Intel P35 / X38 Motherboards Roundup
MSI X38 Platinum (Intel X38; DDR3)
Of all the motherboards presented in this review, only MSI X38 Platinum offers 4 PCI Express x16 slots which are the principal advantage and a distinguishing feature of this product. The Intel X38 chipset allows setting up two full-featured PCI Express v2.0 x16 slots, and to make it possible to add two more slots, the engineers at MSI have installed the additional IDT PES16T7 chip. As a result, four PCI Express v1.0 bus lanes are allocated to two additional PCI Express x16 (yellow) slots. The IDT chip has its own radiator which is integrated into the shared system for cooling the board with a heat pipe.
On the whole, the cooling system is standard: radiators are on all the important components. However, we note a special shape of the radiator on the north bridge:
Apart from the four PCI Express x16 slots, the board uses two PCI Express x1 and one PCI slots.
The remaining expansion options include 6 Serial ATA II links (supported by ICH9R) plus two more Serial ATA II links (due to the additional RAID controller Sil 5723), 1 Parallel ATA link (another additional Marvell 88SE6111 chip), two Gigabit LAN controllers. The board offers support for Firewire buses (2 ports) and USB2.0 (12 ports), as well as 8-channel integrated audio (ALC888).
The special trait of the rear panel is a massive block with 4 USB2.0 ports. In all the other respects, the configuration is customary enough: COM and LPT ports are missing, but on the other hand, there are two SerialATA ports to plug in external devices.
We also note one Firewire port and an optical SP-DIF output. By the way, the motherboard supports one COM port with a matching bracket.
Now a few words on MSI's proprietary technologies. First, it is the additional Dual CoreCell chip which is meant for doing such tasks like dynamic overclocking, system monitoring, power management, and control over the fans' rotational speeds. It also closely interacts with the Dual CoreCenter utility that allows the user to control the mentioned features.
Besides, the board uses a 7-stage POST indicator.
The indicator is not a regular 7-stage, but more advanced. It allows the user to perform an initial fault diagnostics. Also of note are three onboard buttons: one to power-on, and one to reset the system,
and one to clear the CMOS settings (on the rear panel).
The board's BIOS is based on AMI BIOS version. The section in charge of memory operation settings offers the following kit of timings:
The board displays the current temperatures for the processor and the system, voltage, as well as rotational speeds of all the three fans.
The motherboard is also able retaining and loading packs of the BIOS settings as profiles.
As regards the overclocking tools, the FSB speed is adjustable within 200 to 800 MHz, and the CPU voltage can be raised by +0.75V, on the memory - to 2.75V, on the north bridge - to 1.83V, on the south bridge - to 1.8V, and on the FSB bus - to 1.44V.
In practice, the board showed middling results - a stable operation at FSB=444 MHz.
In our view, MSI X38 Platinum is aimed more at the professional rather than home-based use. From this viewpoint, we can explain the support for the expensive DDR-3, and the 4 PCI Express x16 slots, with the middling overclocking results. That is, everything the regular user or the PC enthusiast does not need!
Pros:
- High stability and good performance level;
- Four PCI Express x16 slots (16+16+4+4);
- Support for SerialATA II/RAID ( 8 links; ICH9R + Sil 5723);
- Support for one P-ATA line (Marvell 88SE6111);
- Integrated 8-channel audio and two LAN (Gigabit Ethernet) controllers;
- Support for USB2.0 (12 ports) and IEEE-1394 (Firewire, 2 ports);
- Wide selection of MSI's proprietary utilities (POST diagnostics, D.O.T., BIOS profiles, etc.);
- Passive system for cooling the chipset and the power supply module;
Cons:
The board's specific features:
- Middling results of overclocking the processor and memory;
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