Board Software

On the software side of things, MSI provides just as much as they do in BIOS, and that's a good thing, as there is something here for everyone. The first bit of software is a tweaking utility, "MSI Control Center", that offers the ability to adjust clocks and voltage from within the OS with a few simple clicks. We did test the software a fair bit as we ran into some strange issues with our RAM, which "Control Center" helped us identify as a low I/O voltage. We did try to fix the problem using the software in the OS, but we found that the changes offered, while effective in the OS, only work inside the OS, and a reboot will undo the changes made in software. This is a bit of a problem for us, as we know it's very possible, using Intel's Management Engine interface, for settings to be applied to the BIOS on the next boot, yet at the same time, we appreciate that this particular functionality could lead to other issues too, so we set the tool aside as a way to test from within the OS. It also has a handy panel that lists real-time CPU temperatures and individual core speeds, including for the integrated GPU, and we used this bit of "Control Center" quite a bit while doing our overclock testing.


Next up is "Live Update 5", a tool that offers an easy way to access online updates for drivers, tools, and the board's BIOS, as well as for GPU software and other such things for other products that MSI has on the market. When it's opened, it greeted us with a listing of our OS, the board model, BIOS version for the board and our installed discrete GPU, with a line at the bottom to notify us of any available updates. Unfortunately, because our board is so new, there were no updates available, so we removed some drivers and installed older versions that what we found on the driver disc, and we were quite pleased to see that "Live Update 5" picked up on this, and offered installation of the latest drivers. Good job, MSI!

The third image above is of another application, called "Easyviewer". Simply an interface to view media such as video and pictures, it's handy, and has a nice layout, but doesn't really offer anything that didn't exist already in Windows. It's nice, but not for us, directly.


Of course, not all software is going to appeal to everyone, but the next three tools did offer us a bit of useful function, although again, not offering anything that we haven't seen before. "Audio Genie", "Teaming Genie", and "Video Genie" are all tools that access settings for onboard components in an easy to use and a bit overly flashy interface. We did have some issues navigating through the Audio Genie with the offered options have buttons that blended well into the software's background, and moved in position depending on what screen was in the forefront, so while they are nice, again, we think they could use a bit of tweaking, but that is also just us being critical.


Last, but not least, for sure, is the Lucid Virtu software that we find packaged with all Z68-based products. The MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) ships with a fairly recent version of the Virtu software that works quite well, with very little performance impact when using the board's display output combined with a discrete GPU, a definite step in the right direction.

There is another piece of MSI software on the disc, called "Click BIOS II", but because we already covered the BIOS, and it takes the BIOS and makes it usable from within Windows, we're not going to go into much detail other than to say that it's there, and it works, and requires a reboot before the settings are applied. Because it requires a reboot, we don't mind just going into the BIOS during boot directly, but it will save a few seconds or so, and make copying settings from other users very easy.