BIOS -
BIOS is an acronym that stands for Basic Input/Output System. It is meant to control your product at a very low level.  As of right now there are three regularly used BIOS formats (there are actually more than that but there are three common ones). These are the AMI (American Megatrends Incorporated), Award, and Phoenix. With the launch of the P67 the majority of Intel based motherboard BIOSes have switched over to the EFI style BIOS. The Big Bang Marshal has MSI’s version of this BIOS, which looks a little cheesy to be very honest with you.  But, looks can often disguise good performance.

When you hit the landing page you will see five icons, however the one in the middle is the one that will occupy the most of your time. Still we will start off with the Green Power page first. Here, as you can imagine you will find all of the settings that let you get the most power efficiency out of the Big Bang Marshal. There really are some great features here, but I just have this feeling that if you picked up this board you are not looking to try and reduce your power bill. The features here are not useless though and are an indication that MSI has put a lot of work and thought into the power design of this board.

Moving over to the Utilities page MSI provides you with a Memory Test, a Live Update tool, an HDD image backup utility and a way to customize your boot screen with images of your own (just like Capital One). To get this to work you will need a FAT32 formatted device with a .BMP or .JPG file on it. From there it will upload it to the system and use that instead of the normal boot screen.

Since we are working in order we now come to the Overclocking pages. If you were thinking you were getting something different here you are going to be a little disappointed. The layout is different and it is easier to move around (with the help of your mouse). We found it very easy to move around in and to get a quick over view of things when we were looking to make changes during our overclocking. The next Icon is titled Games. This is one that I think is here because it is part of the Click BIOS from MSI. I do not know many overclockers or enthusiast that would be interested in playing games in the BIOS. The last screen is the Settings page. Here are the things like the M-Flash (odd since there is a Live Update here too), your security settings, Boot options the system status and the Advanced system settings. It is also where you go when you want to save your changes.

Overclocking -
When you bring up overclocking you often hear people talk about Asus, Gigabyte, eVGA and others. You probably do not hear about MSI though.  However, we have to say that so far we have consistently gotten our high clocks when we have used the MSI boards we get into the shop (at least on the Intel side of things). For Sandy Bridge the MSI Big Bang Marshal allowed us to push our Core i7 2600k all the way to 4.9GHz and this is with an early BIOS! Can you imagine what you might be able to get with a BIOS that is properly tuned? We also have to wonder what we would get with some extreme cooling (which we are looking into).

Of course overclocking is a picky subject. I can buy to identical CPUs from the store and they will not always perform the same way under stress. This is the same with motherboards, RAM and GPUs.  So again it is important to keep in mind that our results represent a specific hardware configuration. Yours may be similar but will rarely be identical.

Overclocking Tools -
Everybody has an overclocking tool and MSI is no exception. In addition to their OC Genie button (and software) you also get what they call the Control Center. This tool is well laid out and clean, in a way it reminds me of the way the overclocking section of the BIOS is laid out. Everything you need is located on one page and can be quickly found and adjusted. You can also save different overclocking profiles that you can save to your system if you want or need to get a quick OC fix later.

You also have the same Green Power page (like in the BIOS). Here you get some of the same options and can also find a good read on how efficient your system is performing. This screen shot was taken during our 4.9GHz overclock and even with the system pushed to the limit we were getting a reading of 86% efficiency. Here you can also turn the board level LEDs on or off, if you care to.

The Test System and Comments -
Our test system is built on an open bench. This has two effects on testing. First it allows us to see everything and also to setup and disassemble the test rigs quickly. Second it means that we cannot gauge the potential air flow found in a normal case. The air is pretty stagnant; some may say this is a great neutral testing method and it can be. However, it does mean that the temperature reading taken off of the components are not accurate to what an average consumer would see. This means that your thermal performance will vary from what we see here.

