In practice
So how does this chipset fare in practice? To answer this question, MSI lent us a P45D3 Platinum which we compared to this same brand’s P35D3 Platinum. With its imposing cooling system based on heatpipes, the motherboard has all of the capabilities of the P45 while also adding an e-SATA (JMB362 chip), two SATA and a PATA (JMB363 chip) ports, as well as FireWire 400 (JMB381 chip). HD Audio is handled by a Realtek ALC888 CODEC while the Gigabit network is provided by a PCI-E Realtek RTL8111C chip.
Note that the CPU power block uses a DrMos-type component, in other words, a driver-MOSFET is integrated to the same unit in order to decrease its size. The chips, developed by Renesas, are announced as being able to attain up to 89% efficiency. This motherboard also features GreenPower technology. It is MSI’s name for the possibility of automatically changing the number of phases used by the motherboard for CPU, chipset and DDR power in order to find the most efficient use of energy depending on required levels. Otherwise, the motherboard comes with a PCB which fits between your power supply and the motherboard’s ATX block (relayed to the motherboard). It enables displaying the power used on each line in addition to the power used by the CPU via the ATX12V connector.
Despite the array of functions, we obtained rather mixed results, although we could not determine the exact cause: the beta bios, a pre-version of the motherboard, an ‘’ES’’ (sample) chipset? Indeed, on the first and then a second model something rather strange happened.
After our usual tests in FSB increases on the motherboard with a quad core (something much more demanding than dual core FSB increases) consisting of raising the frequency and if necessary calculated increases in the various voltages, the quality of the chipset seemed to have been altered. Afterwards, it didn’t even function at FSB1333!
For this reason, we couldn’t finish all of our tests on the P45. Moreover, the overall reliability of this solution seems to be in jeopardy even if specify again that this situation repeatedly happened with pre-series material.
Memory
We were first interested in evaluating the memory controller by using ScienceMark 2 to obtain speeds and latency. The framerate was also measured in Crysis and file compression times were obtained with WinRAR 3.7. These two ‘’practical’’ applications were chosen because they are noticeably affected by the speed of the memory subsystem, something that isn’t always the case.
As you can see, there are slight gains in latency but much bigger improvements in bandwidth with the MSI P45 motherboard compared to the MSI P35. In practice, the impact is variable. It’s significant in WinRAR and barely noticeable in Crysis, though always in favor of the P45.
PCI-Express
In practice, what does improved PCI Express support add to the P45? This is what we wanted to determine with the help of Crysis, the latest game from Crytek, and which has the most advanced graphic engine at this time. In fact, in standard resolution, 1680*1050, high quality mode causes problems for 256 MB cards and they are required to use central memory to compensate for this. Therefore, for this test we used two PCI-E 2.0 cards, 8800 GTs equipped with 256 and 512 MB of video memory. We started with exclusive connection to the first graphic port and then we tested the second port with another card being placed in the first.
With a 256 MB card the result is clear and the benefits of the P45 are obvious. On the first port, the advantage of 16 PCI-E 1.0 lanes versus 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes is already significant. Moreover, when comparing 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes to 4 PCI-E 1.0 lanes by using the card on the second port, there is really no comparison.
With a 512 MB card, the differences are much less, to the extent that the advantage on the first port is very small. On the other hand, on the second port, the advantage is clearly in favor of the P45. However, note that there isn’t really a difference for the P45 between 16 2.0 lanes (the first port used by itself) and 8 2.0 lanes (the case when using two cards). For this reason, the interest of the X38/X48, which has support for twice as many PCI-E 2.0 lanes, is very minimal.
