is perfectly capable of. The only option on the current BIOS for overclocking is to disable Vdroop, which results in voltage being raised by around 0.03V under full load.

CPU overclocking results were identical to all the other P55 boards when using the same components, so there's nothing special to report there, other than the board being a little harder to set up due to the memory related issues we pointed out above.

In short, everything else seems to work okay apart from a few niggles with regards to layout and accessibility. MSI choosing to go with the standard ATX form factor does limit access to some of the onboard buttons and headers when running a GPU in the last slot. Luckily, the board recovers well from failed overclocks so we did not find ourselves in a position where restricted access to the CMOS clear button became a hindrance.

Single GPU performance suffers by around 1-3% in most games due to the NF200, although we don't think that anyone who actually buys one of these boards will buy it to run a single GPU. Surprisingly, the multi-GPU results in our benchmarks were on par in places with X58 and only slightly behind in others.

A couple of the bundled extras are a nice touch, like the overclocking panel that allows on-the-fly changes to voltages and BCLK together with monitoring options. These features point towards MSI's intended audience for this board, namely the benchmarking crowd. The real plus point for MSI is that they now have boards to cater to all audiences, from the budget oriented to the spare-no-expense gaming and overclocking enthusiast.

In chasing enthusiast hearts, we hope MSI pays lots of attention towards improving and retaining board functionality on all levels. If there's one complaint users generally make towards MSI, it's been the lack of polish with regards to BIOS functionality or the workings of bundled software. Things are improving but can still be off pace when compared to out-of-the-box functionality provided by other vendors at times.

Specifically with regards to the Trinergy, we'll finish off by saying we like some of what MSI is trying to do, but can't help feeling that what's on offer would be best served on an X58 refresh rather than P55, especially at the asking price.

Performance Summary

Non-3D benchmark scores (2D) are identical to the MSI GD-65.

Triple card performance with GeForce 275 does show scaling on P55, but as expected, X58 pulls ahead in certain situations.

For this test we measured AC power consumption from the wall while using the same set of components on all boards. All power saving features were turned on, with OS software installed where necessary to give maximum power saving at stock operating frequency on our i7 870 CPU. Real power consumption will probably be a few percent lower than what the AC wall meter reports but as we're going apples to apples here, the percentage of change is the important factor.

MSI's power saving features and software turn in class leading performance under heavy load. This is impressive considering the Trinergy has the NF200 in tow. However, we doubt anyone purchasing this board is overly interested in saving a few watts of power.

Overclocking

There are no real changes here either; these CPUs hit the same speeds on almost all P55 boards we have tested to date.

8GB memory over 1600MHz+ is made a little tricky on MSI boards once you select the "Advanced" DRAM timings menu. All sub-timings must be changed manually by the end-user as frequency is increased. Other vendor boards from the likes of ASUS, BIOSTAR, Gigabyte, and EVGA don't have this problem and it would be nice if MSI would follow suit.

Our 750 retail CPU is frequency limited between 4~4.1GHz unfortunately, and it seems no board can extract anything further from this processor regardless of tinkering with settings. Our 870 can go over 4.2GHz if cooling permits but we think 4.2GHz is more than enough. Both processors needed around 1.39VTT to hold 8GB of memory at 2000MHz. VCore for both processors was set to around 1.37V under full load, while VDIMM was set to 1.65V. All other rail voltages were left at defaults and did not affect stability in any way.

One thing to note, MSI needs to work on their Vdroop function in BIOS. With Vdroop enabled, the voltage sag is ridiculous; we measured around 0.15V between the set voltage and full load voltage. Given the fact MSI are using an over-engineered PWM circuit, we think this figure can be reduced substantially. If you disable Vdroop, the voltage actually rises somewhat under full load conditions by around 0.03V or so, which is something to take note of.

Once you get your head around the current BIOS quirks, the board is perfectly stable. S3 resume also worked fine (215+ BCLK), which is good news for those of you that utilize sleep states.

Board Features

Today's test sample is the MSI P55 Big Bang - Trinergy and has an MSRP of $349.