Building and configuring the MSI Big Bang Marshal was a snap. We did not have any issues with the install of Windows 7 and the driver/utilities DVD also made things simple. For drivers there is a “Total Installer” which manages to get all of the drivers that you need on the system without the need to reboot (for the most part).  There is also a Total installer for the utilities, but I would not recommend running it as you will end up getting more than most people would want or need. You get things like the Audio Genie (THX software), Teaming Genie, Video Genie, and a bunch of other genies.

Again some of these are nice, but I wonder where they fit into an enthusiast/overclocker’s motherboard.

Performance testing overview -
Our testing is a little different than most. We combine both synthetic and real-world applications to simulate the types of performance common to the individual products. For motherboards this means that we run roughly six synthetic tests and two real-world. We will be expanding the real-world testing in the near future.  But there is more to performance than just the raw numbers. As there are multiple components and sub-components on a motherboard there each item can have a distinct impact on the way the product will perform once you get it in your system. It is important to note not only the actual results but what they mean to you as a potential consumer. We will try to give this information to you. But we do not just cover the performance aspects that are measurable. We also talk about the components that might not have a direct benchmark. These are items like Audio Quality, ease of use and installation.  

Section 1 Subsystems -
Memory -
Memory performance is very important on a motherboard, especially when you have a CPU with multiple cores and threads. If you have slow memory your cores and threads can become starved for data to execute. To test memory performance we run both Sisoft’s SANDRA and AIDA64. These two combine to not only give us accurate numbers but to validate each other. For testing at stock speeds the memory is hard set to 1333MHz while overclocking testing is done at the highest stable speed for the voltage of 1.65v this is due to the different memory dividers for each CPU. As such, the memory speeds will vary greatly. This means that the overclocked numbers are a little misleading and while they can show a trend are really only included to show if a board has a problem with memory performance at high clockspeeds.

The Marshal does very well in our memory performance testing. This is not surprising as most of the Intel CPUs we have tested since the Second Generation Core CPUs hit the market. Still with these scores we can expect to see good performance in out rendering tests. When we overclock the Marshal we lose a little bit of this though as we only see our memory speed step up by a very small amount.

ADIA64 gives us more detail on the memory performance we get with the Marshal. We see that it has some good latency scores (something that many AMD CPUs have an issue with). We also see excellent read speeds with the CPU and memory we have chosen.

AIDA64 Stock Speeds	AIDA64 Overclocked

Drive performance -
Drive performance is also one of the major subsystems that goes to make up the performance of a motherboard.  For our testing we use Sandra and AIDA64 again.  We only test with single drives for each type of controller present on the motherboard (unless it is a professional product where we will use RIAD 5 and/or 10). We have also begun using a Seagate PS-110 USB 3 external HDD for our USB 3.0 performance.  As a side note, we include the overclocked numbers here to make sure  (again) that you are not going to see a major drop in performance due to minor instabilities at high clock speeds.

The MSI Big Bang Marshal has some of the fastest SSD speeds we have seen on a P67 motherboard, we were (and are) very impressed with what it can do. We were seeing speeds that were up in the area of 220MB/s which is not bad at all when you look at some of the other boards we have in our test group.

AIDA64 Stock Speed	AIDA64 Overclocked

Power -
Power efficiency is another of those misnomers that we get caught up in. We hear about idle states and power gates. But what does that mean to you and I?  On the surface having power management that reduces idle power sounds great and can be a benefit to someone that leaves their system on for long periods of time (and inactive) but how a system handles power under load and the delta between the two states is often more important than the idle power usage numbers. We use only P3 Kill A Watt instruments for measuring power.

As we mentioned before the Big Bang Marshal has a level of efficiency, but not one that really keeps it from pulling a lot of power from your house when you put it under load. There was an even bigger draw of power when we overclocked the board. I would not let this worry you really. The components on the board are designed to take this and keep going and, like I said before, this is an enthusiast’s board. It is not meant to sit in the corner and play solitaire on.

