Introduction:

The Brand new MSI Eclipse SLI motherboard features the latest Socket 1366 supporting Intel Core i7 series CPU’s, and triple channel memory for even greater performance over previous generation CPUs.

At the heart of the motherboard is the new Intel X58 chipset, providing 3x PCI-e slots for both Nvidia and ATI crossfire multi GPU graphics. Although this current motherboard only supports 8 lanes on the middle PCI-e slot for tri-Sli, a future revision to the board will feature an Nvidia N-Force 200 chip for full 3 way x16 slots.

Building on the success of its previous generation P45D Platinum motherboards, MSI has aimed this straight at the enthusiasts market, offering fantastic build quality in a feature rich package. So, does this board have what it takes to compete with Asus, Foxconn and Gigabyte for crown of best X58 mobo? Read on, as BenchTecUK are about to find out!

Packaging:

Nice packaging has a feel of quality to it, makes you feel your £280 was well spent. The inclusion of a Creative X-Fi is a very welcomed addition. Not only does this sound great when gaming or watching movies, but also for the more “Hardcore” among us, can be removed when benching.

The Motherboard:

Ample accessory pack includes everything you could wish for in a high end motherboard such as this. The only downside however is the lack of a Tri-SLi bridge, CrossfireX is supported though with 2x CF bridge connectors. A temperature probe is also included that connecs to the “D-LEDz” display and enables temperature readout from any selected system component.

The Creative X-Fi audio card (PCI-e x1), D-LEDz display module and the MSI “Green Power Genie” for system power monitoring and energy reduction.

Specifications:

CPU

Supports Intel® i7 based processors in LGA1366 package

Chipset

Intel® X58 Chipset

• Supports QPI up to 6.4GT/s

Intel® ICH10R Chipset

• Hi-Speed USB (USB2.0) controller, 480Mb/sec, up to 12 ports.
• 6 SATAII ports with transfer rate up to 3Gb/s.
• PCI Master v2.3, I/O APIC.
• ACPI 2.0 compliant.
• Serial ATA RAID 0/1/5/10.
• Integrated AHCI controller.

Main Memory

• Supports six unbuffered DIMM of 1.5 Volt DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600 SDRAM, 24GB Max
• Supports 1Gb/ 2Gb/ 4Gb DRAM size
• Supports x8 / x16 data lines per DIMM
• Supports up to 3 channel mode

Expansion Slots

• 3 PCI Express gen2 x16 slots
• Two Black PCIE x16 slots (PCI_E2 &PCI_E4) support up to PCIE x16 speed, one Blue PCIE x16 slot(PCI_ E5) supports up to PCIE x4 speed
• Supports ATI® Crossfire™, NVIDIA® SLI
• 2 Black PCI Express x1 slots
• 2 PCI slot, support 3.3V/ 5V PCI bus Interface

On-Board IDE/SATA

One Ultra DMA 66/100/133 IDE controller integrated in JMicron® 363.
Supports PIO, Bus Master operation modes.
Can connect up to two Ultra ATA drives.

SATAII controller integrated in ICH10R/JMicron® 322 / 362 chipest
Up to 3Gb/s transfer speed.
Supports six SATAII ports by ICH10R
Supports four SATAII ports by JMicron 322, support SATA RAID 0/1/JBOD.
Supports two eSATA ports by JMicron 362.
Supports AHCI controller with SATA RAID 0/1/5/10 by ICH10R.

Audio

Creative® SB X-Fi Xtreme H/W Audio Card (MS-4132)
24-bit / 96KHz audio quality
100dB SNR clarity
Up to 7.1ch EAX 5.0 Surround Sound

LAN

Supports two PCI Express LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Realtek 8111C.

Internal I/O Connectors

ATX 24-Pin power connector
8-pin ATX 12V power connector
CPU / System x 5 FAN connectors
CD-in connector
Front panel audio connector
Front panel connector
1 x chasis intrusion connector
1 x serial port pinheader
2 x USB 2.0 connectors
10 x Serial ATAII connectors
1 x ATA133 connector
1 x IEEE1394 connector support additional 1 port
1 x GreenPower Genie connector
1 x Reset Button
1 x Power Button
1 x SPDIF-out connector
1 x D-LED2 connector
1 x TPM module connector

External I/O Connectors

1 x Clear CMOS button
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
2 x eSATA ports s
1 x IEEE1394 port
8 x USB 2.0 ports
2 x RJ45 LAN jacks
1 x 5 in 1 + Optical SPDIF out Audio Card

BIOS

The mainboard BIOS provides “Plug & Play” BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.