MSI P55 Trinergy
Market Segment	P55 Overclocking Enthusiast
CPU Interface	LGA-1156
CPU Support	LGA-1156 i5/i7 Series of Processors
Chipset	Intel P55 Express Chipset
BCLK Speeds	100~600MHz, in 1 Mhz steps
Uncore Frequency	Fixed at 16x or 18x according to CPU model class
PCIe Speeds	Auto, 90MHz-190MHz in 1MHz increments (100MHz stock)
Core Voltage	0.9V ~ 2.1V in 0.00625V increments
CPU Vdroop Compensation	High/Low
CPU Clock Multiplier	Dependant on Processor, all available multipliers supported
DRAM Voltage DDR3	Auto, 0.93V ~ 2.43V in 0.001V ~ 0.07V increments (1.53V base)
DRAM Timing Control	tCL, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, + 20 additional timings
DRAM Command Rate	Auto, 1N & 2N
PCH Voltage	Auto, 0.45V ~ 1.95V in .015V increments, 1.05V Base
CPU VTT (Uncore) Voltage	Auto, 0.482V ~ 2.092V in .08V ~.016V increments, 1.05V Base
CPU PLL Voltage	Auto, 0.20V ~ 2.40V in 0.01V ~ 0.40V increments, 1.80V Base
Memory Slots	Four 240-pin DDR3 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered DDR3 Memory to 16GB Total
Expansion Slots	3 - PCIe 2.0 x16, PEG slot 1 @ x16. PEG2 @ x16 (x8 when all PEG slots filled), PEG 3 @ x8 2 - PCIe X1 (1 MSI supplied audiocard dedicated) 2 - PCI Slot 2.2
Onboard SATA/RAID	6x SATA 3.0Gbps Ports - Intel Chipset Hot Plug and NCQ Support, RAID 0, 1, 5 RAID 0+1 Support & Intel Matrix Technology Support 4 JMicron JMB322
Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394	14 USB 2.0 ports (8) I/O Panel, 6 via brackets 2x 1394a Ports - (1) I/O Panel, (1) via header
Onboard LAN	Realtek RTL 8111DL X2 (PCI/e)
Onboard Audio	Realtek ALC 888S - 7.1 Channel with software level support for EAX 5.0 and Creative TruStudio PC)
Power Connectors	ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EPS 12V
I/O Panel	1 x PS/2 Keyboard 2 x eSATA (JMicron JMB362) 2 x IEEE 1394 2 x RJ45 8 x USB 2.0/1.1
Fan Headers	1 CPU + 4 Additional Headers
Fan Control	CPU Fan speed Control Via BIOS&OS (temp/speed), additional fan headers have 3 step speed control only (via BIOS and OS software)
Package Contents	HDD Cable X1, SATA Cable X6, SATA Power Cable X2, ESATA Cable X1, I/O Panel X1, User Manuals, Driver DVD X1, SLI Bridge X3 & CF Bridge X1, USB Bracket X1, Voltag Check Cables X4.
BIOS Revisions Used	A7580IMS.110, A7580IMS.111 & A7580_T1.121
Warranty	3 year standard, (8 years if purchased during limited pre-order promotion)

MSI includes a full featured set of components like the Realtek ALC 889 HD audio codec on a dedicated plug in soundcard (which can only be used in the primary PCI-EX1 slot), dual Realtek PCI-E RTL8111D Gigabit LAN controllers, Via VT6315N 1394a chipset, powered JMB363 eSATA/USB ports on the I/O panel, and full support for the Core i7/i5 S1156 processor series.

MSI includes an extensive accessories bundle. You get the standard rear I/O panel cover along with 1 x IDE cable, 6 x SATA cables, 2 x SATA power cables, 3 x SLI and 1 x CF bridges, OC Dashboard, a USB bracket, an informative manual, quick installation guide, OC Genie guide, Winki Guide, and a software DVD.

Of note in the software package is Winki. This is a Linux-based operating system similar to ASUS' ExpressGate. Unlike ExpressGate, you boot Winki off the DVD or off a USB thumb drive once it is set up. Winki includes Open Office, Photo Viewer, Instant Messaging, Web, and Skype functionality without booting into your primary OS. A quick overview of the bundled Control Center overclocking software is available here. Earlier versions of this software had a tendency to misreport voltages which made it a minefield to use. MSI released an updated version last week that fixes 99% of these problems on the Trinergy and now appears safe to use.