Cooling (Board Level) -
Board level cooling is an important factor in product performance and longevity. Components like the chipset, VRM modules and even capacitors need to be kept relatively cool to prevent failure. As these parts are made of silicon, they have a thermal breakdown threshold; or melting point. At that temperature the actual transistors built into chip will begin to deform and break down. Granted, the threshold is often very high, but you still need to make sure that components stay away from this level of heat for longer product life.  

Once again we find the Marshal in the middle in terms of heat generation. It was not bad in terms of temperature, but it was at the upper edge of where it should be for a P67 based product. Of course this will change if you buy this and put it inside a case with good cooling at that point the heatsinks should be able to keep things under control.

Audio -
Audio is highly subjective. What we find pleasing may sound “off” to you. That is always going to the problem with testing audio; results will vary too widely depending on the tastes of the listener. However, there are ways of measuring the audio output with an objective ear. There is also the issue of audio causing performance issues in gaming and video playback. The reason this is a potential source of concern is that all onboard audio CODECs (Compression/Decompression) are CPU controlled. This means that while the audio chip controls the audio levels and effects of the audio the actual work is done on the CPU. Usually this will not be a problem with today’s powerful CPUs. Even the lower and consumer level products can handle high-end audio these days. But again there is the chance that a bad design or software will hinder your system and performance. On the other side the limits of board space, cost, etc will also prevent the level of audio quality you can get from an add-in board.  We test all audio parts with three media types, Movie (DVD), MP3 Music, and Gaming. These are pushed to our Tec On model 55 Tube Amp to see if we can detect any signal issues in the reproduction.

The Big Bang Marshal comes complete with a THX audio software pack. With this installed our gaming and media experience was… well it was the same as it was without it. THX does not really translate through the DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) found in our Tech On Model 55. To be sure about this we plugged in a decent set of gaming headphones and retried. The audio was a little better… not great but the software tried to add more depth and vibrance to it. It is still good audio for a built in CODEC but it is not going to win any awards.

Networking -
This one is something that is a requirement anymore. If you have a computer, the chances are good (like 99%) that you are also connected to high-speed internet.  With this you need a good and solid LAN chip to make sure that your data flows properly out and back.

The Marshal has dual RealTek GBe LAN chips on the board. These work well and should be more than enough to handle almost any gaming or networking situation you get yourself into. We also played around with the RealTek teaming utility that MSI rebranded. Once again this is a nice utility, but… unless you have a switch or router in your house that actually supports real teaming you are not going to get any true benefit from it.

Section II - Performance Tests, Synthetic
In this section of testing we cover the synthetics. These are tests that run a scripted sequence of internal APIs or that use another installed application to perform a series of scripted events. They are great in that they can provide reproducible results across various platforms. On the down side, synthetic tests can be fooled with driver tweaks and optimizations. In some cases it is necessary to rename the .exe file to something generic to discover if this is the case. In any event when this is needed (when a test shows a drastic difference in performance over the renamed exe) we will note this and show both results for comparison.  

PCMark Vantage -
PCMark Vantage is a suite of tests designed to test the power of your computer. It runs task that range from productivity to gaming (DX9 only). It is a great test to identify potential problem areas with general performance on a system. It can also show how well a single component can increase or decrease system-wide performance. We run both the x86 and x64 PCMark Suites for testing.

Our PCMark Vantage test shows us that the Marshal can put the extra memory and HDD performance to good use. In both the stock and overclocked tests we find it out in the lead by a comfortable margin. This is very good news for more than one group of potential buyers. For the enthusiast they know they can crank out some good PCMark scores for HWBot and for any potential prosumer or professional customers they get a glimpse into its potential as a workstation board.

