MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming: Packaging and Bundle3. MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming: Layout and Features4. MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming: BIOS and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark8. Synthetic: 3Dmark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201311. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.512. Synthetic: Super Pi13. Synthetic: SATA Performance14. Real World: WinRAR15. Real World: MKV Playback16. Real World: Media Encoding17. Gaming: Battlefield 318. Gaming: Call of Duty Black Ops 219. Gaming: DiRT Showdown20. Technical: Power Consumption21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

Today we are going to look at the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard.  It's MSI's latest model, targeted at the enthusiast audience, more specifically enthusiast gamers.  It boasts an impressive feature set which is specifically tailored for those gamers who want the best possible performance from their system.

MSI are one of the four market leaders, along with Asus, ASRock and Gigabyte. It has been clear that they have been looking to cement their reputation over the past couple of years by releasing numerous enthusiast grade products.

The ‘gaming' series of motherboards differ from MSI's other models in a number of ways.  Firstly, they have given the aesthetic design an overhaul by adding metallic red accents to the heatsinks and a dragon design to the chipset.  However, the changes aren't just skin deep.  All ‘gaming' series motherboards feature a Bigfoot Killer E2200 network chip for optimum performance as well as support for up to 3000 MHz memory.  Other improvements include a Sound Blaster Cinema audio codec and a dedicated gaming device USB port.

Features

• The highest frag and the lowest lag with Killer™ E2200.
• Game networking.
• Military Class III components.
• Gaming device port.
• Optimized for multiple graphics cards.
• Boosting performance thanks to OC Genie II.
• Top quality audio solution with Sound Blaster Cinema.
• Supports DDR3 3000 memory for super fast loading.

MSI have chosen to use a red and black colour scheme for the packaging which follows the trend set initially by Asus with their Republic of Gamers brand.  The front of the box features a large dragon logo which is the emblem of MSI's ‘gaming' brand.

Turning the box over reveals a detailed breakdown of motherboards most interesting features alongside a list of specifications.  The motherboard box feels very good quality and should provide a decent level of protection to the motherboard during transit.

Inside the box, there is a fairly generous bundle included which includes a selection of manuals, a software CD, an I/O backplate, four SATA-600 cables, a Crossfire cable, an SLI cable and a MSI gaming badge.  They also supply something called an M-connector which simplifies the process of attaching the front panel connectors.  Also, the company supply some adapters which let you attach a volt meter to the motherboard.

Like the vanilla version of the MSI Z77A-GD65, the gaming version occupies a standard ATX form factor.  The colour scheme, however, is quite different.  MSI have ditched the black and blue colour scheme in favour of black and red, presumably with the intention of attracting a more gaming focused customer.

It's quite clear that MSI have designed this board with overclocking in mind as there are some very sizeable heatsinks covering the VRM circuitry surrounding the CPU socket.

We find the 8-pin CPU power connector nestled between these large heatsinks in the top left hand corner of the motherboard.

Moving to the right of the CPU socket there are four DDR3 memory slots which support frequencies of 1066/1333/1600/1866/2000/2133 (OC)/2200 (OC)/2400 (OC)/2600 (OC)/2667 (OC)/2800 (OC)/3000 (OC) MHz in a dual channel configuration.  These memory slots seem to be a little closer to the CPU socket than those on most motherboards so we would highly recommend using low-profile memory or perhaps an all-in-one liquid cooler.

Further to the right, we find the 24-pin motherboard power connector.  Along the right edge of the motherboard, there are a series of voltage reading points which can be used to accurately measure various system voltages using a volt meter.

Up in the top right hand corner of the motherboard we find on-board power and reset buttons alongside an ‘OC Genie' button which can be used to activate the automatic overclocking feature.

Moving further down the right hand side of the motherboard we find no fewer than eight SATA connectors.  These are made up of four SATA-600 and four SATA-300 connectors.  All of the SATA-300 connectors and two of the SATA-600 connectors are controlled through the Intel Z77 chipset while the remaining two SATA-600 connectors are hooked up to an Asmedia ASM1061 chip.

We also find the internal USB3.0 header right next to the SATA ports, angled at 90 degrees to the motherboard like the SATA connectors.  This is without doubt the best USB3.0 header configuration we've seen as it makes cable management very simple.

Moving along the bottom edge of the motherboard we find the remaining internal headers.  From left to right we find a HD Audio header, a 3-pin fan header, a TPM header two front panel headers and three US B2.0 headers.  There is also a debug LED located in the bottom right hand corner of the motherboard, just below the chipset heatsink.

There is a generous selection of expansion slots on the motherboard.  There are three PCI Express 3.0 lanes running at speeds of 16x, 8x and 4x as well as four PCI Express x1 slots.

There are also a good selection of rear I/O connections.  From left to right we find a PS/2 connector, two USB2.0 ports, a clear CMOS switch, optical and analogue S-PDIF connectors, two USB2.0 connectors, a HDMI connector, an RJ-45 Ethernet connector, two USB3.0 connectors, VGA and DVI connectors and six 3.5mm audio jacks.

BIOS

MSI have designed an attractive UEFI interface which quite different to those we've seen from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte.  Some of the key settings like boot order are located along a bar at the top for easy access and are present throughout all of the other menus.

The settings tab contains the majority of the non-overclocking related settings.

Under the ‘OC' tab we find all of the overclocking options.  Everything we could possibly ask for is located here.

The ‘Eco' tab contains a few basic settings which can be adjusted to improve power consumption.  The ‘Browser' tab features a web browser but this needs to be installed onto the hard drive using the supplied software CD.

Under the ‘Utilities' tab we find a live BIOS update utility, a USB BIOS flashing uility and a HDD backup utility

Finally, under the ‘Security' tab, we find options for chassis intrusion and an administrator password.

