MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) Motherboard Review - PAGE 10

When it comes to Sandy Bridge based motherboards, the MSI Z68A-GD80 has it all. Just looking at the features exclusive to the MSI brand, the board boasts an impressive array of features such as the on-board OC Genie II overclocking button, high-quality Military Class II components and a newly refined UEFI Click BIOS II sub-system. All of these features really improve the overall value of the Z68A-GD80, but MSI has taken things one step further by increasing the warranty period to a whopping 5 years, which is really putting your money where your mouth is.

In addition to the exclusive technologies this board offers, it also comes equipped will all the features that make the Z68 Express chipset the best choice available for Sandy Bridge processors. These include Intel Smart Response Technology that improves the performance of a system by allowing a hard drive and SDD to be paired together. This technology allows the system to work as if an SSD is the only drive in use, but in actuality the SSD is used for caching while a standard hard drive is used for data storage. This really is a win-win solution, as it boosts the performance without sacrificing storage space in return.

Another excellent feature of the Z68 chipset is the GPU Virtualization. This technology allows the system to dynamically switch between the GPU and IGP. The system can utilizs the power of a discrete graphics card when needed, while reducing the total power consumption by letting the IGP handle processes such as HD playback and video transcending.

One nice addition to the board, but not an necessarily important one at this point in time, is the PCIe 3.0 slots.  This technology effectively doubles the bandwidth of the PCIe x16 slots, which will improve performance down the road. For the time being though, PCIe 3.0 is not going to deliver performance gains with today's cards, but this may soon change because AMD could be releasing their Gen 3.0 graphics cards as early as this fall. To be sure, the generation 3.0 slots are still backwards compatible, so PCIe x16 graphics card will still work with this board.

MSI did an excellent job incorporating its exclusive technologies into the Z68A-GD80, and the latest Z68 Express features make one hell of a motherboard. At $239 it is an expensive motherboard, but it really delivers the goods, and is well worth the premium.