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MSI P45 Platinum review and P45 to P35 comparison |
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Written by Димитър Динчев a.k.a. Veseliq
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Wednesday, 24 September 2008 |
Page 12 of 13
Page 12 - Overclock and power efficiency
The time with MSI P45 Platinum was rather limited, so a very precise and fine tuning in order to find its absolute maximum was out of the question. Another thing is that our Intel Core 2 E8500 CPU has its own limitation on the bus - the barrier set by Intel is at around 525MHz Bus speed (FSB 2100MHz). Those 525MHz were easy to reach with MSI P45 Platinum with just one change in voltage settings - a slight increase of voltage for the North bridge.
On the screenshot above you can see the motherboard working at 500MHz bus, which was the first of our overclock attempts, but unfortunately we forgot to make a screenshot at 525MHz.
Continuing our experimentation with the processor, we successfully ran it at 4GHz (8x500) with 1.3125V - with the exact same voltage the CPU performs stable at 8x500 on the 8-phased ASUS P5K-E WiFi. So here MSI are doing better, since with better energy efficiency the motherboard has the same stable voltages. It of course could perform quite differently with high class Quad-core CPU, were the power consumption would be much greater and the fewer phases of the motherboard could be its weak point.
We already mentioned the software overclock of MSI, it is available not only on BIOS level but at OS level too, through the Dual Core Center software from MSI. With the program you get to choose between modes such as "office, silence, gaming" and others without having any special knowledge of overclocking and the program will make the necessary settings, providing overclock up to 11%.
Power efficiency
On page 3 we already talked about DrMOS and GreenPower. What we had to do now was to put the MSI statements to the test! For measuring the power consumption of the motherboards we used digital measuring device (with accuracy of +/- 1W)in which the PSU was plugged in. Of course in the test the hardware for both motherboards was identical and they were not overclocked. So here they are:
you need to upgrade your flash player
Indeed MSI has the edge here. Every word about the power efficiency of the motherboard, about the capabilities of DrMOS and so on is true. In idle mode MSI P45 Platinum is definitely much more gentle to your electricity bill. Now to sum the results and pass judgement.