MSI have gone the route of making the Realtek ALC 889 based soundcard a plug-in module, which utilizes the first (dedicated) PCI-E x1 slot on the board. S/PDIF, Toslink optical, and six 3.5mm jack outputs are located on the rear of the card. Creative EAX 5.0, Creative Alchemy, and THX TruStudio PC software are included on the driver DVD (there is no Creative hardware on the soundcard). The soundcard will only work in the first PCI-E x1 slot, so is not a device that you'll be able to use on other motherboards in the future (unless supported by MSI). The primary PCI-E x1 slot does function as a normal slot, so is not limited solely to MSI's bundled soundcard. While we're on the subject of sound, we take this opportunity include a DPC Latency screenshot below for those of you interested in such matters.

Finally, a handy little overclocking panel is included that allows on-the-fly adjustment of BCLK and voltages, as well as providing temperature and voltage monitoring options. The rear of this panel is magnetized allowing it to be attached to the front of suitable PC cases or benchmarking tables. The unit connects to the board via a dedicated port on the rear I/O panel and optionally USB for monitoring purposes (two 1.5m leads are included). No software is needed for connection or use of the device, although MSI does provide pop-up software that shows clocks speeds on the desktop when a change is made (USB connection required).

CPU Fan speed, CPU IHS temperature, CPU PWM temperature, and system temperature monitoring functions are available providing a small level of usefulness to desktop systems. We think the primary audience for this device is benchmarking fanatics who use subzero cooling to chase scores. We found OC Dashboard worked pretty well, although CPU VID was displayed as a positive offset from 0V upwards rather than the actual voltage (other rails reported values fine). It's probably wise to use a multimeter connected to the voltage rail you are adjusting while using OC Dashboard so you can see exactly what is going on.

BIOS

The BIOS layout is very good and offers a significant amount of settings for overclocking. MSI's Cell Menu is where all the action takes place with a wide variety of adjustments including the CPU Core, PLL, VTT, PCH, VDimm, and VRef voltages. Each of the settings is very granular and offers just about any range that a user could want or need. Clock and PCI-E skews are not available but generally are not needed in this range.

One extremely nice function that MSI includes is that frequency and timing changes are directly visible in the BIOS when values are being changed. Overclocking profiles can be saved, loaded, and individually named in one of the available six slots. One item missing from the board is some type of BIOS backup or redundancy system that we find on the ASUS, Gigabyte, and EVGA boards in this price range.

MSI's BIOS-level fan speed control options are an improvement over other P55 boards, but not perfect. Users can select a target CPU fan speed between 40 and 70°C while setting a minimum fan speed between 0% and 87.5% in 12.5% increments. The three system fan headers are only capable of speed changes with settings at 50, 75, or 100%. Unfortunately, they cannot be controlled by system temperature changes.

Gallery: MSI Trinergy - BIOS

Board Layout

It's pleasing to see MSI sticking with their blue/black theme for the Trinergy. Most of the layout is identical to the GD80/GD-65 motherboards. Notable changes over the lower priced boards from MSI's P55 series are the addition of the NF200 bridge chip and the liberal use of tantalum capacitors (other than the supplied soundcard). Every conventional can type capacitor has been replaced with tantalum types for decoupling, providing lower impedance at high frequencies and also making the board less prone to capacitor related failures long-term.

MSI's confidence in this design is such that they offering an 8 year warranty promotion (non-transferable) on the Trinergy if you pre-order now and register within 30 days. Most enthusiasts will probably be rid of the board well before the warranty expires so they are unlikely to call upon it outside a couple of years. Still, it's good to see this level of confidence (providing MSI does not go the way of the Dodo in the meantime). Normal orders outside MSI's promotion will be subject to a standard 3 year warranty period.

All of the power rails are suitably over-engineered at first approximation, using eight ~30 amp FETs for CPU VCC. Other primary rails like VTT and VDIMM seem to be capable of supplying 50-60 amps peak each - plenty of overclocking overhead. Each of these rails support dynamic power saving which switches off phases to reduce power consumption in light loading conditions. Most overclocking enthusiasts tend to switch off power saving features generally and it appears MSI's engineers do the same thing when you enable OC Genie. The bundled Control Center software also makes some of the power saving menus unavailable when the system is overclocked. We guess this is a good way of ensuring users don't encounter random system crashes when the system is overclocked.

