MSI X99S MPower Review: Sting Like a Bee
by Ian Cutress on February 17, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Overclocking
- X99
CPU Performance
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
For reference, the MSI X99S MPower does not enable multicore turbo on BIOS 22.1.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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Horza - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review but no info regarding the power delivery? It's the first thing I look into with an overclocking board. More for reliability than any extra clock speed. I'm aware phase count is not always a useful metric but it would be nice to include it.Anyway it's 12 phase a "ISL6388 6-phase PWM" with doublers. "Fairchild FDMF5823DC MOSEFTs" rated 55a. Twelve Solid Ferrite Chokes (SFC). Memory is "Two Powervation PV3203 controllers"
tabascosauz - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Every manufacturer appears to be cheapening their boards that carry over from Z87 to Z97, but on X99, this is quite disappointing to hear. IR3550s are expensive, but an analog PWM on an overclocking board? This is a surprising choice, especially in the light of Asus' and GB's X99 boards. The X99 Deluxe pairs the nice "Blackwing" chokes with IR3550Ms, although it costs way more. Even the UD7, a non-OC geared board, comes in at just $20 more with the usual GB fare: all new IR, from the IR3580 PWM to the IR3556s.The ISL6388 is disappointing. This doesn't belong on MPower. So what if the FDMF5823 is one of Fairchild's DrMOS top-of-the-line products? The ISL6388 is on a completely different level. MSI has always flaunted their "Solid Ferrite Chokes" while hiding crappy MOSFETs/PWMs under heatsinks since Z77.
Antronman - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
In the end, the serious OC purchase will always be ASUS' Rampage Extreme series. I don't understand why you'd cheapen your overclock with a board that has cut high-end features to lower the cost on the most expensive consumer platform.KennyDude27 - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Actually analog PWM or digital PWM doesn't mean one is better than the either. An analog pwm can be just as good if not better than a digital pwm and these days digital and analog is so obscure.If you mean digital control loop vs analog loop its hard to tell which is totally better. As long as the control loop is making the right decisions in the right amount of time it doesn't matter if its digital or analog. Phase shedding or increasing can be done in analog or digital as long as its done. Digital control loops do offer non linear control so you can do things such as have smaller caps but analog interfaced with digital can do the same and at much less power usage. The one issue with digital control is the process time so your limited to how fast the clock can run. Thats why they use alot of phases, it makes it so that the slow digital loop can handle it by dividing the time by the number of phases so you might be using a board that has more phases not for you but to help the digital control loop out since digital loop requires processing time to do its computation and control. So as switching speeds increase digital control may have a harder time while analog pwm can go to 20mhz or more no problem.
In the end its whichever solution gives the best performance and features people are willing to pay for
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
I'm mildly surprised that MSI decided that this board could make due with only 2 12V connectors. The Z97 MPower used 3: 8pin, 4 pin, and 6pin PCIe; but its CPUs are lower power and is maxes out at 3GPUs vs potentially 4 here (with water cooling and if you can remove the video out ports on one card).29a - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
What does 3DMark2001 XP Turbo in the BIOS do?Horza - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Boosts 3DMark2001 scores I'd imagine. My Gigabyte board has a similar "Legacy Benchmark Enhancement" setting in the bios which apparently boosts 01 score and SuperPi.kmmatney - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
I just don't get why anyone spends $250+ on a motherboard. I've always been able to overclock my cpus quite high (better than the average, let's say) using motherboards that are virtually free with a Microcenter CPU+MB bundle. The last few motherboards have been the MSI PC-Mate Z77, and I was able to overclock both a G3258 and a Devil's Canyon Core i5 to levels on par with the Anandtech review of those respective cpus. The cpu heatsink makes more of a difference than the motherboard. I haven't had any stability problems overclocking, going back over 10 years, with basic motherboards. Once you have a good overclock and stability, what more do you need?Zap - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
You can't directly compare pricing of socket 2011 motherboards versus socket 1150 motherboards. They are entirely different beasts.As for the exact same platform, more money gives more features. Also, some people can afford to spend more, and enjoy owning a "premium" product.
Why does someone pay for an iPhone when they can use a "almost the same" $100 Android phone? Why does someone pay for a top end Mercedes when a loaded Camry for $30,000 has power and leather everything, plus electronic gadgets?
That said, I do agree with you to a point. Sometimes more cost means real benefits. However, sometimes that just means extra NICs and PCIe slots and fancy VRM heatsinks that you still won't use or benefit from.
nos024 - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
Choosing a motherboard is important, not just for overclocking capabilities. Whether you'd want SLI, extra USBs and SATA connectors, NIC, Wifi etc, Also some would like PCI/PS2 ports to carry on perips they want to incorporate into their new build. I learned this from many builds I'd built for myself. Essentially you are stuck with the motherboard you go with. I don't totally disagree with your point, but I've learned that cheap motherboards are just that...cheap.The most I will spend on a motherboard is $200 and I am quite satisfied with my ASRock Z97 Extreme 6. It took me months of research to settle on this. I'd happily pay an extra $50-100 for something I want.