Monday, May 30th 2011

MSI 990FXA-GD65 Value AM3+ Motherboard Detailed

MSI is approaching the socket AM3+ performance platform with two motherboards based on the AMD 990FX chipset, at the very top is the 990FXA-GD80 detailed earlier. Next to it, is the 990FXA-GD65, which is designed to occupy a sub-$200 price point. The GD65 depends entirely on the chipset for its features, with very little 3rd-party features. It uses a full-fledged 10-phase VRM to power the CPU. To add electrical stability, a 6-pin PCI-E power connector is in place, if discrete graphics cards that rely on slot power, are used. The 990FX northbridge gives out two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 ports, which are wired to two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots that run at full-bandwidth all the time. Other expansion slots include four PCI-E x1 and a legacy PCI.

All six SATA 6 Gb/s ports from the SB950 southbridge are assigned as internal ports, while there are no eSATA ports on the rear panel, MSI might bundle an eSATA bracket that extends two of the six internal ports as eSATA. This way, MSI saved the cost of using an additional third-party SATA controller. Other connectivity includes 8-channel HD audio driven by Realtek ALC892 CODEC that supports optical and coaxial SPDIF output; and two USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel driven by an NEC/Renesas-made controller. There's little more to this board than that, for overclockers. There is a rear-panel CMOS reset button, and "Military-grade" components. Instead of using UEFI firmware with its GUI-driven setup program ClickBIOS, MSI used conventional BIOS with a hack that allows it to boot from volumes greater than 2.2 TB in size. MSI also includes BIOS Code Unlocked Technology, which lets users unlock disabled cores on certain CPUs.
Source: TechConnect Magazine
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10 Comments on MSI 990FXA-GD65 Value AM3+ Motherboard Detailed

#1
Anarchy0110
Value ? For how much :banghead:
Sub 200$ :toast: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about
Posted on Reply
#2
Fishymachine
I have a question... why would make a 2(real) TB (or commercial 2,2 TB) boot partition ... who wants to backup 1+ TB of data every year?
Posted on Reply
#4
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
I like it, but what are these "3rd Party features" missing that the GD80 has?
Posted on Reply
#5
arnoo1
VEry very clean, i'm impressed, and normal colors instead thosr x79 boards, i want reviews!! From both
Posted on Reply
#6
jalex3
wow no air gap for dual cards, 2 x1 no x4 for ssd. lame
Posted on Reply
#7
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
jalex3wow no air gap for dual cards, 2 x1 no x4 for ssd. lame
Meh, ran dual OC'd 5850's like that on my GD70 for a long time with no issue. And its the cheap board so prices cut by missing slots, you want the small goodies that don't matter a ton, but are nice for a few, GD80 is the way.
Posted on Reply
#8
TheLaughingMan
jalex3wow no air gap for dual cards
There is a 1 slot air gap for dual cards.
Posted on Reply
#9
jalex3
TheLaughingManThere is a 1 slot air gap for dual cards.
:banghead: well I guess its not as bad as I thought...
Posted on Reply
#10
dlb
It has (of course) the normal 24pin power connector, the 8pin EPS/CPU power connector, but there's a third that looks A LOT like a PCIexpress video card power connector (it's just to the left of the "Military Class" heatsink in pic #2 above). So I'm assuming that you'd three 6pin GPU power connectors on your PSU to run a single GTX570? Or five 6pin power connectors for SLI? Weird. I've looked at a few other boards in the same price range with similar features and chipset, and this is the only one with the extra 6pin on the motherboard. Weird.
Posted on Reply
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