MSI P67A-GD80 Motherboard Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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MSI P67A-GD80 Motherboard Review - While Z68 is the new hotness, there are still plenty of solid P67 boards out there, and plenty of people who do not need or want the extra features Z68 offers. As a result of the recall, there are many more mature P67 boards out there to pick from. We take a look at MSI’s P67A-GD80 to see just what kind of choice it could be.
 
Good review, I agree with you with you on the Control Center and the BIOS, definitely don't work as intended and are frustrating to work with. However at the end of the day once I got everything dialed in I've been very happy with the actual results. Glad to hear that they are coming out with a new BIOS, I will have to keep my eyes open. It also helps temper my expectations getting the board for only $160 off the FS forum. ;)
 
Considering you'll rarely, if ever, need to access the BIOS on a regular basis, I'll give them a pass on it. At least it's upgradeable to something better down the line as compared to hardware problems.

I've been using it for 2 months and it's a very good board. First PC I've ever built too. Glad to own it. The colors in the BIOS are quite playskooly, and I strongly wish I had a BIOS designed like the one on ASUS' boards.
 
I don't know why you guys had such a bad experience with Click BIOS, I haven't had any issues with it at all. As long as you aren't trying to quickly scroll through a list of voltages by clicking below/above the scroll bar, it works fine. Control Center has worked great for me too. Then again, I'm on the GD65.
 
zaxour said:
I don't know why you guys had such a bad experience with Click BIOS, I haven't had any issues with it at all. As long as you aren't trying to quickly scroll through a list of voltages by clicking below/above the scroll bar, it works fine. Control Center has worked great for me too. Then again, I'm on the GD65.
Click to expand...

I think their main concern is that compared to what ASUS has, the Click UEFI BIOS is just plain wonky.

Honestly, who wouldn't rather want something that looks like this: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_uefi_bios/2.html
 
I'm a little confused. When [H] reviewed the MSI P67A-GD65, which is essentially the exact same board but without the more robust power circuitry of the GD80, the result was glowing praise and a Gold award. Why so little love now?
 
Cherub said:
I'm a little confused. When [H] reviewed the MSI P67A-GD65, which is essentially the exact same board but without the more robust power circuitry of the GD80, the result was glowing praise and a Gold award. Why so little love now?
Click to expand...

I actually got the board for its OC performance and positive review from HardOCP. However, I'm returning my P67A-GD65 for its rather finicky behavior and getting an Asus Z68 pro.
 
zaxour said:
I don't know why you guys had such a bad experience with Click BIOS, I haven't had any issues with it at all. As long as you aren't trying to quickly scroll through a list of voltages by clicking below/above the scroll bar, it works fine. Control Center has worked great for me too. Then again, I'm on the GD65.
Click to expand...

It's clumsy to work with. Simple as that. Having to double click every single thing in it gets old fast. Control Center II again has the same problem.

dagamer34 said:
I think their main concern is that compared to what ASUS has, the Click UEFI BIOS is just plain wonky.

Honestly, who wouldn't rather want something that looks like this: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_uefi_bios/2.html
Click to expand...

Exactly. ASUS set the bar for UEFI. To date no one has remotely come close to their implementation.

dagamer34 said:
Considering you'll rarely, if ever, need to access the BIOS on a regular basis, I'll give them a pass on it. At least it's upgradeable to something better down the line as compared to hardware problems.

I've been using it for 2 months and it's a very good board. First PC I've ever built too. Glad to own it. The colors in the BIOS are quite playskooly, and I strongly wish I had a BIOS designed like the one on ASUS' boards.
Click to expand...

There are so many great boards out there that the devil is really in the details. You have to start separating them out and given the current state of P67 boards fairly minor offenses are enough to make the "not recommended list."

Cherub said:
I'm a little confused. When [H] reviewed the MSI P67A-GD65, which is essentially the exact same board but without the more robust power circuitry of the GD80, the result was glowing praise and a Gold award. Why so little love now?
Click to expand...

Two reasons:

  • That was Morry's first P67 chipset based board and first UEFI board. He hadn't yet seen the ASUS UEFI yet.
  • Morry is not as critical as I am generally speaking. I tend to think that I'm a bit more nitpicky than he is.

Reviews like this are still opinions. Granted they are heavily influenced by technical issues and data, but they are still opinions. Morry may simply not dislike the double-clicking but as you can tell, Kyle and I both hate it and feel it to be totally unnecessary and annoying.

