After taking a look over the MSI X79A-GD65(8D) motherboard and some of MSI’s design choices (and the benefits they bring) we have dove into our performance testing. You may remember that we had concerns about the way the PCIe slots were segmented into Gen3 and Gen2. To check and see what effect (if any) this might have on performance we ran some of our tests with the GPU in the Gen2 slot and some in the Gen3 slot. We were more than a little surprised at what we found out. So let’s get into the performance half of our review of the MSI X79A-GD65(8D) and see what we found.
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 MSI X79A-GD65(8D) will run you about $290. This is a little less than your average X79 motherboard, but as it does not include the WiFi or Bluetooth adapter you would expect it to cost a little less (you can get boards with the WiFi/BT module for about $315). It looks like MSI offset the cost of the Intel LAN controller and some of the other higher-end components by removing this add-in. We do wish the performance was better as the performance that we see here does not really justify the full $290 price tag in our minds. Conclusion -Although the MSI X79A-GD65(8D) comes with Gen3 PCIe and some high-end components we were a little disappointed in it. There is something that is affecting performance when you need to move data between the memory, the HDD and the CPU. We saw this manifest in several tests. Our thoughts are that this is a BIOS issue and one that should be easily corrected. However, we have not ruled out the possibility that the PCIe Gen3 could be a factor. We saw some odd performance numbers when we tried to use the PCIe Gen2 slots so there could be something in the way the Gen3 switching is working that is causing an issue. Check out our final thought below; Discuss this in our Forum