Onboard cooling service is provided by solid screw mounted heatsinks, with the CPU PWM and NF200 sections linked together with a heatpipe. Fin height does not infringe on larger CPU coolers and should allow heatsink mounting in north-south or east-west configurations easily. As always, if overclocking you'll want to keep system temperatures in check and use a fan to cool the heatsink assembly. A small fan pointing at any section of the heatsink should suffice in most situations as the heatpipe seems to transfer heat very well between each portion of the heatsink.

The topmost slot is PCI-E x1 and is configured to accept MSI's bundled soundcard. The blue PCI-E slots placed below are all strung from the NF200 chipset, supporting x16 bandwidth to the first slot in all configurations. If PCI-E slots two and four are populated, both will run at x16 bandwidth unless the third PEG slot is occupied. If all three PEG slots are populated, the PCI-E slots run at x16-x8-x8 bandwidth. Two PCI slots are placed in between the PCI-E slots, and at least one is available for use when all PCI-E slots are occupied. Spacing for the PCI slots in multi-GPU configurations will hinder airflow somewhat.

The lower edge of the board is home to CMOS clear and OC Genie buttons as well as a TPM, one 1394, and two USB headers. Power, reset, and green power buttons are located at the bottom right hand corner of the board using MSI's favored touch sensitive buttons. To the right you'll find the front panel control header block for power, reset buttons, and activity LEDs.

Do note that if the last PCI-E slot is used, access to all buttons and connectors at the lower edge of the board becomes very limited. The power and reset buttons users can work around by using the front panel header to the same effect, but the CMOS Clear button may become inaccessible depending upon the type of GPU cooler employed. MSI would have done well to include a rear panel CMOS-clear button just in case things go awry.

In the lower right hand corner we find an IDE connector, six black right angled SATA ports (Intel P55 PCH), and finally four blue SATA ports (JMicron JMB322) placed in vertical orientation. Unlike the MSI-GD65, the JMicron SATA ports are placed to remain somewhat accessible when GPUs occupy each PCI-E slot.

MSI provides voltage measuring points for all primary rails. A set of leads is included that allows users to plug multimeter leads into the test points for hands free voltage monitoring of each rail. This is the best voltage measurement option we've seen on a board to date. The four DIP switches are 0.1V voltage boost options for CPU VCC and +0.2V for VTT, VDIMM, and PCH rail voltages. The CPU VCC boost is handy in situations where processors are sub-zero cooled and have boot up voltage limits.

The rear I/O panel connection set is comprised of PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse, OC Dashboard connector, 8 x USB 2.0, 2 x ESATA (USB combo), and 2 x RJ45 LAN ports (Realtek RTL8111DL PCI-E).

Testbed Setup

Testbed Setup Overclocking / Benchmark Testbed
Processor	1 x Intel i5-870 ES CPU, 2.93GHz, 8 Threads, 8MB Cache Intel i5-750 Retail, 2.66GHz, 4 Threads, 8MB Cache Intel I7 920 D0, 2.66GHz, 8 Threads, 8MB Cache
CPU Voltage	Various
Cooling	Intel air cooler, Heatkiller 3.0 waterblock, PA120.2 radiator and DDC ultra pump (with Petra top). 1/2 ID tubing for watercooling.
Power Supply	Corsair HX950
Memory	Corsair Dominator GT 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit (X2 for 8GB) G.Skill Perfect Storm 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit
Memory Settings	Various
Video Cards	MSI 275 Lightning (stock clocks)
Video Drivers	nVidia 195.62 WHQL
Hard Drive	Western Digital 7200RPM 1TB SATA 3/Gbps 32MB OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD
Optical Drives	Plextor PX-B900A, Toshiba SD-H802A
Case	Open Test Bed - Dimastech Benching Station Lian-Li V2110
Operating System	Windows 7 64-bit
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We utilized memory kits from Corsair and G.Skill to verify memory compatibility on our test boards. Our OS and primary applications are loaded on the OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD drive and our games operate off the WD Caviar Black 1TB drive. We did a clean install of the OS and applications for each motherboard.

