MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3)

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This year at Computex 2011, MSI showed off their latest PCI-E Gen 3 motherboard. When Z68 launched, motherboard manufacturers continued using the most widely available PCI-Express 2.0 interface. As weeks passed, new PCI-Express 3.0 switches were introduced and MSI was the first to jump on the opportunity to provide their customers with the latest PCI-E Gen 3.0 support for their LGA1155 Z68 boards. ASRock and GIGABYTE followed closely as they also showed off their ASRock Extreme 4 Gen 3 and GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2 motherboards with PCI-E Gen 3 support. Today we will be looking at the MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3) motherboard. This motherboard is an upgrade from the (B3) revision, which still used PCI-E 2.0 switches. Though while MSI was one of the first to have a PCI-E Gen 3 motherboard, it also looks like they might have one of the first true Gen 3 designs, with GIGABYTE coming in 2nd with their G1.Sniper 2 motherboard.

It is not a coincidence that ASUS, one of the largest motherboard manufacturers, still doesn't have a true PCI-E Gen 3.0 motherboard. As a matter a fact, ASRock and GIGABYTE only have partially functional PCI-E Gen 3 support for their motherboard, but more on that on our motherboard overview page. We don't find this ironic, as there are no PCI-Express Gen 3.0 products which could potentially use the new interface. Not only that, but the current Sandy Bridge architecture only supports up to PCI-Express 2.0 specifications and does not have the potential to utilize the extra lanes that become available with the current PCI-E Gen 3 switches. With this said, the current motherboards that are currently sold as PCI-E Gen 3.0 motherboards will not be fully utilized till about early next year, when we see Ivy Bridge used as the next high-end CPU for the LGA 1155 socket. As of yet, we don't know too much about Ivy Bridge, but it should be a 22nm CPU architecture compatible to fully utilize PCI-Express Gen 3.

The Z68 Chipset is now considered to be the flagship for the latest Sandy Bridge platform. The original P67 was only able to utilize the CPU and not the onboard Intel Integrated Graphics, but the Z68 chipset is able to use both discrete and integrated graphics that Intel offers with LucidLogix Virtu technology. Because of this, Intel is also able to enable Quick Sync technology, which was not functional on the P67 platform. Also, with the introduction of Z68 beginning Q2 2011, Intel added a new feature to the chipset allowing Hard Drives to be mixed with SSDs to gain higher storage performance with the Intel Smart Response Technology. We'll have more about Virtu, Quick Sync and Intel Smart Response on the following pages.

The Z68 chipset will be compatible with Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture, however, with X79 just around the corner, enthusiast users might want to wait for that chipset. Note that X79 will most likely also come with a higher price tag as well as the new LGA 2011 Socket which will require new processors.

Features of Motherboard:

MSI offers a 5 year warranty for their Z68A-GD65 (B3) motherboard within the United States and Canada. MSI believes that their Military Class II components including Hi-Cap, SFC, Solid Caps, and more deliver not only performance, but also quality and reliability. We'll try to torture this motherboard as far as we can to see where we can push our hardware. However, do remember to register your board within 30 days of purchase, or else the 5 year warranty will go to waste.

The new Military Class II components that MSI is advertising on their latest motherboards like the Z68A-GD80 (B3) consist of only component upgrades. Some of the components are really nice while others are just the traditional Solid Capacitors that most of the other high-end motherboard manufacturers also use. Besides the Solid CAPs, the Hi-C CAP is a new nice design for solid capacitors which we have seen on both ASUS's top-of-the-line ROG boards as well as on GIGABYTE's GA-X58A-OC overclocking motherboard. Many newer non-reference video cards also use the Hi-C CAPs which come handy for overclockers. The nice thing to know about MSI's components is that they use the same Military Class II components on the majority of their mid to high-end motherboards (GD55, GD65, GD80, Big Bang Series), unlike other manufacturers which only have these components on their most expensive motherboards in the 300-400 dollar range. MSI's SFC (Super Ferrite Choke) is a newly improved ferrite choke that is Super-Permeable. This means it will run cooler for better stability. More on the Military Class II components on the next page, and on the motherboard overview page.

Most of us that overclock our processors and video cards have heard of the magical 1 second overclock button that ASUS offers. ASUS's 1 second overclocking tool works through the BIOS, where a user clicks on the OC Tuner Auto Tune feature and it overclocks the processor to somewhere in the 4GHz range provided the CPU is a K-series Sandy Bridge processor. MSI also has a feature just like this, but they make it even easier by providing a button which can be clicked to enable 1 second overclocking. This feature is called OC Genie II. The feature is accessible as a button on the motherboard or through the ClickBIOS Windows based BIOS application.

Socket : 1155

CPU (Max Support) : i3/i5/i7

FSB/BCLK/Hyper Transport Bus : 100MHz

Chipset : Intel® Z68 (B3)

DDR3 Memory : DDR3 1066/1333/1600*/2133*(OC)

Memory Channel : Dual

DIMM Slots : 4

Max Memory (GB) : 32

PCI-Ex16 : 3

PCI-E Gen : Gen2 (1x16, 1x8, 1x1)

PCI-Ex1 : 2

PCI : 2

SATAIII : 3

SATAII : 4

RAID : 0/1/5/10

LAN : 10/100/1000*2

TPM : 1

USB 3.0 ports (Rear) : 2

USB 2.0 ports (Rear) :  4

Audio ports (Rear) : 6+Optical SPDIF

1394 ports (Rear) : 1

eSATA : 1
HDMI : 1
DVI : 1
VGA Max Share Memory (MB) : 1024
DirectX : DX10.1
Form Factor : ATX
DrMOS : Y 
APS : Y
SLI : Y
CrossFire : Y 
                                                   MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3)