MSI Releases X79A-GD45 PLUS Motherboard

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]renosablast[/nom]What only TWO SATA3 ports? Most competing boards have anywhere from 4-6. Rather limits one's RAID options unless using a PCIe RAID card.[/citation]

You usually can't RAID across more than two SATA 6Gb/s ports anyway since they're generally in pairs on different controllers.

 

[renosablast]

Most that have 6 have 4 on a native controller and 2 on a Marvell controller. And then there are always breakout cables.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]renosablast[/nom]Most that have 6 have 4 on a native controller and 2 on a Marvell controller. And then there are always breakout cables.[/citation]

The X79 chipset only has two native SATA 6Gb/s ports. Any more would be using stuff like port multipliers if not additional controllers (not all of which are Marvell, I might add).

 

[wiyosaya]

[citation][nom]soulkiller[/nom]Simple.... because USB 2.0 devices dont work on 3.0..... 3.0 works on 2.0 ... So.. thats why.[/citation]
Amazing statement for a site that attracts hardware people; however, its completely wrong.

USB 3.0 devices run when attached to USB 2.0 ports; USB 2.0 devices work when attached to a USB 3.0 port. In neither case will you get USB 3.0 speeds; you only get USB 3.0 speeds when you have a USB 3.0 device attached to a USB 3.0 port.

 

[ytoledano]

128GB my a$$. I call your bluff, MSI! I assume that's when using those 16GB unbuffered DIMMs you see on sale everywhere.

 

[shadowfamicom]

I have one of MSI's other x79 board, the "MSI Big Bang-XPower II". It has slots of 8 dimms and I only got 4x8gb in there now (use a bit over half of it for a RAMdisk for scratch disk space and/or installing a VM entirely in RAM). But my board also supports 128gb of RAM, even though there are no 16gb that I can find at the moment. Cool feature to have though and maybe somewhere down the line I will fill it. Though that is not really the feature that sold me on it.

 

[scannall]

With a brand new CPU and socket just a couple months out, why would anyone buy a new mobo at this point in time?

 

[kitsunestarwind]

They would buy this because its only socket 1155 being retired, socket 2011 still has more to come on its roadmap

 

[falchard]

This one does not look that impressive. I usually get MSI boards, but this one does not seem over the top like most MSI boards in this pricerange.

 

[ioconnor]

I think I'll buy this board if it does not have UEFI so I can install Linux on it without any problems.

Please do a review of the board the moment it comes out!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]falchard[/nom]This one does not look that impressive. I usually get MSI boards, but this one does not seem over the top like most MSI boards in this pricerange.[/citation]

It seems good compared to most other X79 boards in its price range. Whether or not it compares similarly well to other boards for different platforms is irrelevant.

 

[mapesdhs]

The max RAM is nice, but it's a shame there's only room for three 2-slot GPUs, otherwise it
would have been ideal for GPU compute, eg. After Effects.

Ian.

 

[Haytham Ghareeb]

From the comments, I am sensing it's not what I expected from this board. I am mainly getting it because of the 128GB support. I was getting an ASUS P8 Z77-V LE plus at first but then saw the X79..Which do you guys prefer of the two? I liked that the ASUS has Wireless built in. Please tell me which I should buy. I will be buying them today or tomorrow at the most.