Big Bang-XPower: A new MSI motherboard announced
by Ian Cutress on May 1, 2010 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Popular motherboard manufacturer MSI has announced the next weapon in their motherboard arsenal - the MSI Big Bang-XPower. Like other second generation X58 motherboards, the XPower will feature SATA 6G and USB 3.0 teamed up with a slew of overclocking features in order to captivate the enthusiast market.
MSI are keen to promote their new 16-phase CPU VRM and liberal use of long-life tantalum capacitors as key selling points. The MSI V-kit is added for voltage monitoring and adjustment of VCore, VTT, DDR and PCH voltages - OC Genie and OC Dashboard are also included.
In terms of audio, an MSI PCI-E 1x card is provided, which utilises Quantum Wave™ Audio processing. This uses THX TruStudio technology and EAX® Advanced HDTM 5.0, adding sonic enhancements to games, as well as music and movies.
MSI are touting this board as the only one THQ endorses for Metro 2033. Somehow we doubt this will be the one selling point that adds into extra sales.
A dedicated website for the XPower has been setup by MSI, combining the Metro 2033 affiliation and general advertising as you would expect for a high-end product.
How this board fares against others for the targeted market of gamers, we will see. However, we have a slight inkling this board will rouse the interest of die-hard overclockers if the power features are as good as MSI are touting.
No information on availability or pricing as of yet - MSI states that Newegg.com and TigerDirect.com are the North American retailers to watch.
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Makaveli - Sunday, May 2, 2010 - link
Is that a SATA 6G marvell controller on a intel chipset board ??If so no thanks i'll wait until intel releases their on native design.
And ESATA > USB 3.0!
Waiting the new board round up i'm sure you writing!
jigglywiggly - Sunday, May 2, 2010 - link
Esata is shit compared to usb 3.0USB has power running through it.
yyrkoon - Sunday, May 2, 2010 - link
Yeah, spoken like a true . . . wanna be Geeksquad employee. Can I be like you ?Makaveli - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
LMAO that was great.Rajinder Gill - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
Yes, it is Marvell I'm afraid. With regards to a board round-up, we're going to look at the high-end boards as a group (there's four inbound). There will be a review of ASRock' X58 Extreme 3 as well..later
Raja
somedude1234 - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
The tech specs on the web site say "6 x PCI-Express x 16 slots" under the video section.The X58 chipset offers 36x PCI-e 2.0 lanes. They may have six slots on the board that are mechanically x16, but listing it as they do is disingenuous at best.
Most X58 boards offer:
- x16 + x16
- x8 + x8 + x8 + x8
- If you're lucky, you'll also have an extra x4 slot that's usable in dual x16 or quad x8 configurations.
I'm really interested to see how MSI has these slots laid out.
7Enigma - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
Now I've seen it all. A graphics card I can understand but a motherboard? That's just rediculous. MSI, save your cash from this website/partnership and work on a bios update.iamkyle - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
Finally, a motherboard manufacturer who finally gets that if I'm building an enthusiast system, I don't want the crappy onboard sound!Hrel - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
You guys need to add something to the title to indicate that the short articles, 1 or 2 pages, are short. I'm talking about in the RSS feed; since that's how I get to the articles. I mean, adding a simple <2 at the end of the title would get the job done. I simply don't always have time to read through a whole long review, but I still want to catch up a little on my anandtech reading. After I select a feed though it marks it as read so I won't know to go back and finish it later unless I leave it open untill I'm done; see my problem? Please start labeling the "short" articles as short articles.