I'm also annoyed by all the crap in their Click BIOS that doesn't do anything and requires a driver DVD. They tried to do way too much with their UEFI BIOS and while I think they may have some good ideas they got ahead of themselves and should have concentrated more on the basics.
 
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I was literally seconds away from ordering the GD80, but figured I should check [H] for a review first, just in case. Lo and behold, there was a review just in time to save me from my error. It'll be an Asus for me. Thanks for your nitpickiness; I'm sure these issues would bother me, too.
 
I can't help but feel apoplectic as I read through your experiences as mine have been largely the same - an Excellent review. I currently own a few P67 and Z68 motherboards (MSI and ASUS) and have to agree with your assessment of MSI's turdtastic BIOS. . Comparing my personal experience with ASUS' UEFI and MSI's click BIOS is like comparing Apples to Dingleberries.
 
roadiemike said:
I can't help but feel apoplectic as I read through your experiences as mine have been largely the same - an Excellent review. I currently own a few P67 and Z68 motherboards (MSI and ASUS) and have to agree with your assessment of MSI's turdtastic BIOS. . Comparing my personal experience with ASUS' UEFI and MSI's click BIOS is like comparing Apples to Dingleberries.
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+1 on this one.

The BIOS is quite shameful. On top of everything, MSI's online BIOS download page is non-descriptive of the changes they have made to this board. My brother, like you, actually spoke of the huge difference between ASUS' and MSI's BIOS, stating how ASUS' offering is far superior.

Another annoyance with the MSI bios is that if you click and hold the scroll bar to scroll (rather than clicking the arrows), you have to stay EXACTLY within the width of the bar itself or else it drops you off in the black hole of the BIOS screen, wondering what you just changed.

In addition, random power cycles during bootup plague the board and out of the box, the board does not allow you to get to the BIOS with a G19 keyboard unless you tinker around with the BIOS settings with ANOTHER keyboard. LAME
 
Well for being a click BIOS, with my Razer mouse I've never been able to click anything...still have to use the keyboard for navigation, a cursor doesn't even appear.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Well for being a click BIOS, with my Razer mouse I've never been able to click anything...still have to use the keyboard for navigation, a cursor doesn't even appear.
Click to expand...

The cursor did a ton of blinking when I had the board on the bench. It might not appear at all with some video cards installed. I'm just guessing but that's the only explanation I've got. That or maybe it didn't detect your mouse.
 
One thing I have to ask about is the loadline implementation. I actually picked up the P55-gd65 because of the [H] review and the first thing that I noticed was the negative vdroop with loadline enabled. It was also pretty high. One other thing that I noticed is that normal vdroop was higher than I saw with my Gigabyte board which is actually why I decided to try vdroop in the first place. These were both issues that I saw addressed in the review by another site. AFAIK, this was an across the board issue.

For a review on a motherboard that is marketed towards overclockers I would think that voltage regulation would be priority number 1 in a review. I was wondering if this has changed and what loadine implementation that they are still using.
 
I just bought this board and was pretty worried after I read this review.

And then I finally got the motherboard and tested out the bios.

Conclusion: This reviewers rage on the bios is the most over-reacted critique ever.
I had no problems, everything was simple and easy, and I did not had any nerd rage.

I did not use the mouse in the bios either, just the usually keyboard just like in the past.

Don't let this review sway you away from the motherboard, the motherboard is very pretty and shiny. I popped it in, overclocked my 2500k to 4.5ghz in a few steps, ezpz.
 
me0w0w said:
I just bought this board and was pretty worried after I read this review.

And then I finally got the motherboard and tested out the bios.

Conclusion: This reviewers rage on the bios is the most over-reacted critique ever.
I had no problems, everything was simple and easy, and I did not had any nerd rage.

I did not use the mouse in the bios either, just the usually keyboard just like in the past.

Don't let this review sway you away from the motherboard, the motherboard is very pretty and shiny. I popped it in, overclocked my 2500k to 4.5ghz in a few steps, ezpz.
Click to expand...

Some of us simply have higher standards I guess. The MSI Click BIOS sucks. And if you didn't try using the mouse, you haven't experienced just how bad it is. I agree that using it with a keyboard is a lot better. That doesn't make it good. Have you tried the ASUS UEFI implementation? I'd put it far ahead of MSI's. It's all relative. The MSI P67-GD80 is a pretty good board. It would be even better if the included software was better and the Click BIOS wasn't lame. Though none of those things will effect day to day operation.
 
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