3DMark 11 -
3DMark 11 is the other Futuremark test that we run on our motherboards. This test simulates the typical tasks that a GPU (and system) would have to perform to provide you with a good gaming experience. It is based on the DX9, DX10 and DX11 engines but can only be installed on Windows Vista or later. The suite of tests covers DX9, DX10, and of course DX11 rendering; it also covers AI computations and physics. That’s right I said Physics the latest version of 3DMark uses a Havok physics engine. This removes the advantage that nVidia had with 3DMark Vantage.

Well look at this, the Marshal is out on top again. In both of our 3DMark runs this board manages to take the lead. This is a good sign for our real-world gaming tests we will be running later. It also shows us that the Big Bang Marshal is not hindered by the awkward distribution of PCIe lanes on the board.

HyperPi 0.99b -
HyperPi is a front end application that allows you to easily run multiple instances of the SuperPi application. SuperPi, for those that are not familiar with it, is an application that measures the time it takes to calculate the number Pi out to as many as 32 million places. This calculation is then checked and run multiple times (up to 24 for a 32M run).  This test stresses the CPU, Memory and HDD as data is handed off between the three. If there is a weak link, HyperPi will show it. For our testing we run the 32M test on as many cores (and threads) as the CPU has available.  The slowest CPU time is then recorded.

Interestingly enough we find that the Marshal comes in second behind the Gigabyte P67A-UD7. The delta is about seven seconds, which as many overclockers know can mean the difference between a record and second.

Cinebench R11.5 -
Cinebench R11.5 is the 11th release of Maxon’s rendering test. This test is based off of the Cinema 4D engine, which is one of the industry standard tools for digital animation. It is a powerful product with many different modules that can be “plugged” into it to increase its effectiveness. With Cinebench you get to see how your computer would do using this application. There are two tests; one tests the CPU’s ability to render an image across multiple cores or threads. The other tests your systems ability to handle OpenGL based rendering.

The Marshal had hit and miss performance with Cinebench R11.5 it is on the lower end of the pack for our stock speed tests, but does manage to come out on top when we overclock it.

Section III - Performance Tests, Real-World
Here we have two tests that are designed to put the performance of the motherboard and its subsystems to the test. Both require good CPU, Memory, HDD and even to a lesser extent audio and network performance. The two tests we chose were Lightwave 3D 9.6 and AutoGK 2.55. We will be adding at least one more real-world test to this battery in the near future, but for now these two cover quite a bit.

Lightwave 3D 9.6 x64 -
Lightwave is another industry standard application for 3D animation and rendering. It has a large tool base and the rendering engine is highly threaded (when using the right render model). This application is also capable of expanding to 4k resolutions as well as ray tracing for rending the light sources. For our testing we use frame 470 of the Pinball scene found in the LW 9 Content folder.  This uses the newer perspective camera that is better suited to a multi-CPU/Core environment. This camera style also uses ray tracing and a much improved anti-aliasing method. Settings are shown below in the attached screen shot.  Of course these are single frame renders and they are not a complete picture; for that you have to take into account the number of frames an average project would have. In a typical 30 second commercial you will have around 840 to 960 frames (at 28 – 32 FPS) this means that you have to multiply the time of a single frame by that number just to get a vague idea of how long that 30 seconds would take. This is because each frame will have a different render time based on complexity.

We might have found the Marshal’s Achilles Heel. After the lower than expected score in Cinebench we see something similar her with LightWave 3D. You might be thinking that the difference is only three seconds, but when you look at our estimated project you will see why it really is a big deal.

Now when we overclock the Core i7 2600K we see the scores drop dramatically. Not bad at all, but I am not sure if I would want to run at close to 100% CPU load on all eight threads for 109 hours though.


AutoGK 2.55 Transcoding -
AutoGK is a transcoding software that is really multiple parts combined to make an easy to use whole. It combines, items like FDD Show, Xvid encoder, Virtual Dub and others for use in converting one media format to another (usually Xvid AVI). It will not transcode copy protected DVDs or Bluray discs yet (you still need a decrypter for that). But it does an excellent job on everything else.  For our testing we use a 2 hour movie that has been placed onto a standard definition DVD for playback; we then transcode this DVD to a 100% quality AVI with the original audio intact.  This puts a strain on the CPU, Memory, HDD and the attached DVD ROM drive.

