MSI Eclipse X58 - Black is beautyful
Category : X58
Published by Jean-Luc Hadey on 23.12.08
With the Eclipse 7520-010R MSI presents it latest flagship in their motherboard portfolio. This product comes with a lot of features and goodies. For example you can find a Creative based X-Fi PCIe soundcard which you can put on a nice black PCB that caries a huge heatpipe cooling solution.
On the following pages you will see what the new MSI Eclipse is capable of.
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Specifications
| CPU | IntelLGA 1336 Core i7,45nm CPUs |
| Chipset | IntelX58 + ICH10R |
| QPI | 6.4GT/s |
| Memory | Triple Channel DDR3, 6 x DIMM, Max. 24 GB DDR3 1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 Non-ECC, unbuffered |
| Multi-GPU | Triple SLI, CrossfireX |
| Slots | 2 x PCIe 2.0 x 16 (x16/x16) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x 16 (x  2 x PCI 2 x PCIe x1 |
| Sound | MSIExtreme X-Fi Soundcard, 7.1 Channel Surround |
| Storage | 6 x SATA 3 Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10) via Intel ICH10R 4 x SATA, 1 x ATA/133 über JMB363 & JMB 322 2 x eSATA 3 Gb/s via JBM 362 |
| LAN | Dual Gigabit Ethernet |
| Firewire | 1 x 1394a port (Backpanel) |
| USB | 10x USB 2.0 Anschlüsse (8 via Backpanel, 2 via Mainboard Header) |
| Divers | Onboard Switches: Power, Reset, CMOS-Clear Green Power Genie Modul |
| Dimensions | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
Included in delivery
| Cables and divers |
| 1 x ATX I/O bezel |
| 6 x SATA cable |
| 1 x IDE cable, 1x Floppycable |
| 2 x SATA-power adaptor, |
| 1 x eSATA-bezel with adaptor |
| 1 x GreenPower-Genie adaptor |
| 1 x X-Fi-PCIe soundcard |
| 6 x M-Connectors |
| 1 x USB bezel |
| 1 x SLI Bridge, 2 x Crossfire Bridge |
| 1 x D-LED2 Module |
| MSI driver and utilities DVD |
| Manual |
| MSI Software: MSI Live Update, MSI Overcloking Center, MSI GreenPower Center, MSI HDD Backup |
MSI ships its Eclipse motherboard with a large bundle of accessories, software and utilities. Next to all the cables and drivers you'll find supplements like MSI Live Update to update your BIOS and drivers within windows, MSI Green Power Center and MSI Overclocking Center. The last two items allow hardware monitoring and manipulating BIOS settings within windows. There's only one thing MSI forgot: a triple SLI bridge.
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Goodies
The MSI Eclipse comes with a whole bundle of features for overclockers and standard PC users. Following you will find them listed:
MSI D-LED2: Allows reading out mainboard specific information.
MSI OverclockingCenter: Windows overclocking tool.
MSI Green Power Genie: The Green Power Genie-Module is being put between the ATX power plug and the motherboard. Once connected it allows – in combination combination with the Green Power CenterII software – to monitor and manipulate the power consumption. Via presets you can choose between different settings. You can also create your very own power profiles.
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Layout and I/O
The layout is clearly arranged. All connectors are well placed and accessible except you install a third graphic card. In this case you won't be able to push the onbaord "on/off"- and "Reset"-button. Installing new hardware is very comfortable because on the whole board there is plenty of space around the bigger components. With its 90 degree angled SATA connectors MSI lets the you arrange its cables neatly (A) and the onboard power- and reset button are very practical (B).
Altogether there are six memory slots on the MSI Exclipse which officially support DDR3-1066/1333 with up to 12 GByte/s transferrate. If you want to overclock the memory subsystem MSI says DDR3-1600 is also possible.
North- and southbridge as well as voltage converters are hold at adequate temperatures via a passiv Heatpipe (A) cooling solution. Fortunately there is still enough space around the CPU socket to install even todays biggest air cooler.
If you are looking for external connectors on the MSI Eclipse you can find two Gigabit ethernet ports, eight USB 2.0 connectors, PS/2 keyboard and mouse connector, optical S/PDIF connectors as well as firewire, eSATA connectors and 8-channel audio I/O.
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BIOS
| BCLK Frequency | 133 - 400 MHz in 1 MHz steps |
| PCIE Frequency | Auto - 37.3 MHz - 42 MHz |
| CPU Voltage | Standard -320mV / +630mV |
| CPUPLL Voltage | 1.0 - 2.43V |
| QPI | Standard -320mV / +630mV |
| DRAM Voltage | 1.2 - 2.77V |
| ICH Voltage | 0.7 - 2.13V |
| IOH Voltage | 0.78 - 1.73V |
The well arranged BIOS provides you with all desired settings to optimize or overclock your system. Especially interesting are the many different voltage settings as well as the possibility to save different BIOS configurations. This for example allows you to store a standard- and a overclocking profile. Unfortunately you can't save the profiles under different names.
