MSI Eclipse Plus Review

RHKCommander959 - June 11, 2009
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Testing:

Testing the MSI Eclipse Plus is done by running the board through a barrage of different software for scientific and synthetic results including popular games (like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty World at War) and said testing is then repeated again on the motherboard after it is overclocked. All i7 motherboards are based on the X58 Tylersburg chipset, so discrepancies should be minimal and only vary due to differences in each motherboard and their BIOS. The addition of the nForce 200 chip may also change things up with the competition. The Eclipse Plus will be pushed to a overclock that should be achievable but still high nonetheless, with average BIOS tweaking involved. If any flaws exist in this board, they will most likely show during the testing phase.

Testing Setup i7:

Processor: Intel Core i7 920 150x20
Motherboard: MSI Eclipse Plus
Memory: Mushkin 3x2GB DDR3 12800 MHz 9-9-9-24 1.55v
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX260 Core 216
Power Supply: Mushkin 800watt Modular Power supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Western Digital 1TB SATA
Opticals: LG DVD-RW
OS: Windows Vista x64 Ultimate Edition SP1

Comparison Motherboards:

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Core i7 920 200x20 1.45 volts
System Memory: Mushkin 3x 2GB 9-9-9-24 1600 MHz 1.6 volts

Overclocking to 200 base clock on the MSI Eclipse Plus was fairly easy, although it did take some tweaks in the BIOS. Anything over 200 got difficult but there is still headroom. A fan is definitely necessary to keep the temperatures down, although the new thermal paste included stock was better than the older purple stuff on the MSI X58 Platinum. Using the OC Dial I was able to get a suicide run up to around 4.6GHz, while the system was tested at 4GHz. In BIOS the extra multiplier for turbo mode can be forced to be enabled, and it worked fine for pushing the overclock to the maximum.