The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface(DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.

The BIOS:

Quite possibly the most important thing in any motherboard. You have a bad bios, you have a bad motherboard. Now, I was very eager to put this new bios through it’s paces. MSI have learnt alot over the past 12 months in the bios department, with continued feedback, good and bad, from the BenchTec guys. Myself, Jabski, 4Qman and blindfitter have all abused the previous generation P45 Platinum, giving MSI feedback on problems/quirks all the time. Have they learnt anything ? Well, the thankful answer is YES! At the time of writing, bios v.13b is a joy to work with. Very stable, mem dividers work and so does the crash recovery that caused so many problems on the P45D.

MSI bios engineers are currently working on an up-dated bios to fix the issue that Jabski found concerning raising the CPU multi above x24 when using the i7 965EE. Im sure this issue will be sorted very quickly.

Pretty standard Main BIOS screen.

The “CELL MENU” – This is where we find all of the overclocking options in the Eclipse BIOS.

SPD information can be read from the installed DRAM modules.

DRAM memory timings section.

XMP is supported so no need for tweaking of the memory if your modules support XMP.

MSI have included 4 BIOS settings Save Slots. This is a very handy feature, but ideally could do with the ability to give names to your overclocking profiles. Also worth noting is that when you flash the BIOS, you loose your Saved Overclocking settings!

MSI M-Flash Utility. This feature is very much in its infancy at the moment. If you have this board with BIOS rev 1.2 or earlier DO NOT USE THIS UTILITY TO FLASH THE BIOS! MSI are aware of this utility not working, and are working on fixing it right now. When it works correctly, it will be an awesome tool for the overclocker. It allows for the recovery of a corrupt BIOS by booting off a USB stick, and recovering the BIOS from there. It will also allow you to boot the machine off a BETA BIOS installed on the USB drive, allowing you to test it before commiting to flashing it to the motherboard.

MSI “Green Power” Information:

Hareware system monitoring page. Sadly the voltage montoring options are quite thin on the ground. QPI, NB and Memory voltages would be nice here.

Overclocking:

Now comes the interesting part! How well does this board fair in the all important overclocking stakes? Well, Im pleased to inform you very well indeed!

Test Setup:

CPU – Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz, 45nm, C0 Stepping.
Memory – Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 3×1GB Tri-Channel DDR3.
Cooling – XSPC Delta CPU Block, BlackIce 120.2, MCP60, 1/2″ Tygon.
Graphics – Nvidia 9800GX2 stock air cooling.

Benchmarks:

First off, 3Dmark06 – Run with HT disabled in bios.

Next up, Quad SLi 3dMark Vantage Performance, this time with HT enabled. This time at 4.1Ghz. I have no doubt this will bench at 4.4Ghz as ‘06 did, but this was an early bench!

Next up, 32mPi. This really shows the power of i7 and triple channel RAM

With HT enabled for a total of 8 threads, I managed a score of 5.950sec in Wprime32m @ 4.4Ghz and a score of 3:11.580sec in Wprime1024m. I dont have a screenshot for either of these results, but they can be found here on www.hwbot.org:

wPrime 32M:

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=796435

wPrime 1024M:

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=795600

Also at 4.4Ghz with HT enabled I managed to come in 2nd Place on the CPC benchmarks leaderboard. Just missing out on the top spot by 50 points to dafridge. The MSI board was the first in this benchmark to break 2000 points in the multitasking test!

Conclusion:

After spending many hours with this board over the last week, I can safely say this is the best board that MSI has made to date. Its well built, stable, comes with a wealth of extras and most importantly, Overclocks like a right demon! The support for both Nvidia SLi and ATi Crossfire is an added bonus too.

The Bios is much improved over previous generation stuff, crash recovery now works too! I you wish to use more extreme cooling on this board, Single Stage, Cascade or LN2, there is ample room around the socket area for insulation. My only minor gripe when looking at the CPU area, why did MSI not fit both sets of mounting holes for the last gen 775 HSF? Foxconn have proved this is possible on their latest X58 offering. As I said, only a minor gripe!

More information on this motherboard, or any other board in MSI’s range can be found at the following link:
MSI X58 Eclipse product page

Update: 

The new ver.1.33b bios is showing some improvments, log into our forums to download it. 

Now 32mPi stable at QPI 215×21 for 4.5ghz. Althou only showing 1 thread, it was also fine with 4 cores enabled. Also able to tighten up the memory loads! Fair play MSI bios engineers!