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Test environment
| Hardware | |
| Mainboard | MSI Eclipse, Intel X58 Express Chipset, LGA 1366 Sockel |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-920, 2.66 GHz |
| Memory | Mushkin 3 x 2GB DDR3 1800 MHz CL7 @ 1066 MHz (Triple Channel Kit) |
| Graphic card | ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB |
| Harddisk | Samsung 620GB F1 |
| PSU | Corsair HX 1000 Watt |
| CPU Cooling | NoctuaNH-U12P SE1366 |
To test the mainboard on performance and stability we use the following games and benchmark programs.
Benchmark programs
Futuremark PCMark Vantage: Checks the system performance with five different tests: System, CPU, memory, graphics and HDD.
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: Checks the systems gaming performance.
Sisoft Sandra XII 2008: Performance- and stability test through memory bandwidth, multi-media performance and arithmetic performance.
Super PI mod 1.5XS: Performance and stability test which calculates PI on a specified number of decimal places.
HD Tach 3.0.4.0: measures the
performance of hard disks. We use HD Tach 3.0.4.0.
Games
- F.E.A.R (DX9.0c)
- Crysis (DX10)
Resolution: 128 x 1024
Anit Aliasing: none
Filtering: by system
Details: low
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Test results and overclocking
| PCMark Vantage | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| PCMarkSuite | 6222 | 6256 | 6413 |
| MemorySuite | 4747 | 4811 | 4747 |
| Gaming Suite | 8833 | 7697 | 8865 |
| Harddisk | 3849 | 3905 | 3733 |
| 3DMarkVantage | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| Gesamt | 8218 | 8257 | 8283 |
| GPU Score | 7039 | 7070 | 7041 |
| CPU Score | 16513 | 16627 | 16430 |
| SiSoft memory bandwidth MB/s | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| Floating point | 18950 | 19120 | 18940 |
| SiSoft memory bandwidth MB/s | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| Integer | 18960 | 19007 | 18930 |
| SuperPi | MSI Eclipse | AsusRampage II Extreme | GigabyteGA-EX58-UD5 |
| SuperPi 1M | 15.469s | 15.383s | 15.325s |
| SuperPi 32M | 14m38.716s | 14m35.369s | 14m31.484s |
| HD Tach USB-2.0-interface | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| CPU load | 2% | 2% | 3% |
| Burst (MB/s) | 35 | 35.1 | 35.7 |
| Read average (MB/s) | 32.5 | 33.5 | 33.4 |
| HD Tach SATA interface | |||
| CPU load | 2% | 1% | 2% |
| Burst (MB/s) | 215 | 232 | 218 |
| Read average (MB/s) | 92 | 94 | 93.5 |
| Resultate in FPS | MSI Eclipse | Asus Rampage II Extreme | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 |
| F.E.A.R (DX9) | 647 | 645 | 644 |
| Call of Juarez (DX10) | 49.5 | 48.7 | 49.1 |
| Crysis(DX10) | 63.47 | 63.05 | 64.12 |
With our overclocking attempts we are looking for the highest possible Busclock. As a stabilitytest we use SuperPI 1.5 which has to run a 32M calculation. Therefore the results can be considered as stable.
With the corresponding BIOS settings we were able to clock the CPU all the way up to 4.23 GHz and the board to a BCKL of 201.6 MHz. Therefore the CPU needed 1.56 volts and a multiplyer of 21.
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Conclusion
MSI did a very god job with its brand new Eclipse motherboard which is placed in the absolute high-end market.
The GreenPower-Genie Module which comes in the extensive delivery is interesting and functional. This module allows you to configure in a very energy efficient way. Furthermore the package is completed by a Xtreme Audio Card which is based on a Creative X-Fi chip.
Also the layout is very good. We only spotted one little issue: if you want to use three graphic cards you afterwards won't be able to use the onbaord on/off- and reset-button easily because they will now be covered by the card in the third graphic card slot. Otherwise perfectly placed connectors, angled SATA ports and plenty of space around the key components make it piece of cake to assemble a MSI Eclipse motherboard.
Performance, stability, memory compatibility - you can drive the board stable with different RAM modules -, overclocking features and capabilities – more than 200 MHz BCLK – are excellent and also the extensive but still well arranged BIOS fits perfectly into the picture.
Resulting of the above mentioned reasons we give our OCaholic Top Hardware Award to this product.
You can buy the MSI Eclipse at PCP.ch to a price of CHF 476.-
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Author: jl.hadey@ocaholic.ch
English text by: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch