Features -
In the current market motherboard (and indeed almost all components) performance is very close. The days of a large performance advantage between boards using the same chipset are long gone. That is unless someone makes a HUGE mistake (like runs traces completely wrong). Now, the thing that differentiates different products is the features. These are things like power management, extra slots, better audio CODECs etc. It is these items that R&D teams work so hard to drop into what are really identical pieces of hardware at their most basic level.

The Big Bang Marshal has a few interesting features (and some really nice ones too). We will cover the ones that we feel are the high lights and what well, isn’t.

Excellent -
Hi-c Caps
Server MOSFTEs
Hydralogic Multi-GPU
Eight USB 3.0 ports on the board

MSI has picked out some great components to push this board and then added a feature set on top that helps make everything work out.  

In the middle (sort of good) -
MultiBIOS
Voltage Monitor Points
Multiple 4-pin Fan headers
SLI (only dual no Three way)
CrossfireX
OC Genie
OC Dashboard

These are nice extras but are not items that are going to push things over the edge for a buying decision. The OC Genie and OC Dashboard features are nice, but end up seeming cheesy (like on many other boards out on the market).

Floor Mats -
Phase LEDs
Board LEDs

These are the types of things that are filler; again they are nice, but they do not make the board what it is as they are pretty much on all MSI motherboards. In fact that is a selling feature for MSI; they created a feature set that spans the different product lines. I would suspect this is to help with product confidence and to give a perception of performance at even the entry and consumer levels.

We will cover some of these features more in their proper places but for now you can see the listing of what we see as real and what is filler or brand wide.

Conclusion Part I -
The MSI Big Bang Marshal is a bold move on MSI’s part. It combines a large amount of components into a single product. This has a risk for failure as all of these components rely on bridges to keep the data flowing. The move to put in all x16 mechanical slots was a little arrogant though. I honestly would have preferred to have seen the x1 slots as x1 slots, but we suppose it is all about appearance. Now it is up to use to see if all of these items will work together as a whole. Stick around for part II where we will cover just how well the Big Bang Marshal performs.

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