I think I see that the issue is with the Big Bang Marshal. If you look at our two real world tests and our synthetic rendering test you can see that we are having an issue with dealing with large calculations and then committing them to disk. We have a feeling that there is something that is slowing things down between the CPU and HDD. If this is memory or something else we are not entirely sure but it is there, no question about it.

Section IV Performance – Gaming
Gaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 DX9 -
This is an excellent but short game that put you right into the action from the beginning and does not let up the pressure until the very end. The graphics are a little better; most notably the night and thermal imaging have been improved. The AI is still the typical COD “bar fight” style AI, with maybe a tad more finesse. All in all it is not a bad game to play and a decent one to use for testing. Our testing run starts at the bridge and ends after you clear the school in the first level of the game. Settings are shown below as are the performance numbers.

The Big Bang Marshal did very well in our Modern Warfare testing. The minimum FPS is right around 100. This almost puts it up there where it can keep up with the 120Hz monitors. Of course none of the boards really does poorly, it is just that this one does much better.

FarCry2 DX10 -
Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.

In FarCry 2 the Big Bang is way out in front again. This is very nice to see as we were concerned with our two other real world tests.

Battlefield Bad Company2 DX11 –
I have liked many of the Battlefield games. They usually tend to be fast paced and fun. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 you do get some of that, but there is something about the graphics and the movement that just does not sit right. The AI is a less sophisticated form of the bar fight AI, but it gets the job done. Still, the game is good for testing as it can put a strain on the components of the board. Out testing run is the entire first level, from beginning to end. Settings are shown below along with the raw numbers.

For Bad Company 2 we see that the Big Bang Marshal is right behind the leader which is oddly enough an AMD board. When we kicked the Marshal into high gear we manage to pull ahead by 2 FPS. Not much of a margin, but enough.

Gaming wrap-up -
I was really impressed with the gaming quality on the Big Bang Marshal. When you play these games over and over (and over) like we do during testing you tend to see these tests are very repetitive. They almost get boring. However, we noticed a slight difference when we were playing on the Big Bang Marshal. The games seemed a little more responsive and the audio was a little fuller (more alive) than we are used to. It was a nice break from the monotony. We are considering setting this up with multiple GPUs just to see what we can get out of it at a later time.

Value -
Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item.

The Marshal will set you back $399.99 for a retail box purchase from most e-tailers (some offer open box or returns for a little less). This is a steep price to pay for a motherboard no matter how thin you slice it. But as we have always said, value is in the eye of the buyer. If you are an overclocker or an enthusiast that wants the most out of their motherboard then the $399.99 price might not be too much to pay. You do get a good deal when you buy this product, for us we got one of the highest overclocks we have achieved with our Core i7 2600K in addition to some excellent synthetic performance. We do hope that we see some improvement on our real world performance (especially rendering and transcoding) if that happens then the $399.99 will be a much easier bill to pay.

Conclusion -
The Big Bang Marshal is an audacious product. MSI has combined a large number of components into one mass and with some thought, engineering and the right component choices they have made brought order out of chaos (sorry I could not resist). We do have some complaints though; we really do wish that MSI had of used x1 mechanical slots for the four x1 electrical slots instead of trying to make the board look more impressive than it is. We would also recommend that you upgrade the BIOS to the latest one available from MSI as we are sure this will help with some of the rendering and transcoding issues we saw with the Big Bang Marshal.

To wrap things up we are still impressed with the Big Bang Marshal; it has the potential to really push your CPU to its limits with the right cooling and power supply behind it. Even the $399.99 price tag cannot take away from this. It is one of the better P67 boards that we have tested and that is saying something as we have yet to find one that is really bad.

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