MSI P45 Platinum review and P45 to P35 comparison

Page 3 - Closer look, connectors and BIOS

Speaking of power saving functions - the whole idea behind "DrMOS" is, that instead of using two mosfets and single IC driver as three separate objects, MSI had them combined in a single chip. This way they don't radiate much heat, take a lot less space on the motherboard and with them MSI manage to to control the motherboard power consumption with mere FIVE phases of power supply, unlike other companies that state that 8, 10, 12 or even 16 phases are necessary for the same effect.

MSI also has the GreenPower power saving technology, just like ASUS has EPU and Gigabyte - DES. These technologies control the switching of the phases of the CPU, RAM and chipset, saving as much power as possible. On the motherboard are placed blue LED's, by which you could enjoy the "green" in the motherboard :) They blink upon switching of the phases (which happens very, very fast) and so you could in real time see that GreenPower works.

Besides the phases LES's on the motherboards are present other diagnostic lights, combination's of which indicate precise problem (codes are listed in the manual, should you be unfortunate enough to have to acquaint yourself with them).

On the last photos the power on and reset buttons are seen. Now, that's very handy for the people that often test and exchange hardware, and usually do it outside of a case. On the back along with the motherboard connectors is a button for for purging BIOS settings. While the motherboard is capable of recovering from too extreme overclock by itself, should a situation in which it will not do so, you won't have to open the case in order to clear things up. The connectors on the back are pretty standard, except the morally well aged PS2 connectors, which ASUS for example had dropped (or at least the keyboard one). Swell impression make the separated 4 USB connectors on a bid aluminum slab, and even though at first sight crude, they are quite comfy to use, being separated and distanced in the way they are.

BIOS

MSI are well known with the fact that the first versions of their BIOS always have bugs and problems, which of course are later fixed. We worked with 1.3 version of the BIOS and met no apparent problems. The motherboard was fairly stable and refused not to POST no matter how wicked the settings were and indeed the whole experience with it was rather enjoyable.

For quite a while MSI bet on the AMI BIOS, which happens to be a successful strategy - users are well accustomed with the basic instruments and their placement and navigate easy in the AMI menus. This is about to change, because at the end of our tests of the motherboard, the MSI UEFI BIOS for the P45 series emerged (actually for MSI P45 Platinum, there already was UEFI BIOS for P45D3 Platinum, based too on the P45, and soon UEFI for MSI P45 Diamond is expected too).

UEFI is a new generation of BIOS. BIOS with nice graphical interface, able to use mouse and (Oh, boy!) capable of supporting applications that are loaded BEFORE the OS (Operational System). Since with UEFI you have control over the boards network interfaces, this effectively means that you could load an Internet browser even without OS and makes you capable of viewing pages or searching for solution for a problem should one is present and you cannot install an OS. MSI supply even a Disk burning software with their UEFI BIOS!

The only problem is that UEFI is 32Mbit file that obviously is in no way flashable on a diskette. And MSI have no cool tools like EZ-Flash, so the only way is to use a USB flash drive. But this being the first steps of UEFI at the end user market, we will be seeing more of it in the future, for now though we'll focus on the good old blue BIOS for the IBM standardized hardware.

If you have used an MSI motherboard in the last two years, it's highly likely that you know about the Cell page of the BIOS. The interface for voltage, bus, memory timings and other directly connected to performance things are situated there, and intuitive they are! For the more common users is the D.O.T. (Dynamic Overclock Technology), which effectively means that if "ON" will overclock the computer automatically, depending on the load and the need of better performance. For the other "POWER" users, there are manual settings for about anything. Vast voltage settings are included and through Memory-Z interface you can control each and every memory timing. The rest is rather common for any overclocking motherboard, so no special attention will be paid onto them.