We used Intel's stock cooler for the stock comparison testing, while water-cooling via the superlative Heat Killer 3.0 water block was utilized for overclocking. For graphics duty, we used MSI's 275 Lighting GPUs to provide performance comparisons between boards and to test SLI scaling in our gaming benchmarks.

For our test results we set up each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings. Otherwise all other settings are left on auto. The P55 utilized 8GB of DDR3 (apart from DFI's MI-T36 which is limited to 4GB), while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7-920 and i7-870 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.

We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5-750 stock setup for all system benchmarks (non gaming tests) as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported at a stock BCLK setting of 133. We had early BIOS releases that offered the native 1600 setting but stability was a serious problem and support was pulled for the time being. Performance is essentially the same between the two settings.

Non-3D test results are all identical to the GD-65, so we've not spent too much of our time re-running the same tests for the same numbers. We're not providing a running commentary for that section of benchmarks as there are no discernable performance differences when running each of these boards at the same operating frequency. We've condensed the application tests down to the most important and have put more focus on the gaming side of things for this article given the nature of the board we're reviewing today.

Gaming results

The addition of the NF200 brings Triple SLI or CrossFire possibilities to P55. We've taken the time to compare graphics performance to four other boards. The P55 line-up is comprised of two native PCI-E boards, the DFI M-ITX P55 and also BIOSTAR's TPOWER i55. We've also added EVGA's Classified 200 P55 motherboard, which also utilizes the NF200 to provide additional PCI-E lanes. Unlike MSI's Trinergy, EVGA chose to keep the first PEG slot CPU native (x16 single card bandwidth, x8 when any other PEG slot is used), and routed additional slots via the NF200. Finally, one cannot ignore X58, so we've added EVGA's Classified E760 motherboard to show how P55 stacks up against the native SLI capabilities of the Intel X58 IOH.

Far Cry 2

Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enabled DX10 with AA set to 2x. For dual and triple card SLI we used Ultra high settings with 4xAA and DX10. The in-game benchmark tool is utilized with the Ranch Small level as our test of choice.

Single card performance favors all boards with native PCI-E solutions, leaving the Trinergy trailing by a couple of frames. The X58 pulls ahead in dual and Triple SLI performance in Far Cry 2, while the Trinergy is marginally ahead of the EVGA Classified 200. Note that native P55 operating at x8/x8 on the Biostar shows that x16 bandwidth is not essential for good performance.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU. We crank all options to Ultra, enable AA, and then run the built-in performance benchmark for our result.

The Trinergy puts in a good show in all configurations during this benchmark. We found dual to triple card scaling was limited solely to minimum frame rates in this benchmark. The minimum FPS results were somewhat erratic at times though, showing wild swings between different batches of testing. Generally speaking, Triple SLI gives minimum frame rates in the region of 40 FPS at 1920X1080 resolution. In dual SLI mode, the averages drop to between 16~24 FPS. Single card mode sees minimum frame rates below 5FPS in the worst case scenario at 1920X1080.

Resident Evil 5

For our final game benchmark we decided to add the Resident Evil 5's fixed time demo, running DX10, Ultra settings and 4xAA.

Capcom's engine seems to be CPU bound more than anything else, with all boards landing within a whisker of one another. Even X58 does not seem to show any real advantage in this benchmark.

3D Mark Vantage

For our final Triple SLI test, we thought it would be interesting to confirm scoring potential by looking at how each board fared when faced with the rigorous 3D and CPU tests of 3DMark Vantage using the High preset (1680X1050 resolution).

We expected more of a gap favoring X58 in this benchmark, but it appears the primary bottleneck is created by the GPUs here. Overall, the 3D benchmark scores in this section show that P55 running Triple SLI is not an embarrassment by any means.

System Benchmarks

Sorenson Squeeze 6

We are using Sorenson Squeeze to convert eight AVCHD videos into HD Flash videos for use on websites. This application heavily favors physical core count and processor clock speed.

WinRAR 3.9 x64

This benchmark compresses our AT workload consisting of a main folder that contains 954MB of files in 15 subfolders. The result is a file approximately 829MB in size.

Bibble 5.0

We utilize Bibble Labs' Bibble 5 v2 to convert 50 RAW image files into full size JPEG images with the program's default settings. This program is fully multithreaded and multi-core aware.

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