MSI P67A-GD65 Sandybridge Motherboard Review

The MSI P67A-GD65 is a good product, however it is a little rough around the edges. If you stick to automatic settings there will never be a problem, even if you use the OC Genie tool. This is ideal for inexperienced users who want great performance ‘out of the box' and perhaps even a little extra performance, by simply pressing a button.

For veterans, this board will prove to be less of a positive experience. The bios is solid enough, but it can be tempremental. It often won't pick up the correct memory speeds, opting for 1333mhz. This won't prove to be that important to some people, but for those wanting maximum performance then manual tweaking is going to be required. If we manually set our Kingston memory to 2133mhz, then the system wouldn't post, getting stuck in a post loop, requiring a reset. Manually forcing an XMP profile cured this particular problem. Unfortunately if you touch the memory settings, then try overclocking the board with OC Genie, it decides that 20GHZ+ is feasible and gets itself caught in another reboot loop.

Inexperienced users with high performance memory will need to load an XMP profile after letting the board settle on the best automatic overclock and guru's will need to just battle against the bios to achieve the maximum manual overclocks. It wasn't the easiest board to overclock, but 4.7ghz with a CoolerMaster V8 wasn't too bad. Sure, I did manage to get this CPU to 5.1ghz on an Intel board, but for most people 4.7ghz is more than enough.

Overall, I found this board to be good, but there are bios quirks that need to be carefully and painstakingly addressed to get the most from it. We are sure that MSI will continue improving the board over the coming months, with bios upgrades, just be careful with the OC Genie and memory settings and it is actually very stable.

KitGuru says: A weird bios, but a solid, good performance board once you learn to live with the quirks. At £132 inc vat it offers good value for money.

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