Overclocking

For our tests we overclocked our Intel Core i7-3770K to 4.8 GHz by bumping the multiplier up to 48x and leaving the baseclock at 100 MHz.  To achieve this speed, we only had to bump the CPU core voltage slightly to 1.35V.  We found that overclocking further than this required us to increase the voltage considerably, resulting in much higher temperatures.  While this doesn't pose an issue in the short term, it could reduce the lifespan of the system.

See validation here.

In this review we are going to test the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming with an Intel Core i7-3770K processor at both stock and overclocked speeds.  The overclocked results were achieved at 4.8 GHz using the settings detailed in the previous section.

Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming
Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-4
Memory: 16 GB Mushkin Blackline 1600 MHz
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7950
Power Supply: Silverstone Platinum 1000W
System Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Software:

PCMark 7
3DMark
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
SiSoft Sandra 2013
Cinebench R11.5
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.7
VLC Media Player
Performance Monitor
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Super Pi 1.5 Mod
CPUID Hardware Monitor
CPU-Z
DiRT Showdown
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

In this test we see a decent boost in performance when the system was overclocked, showing how real world system performance can benefit from overclocking.

3DMark is Futuremark’s latest benchmark. It can be used to benchmark and compare everything from mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops, to high-end gaming systems. The benchmark is available for Windows, Windows RT Android and iOS.

With 3 separate tests, each of which is intended to be used alongside a specific classification of hardware, 3DMark is a very versatile benchmark. Ice Storm is intended to be used with mobile devices, Cloud Gate is good for use with laptops and home PCs, and Fire Strike can be used to push the performance of gaming PCs.

We used the ‘Fire Strike’ benchmark which is designed to be used on gaming PCs. We opted for the Normal setting, NOT the Extreme mode.

Here we see a decent boost in gaming performance when the system is overclocked.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

In this test we see a similar boost in performance to 3DMark.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render.
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux.
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems.
• Multicore CPU support.
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles).
• Powerful C++ API.
• Comprehensive performance profiling system.
• Flexible XML-based data structures.

In this test we only see a very small improvement in performance when the system was overclocked as it is very reliant on the graphics card.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

An excellent set of scores for the system in this test, with decent improvements when overclocked.

Cinebench R11.5 is the newest revision of the popular benchmark from Maxon. The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Here we can see the benefits of utilising multi-threaded applications as the performance benefits are significant.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth pace after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

A good set of results for the test system in this test, showcasing the single threaded performance.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use one of our favourite benchmark utilities – CrystalDiskMark X64 Edition – to rate performance from the on-board SATA controller.

This test shows how important it is to connect SSDs to the SATA-600 ports on the motherboard as a SATA-300 port would restrict performance considerably.

WinRAR is one of the most popular archive manager programs available. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You can try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available in downloads.

We measured the time taken to archive two 2.75 GB .MKV files.

Here we can see how overclocking can offer significant real world benefits, by reducing the time taken to convert the two test files.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in VLC or Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed.

We played our 1080P MKV movie using the latest version of VLC Media Player and measured the CPU usage with the Performance Monitor built into Windows.

Again we see impressive improvements in real world performance when the system was overclocked.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 1.43 GB 720p MKV file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.  Hardware acceleration was disabled so that

Again, we see a decent boost in performance with the overclocked system.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing.

Here we can see a very tiny improvement in performance with the system overclocked.

Black Ops 2 is the latest episode in the Call of Duty franchise and is one of the most popular games of the moment.  It uses an updated version of the IW engine, used in previous Call of Duty games, which isn't particularly demanding.  This makes it ideal for testing mid-range gaming systems like this.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing.

We see a significant boost in gaming performance with the system overclocked in this test.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We used the settings illustrated in the screenshot above for testing.

Here we see a decent boost in performance when overclocked.

We measured the power consumption of our entire test system at the wall while loading the CPU using Prime95 and GPU using FurMark. We recorded results with the system at reference clock speeds and when overclocked to 4.7 GHz.

Here we can see the test system offers fairly efficient power consumption, even when overclocked.

Overall we are very impressed with what the MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard has to offer.  It's clear they are targeting the Asus Republic of Gamer's range and we believe the Z77A-GD65 is one of the finest motherboards we have ever tested.

MSI have come up with a motherboard recipe that is sure to appeal to a wide range of gamers.  The gaming-orientated feature set includes a Bigfoot Killer E2200 network chip and a Sound Blaster audio codec which help to enhance the gaming experience.  The attractive red and black colour scheme should go down well with gamers, too.

When it comes to performance, the Z77A-GD65 certainly didn't leave us with any concerns.  It was incredibly simple to achieve a stable 4.8 GHz overclock with our Intel Core i7-3770K.  This yielded significant performance benefits throughout our extensive test suite.  We expect that you could achieve a higher overclock than this given some time and perhaps some slightly enhanced cooling. Nonetheless, our results were excellent.

The MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Motherboard can be yours for a price of £155 from Aria Technology, making it around £25 more expensive than the original Z77A-GD65.  There are differences between the two models, namely the Bigfoot Killer network card, Sound Blaster Audio Codec and support for 2800 MHz and 3000 MHz memory.  If you're looking to save some pennies and don't need these extra features then the original version is still an excellent choice.

If you want one of the finest motherboards that money can buy however, then the MSI Z77A-GD65 we reviewed today should be right at the top of your shortlist.

Pros:

• Excellent overclocking performance.
• Attractive design.
• Integrated Bigfoot Killer network card.
• Intuitive UEFI interface.

Cons:

• Original version is still a tempting proposition, saving some money.

KitGuru says: An excellent motherboard from MSI which can easily compete with the finest Z77 motherboards on the market.

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