MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) Motherboard Review - PAGE 1

Over the last few years MSI has strived to improve the quality of its motherboards, and this led to better power efficiency, thermal performance and stability. However, MSI has also been working on improving the overall user experience by introducing features such as the easy-to-navigate UEFI Click BIOS interface, Windows OS based overclocking utilities, easy-access onboard tweaking features and improved audio quality. All of these features demonstrate MSI's commitment as one of the top-tier motherboard manufacturers, but with the Z68A-GD80 motherboard reviewed today, MSI is going one step further by increasing the length of their warranty from a standard 3-year time frame to 5 years. This essentially means this board will remain covered by MSI long after the Intel SandyBridge platform becomes obsolete, which is a huge bonus for mainstream consumers who are less likely to upgrade components frequently.  However, it'll cost you thanks to the Z68A-GD80's $239 price tag.

While Neoseeker has looked at multiple MSI motherboards over the years, this particular product is the first MSI Z68-based motherboard to enter the labs. This board comes with all the goodies introduced with Intel's latest chipset release, including SSD caching, LucidLogix GPU Virtualization and access to Intel QuickSync technology.  All of these features are designed to improve the overall performance of the SandyBridge platform.

Through its support for LucidLogix Virtu technology, the MSI Z68A-GD80 provides the most expandable feature for desktop platforms by allowing for switchable graphics. Users will be able to utilize both the motherboard's integrated GPU as well as their own discrete GPU for specific tasks.  For instance, when using a PC for playback, video transcoding and general applications, the discrete graphics card will be inactive while the IGP handles the workload. This in turn lowers the power rating needed for non-gaming related applications. In the same vein, the platform can release the full gaming power of the system by switching over to the discrete graphics card during gaming, or anytime parallel processing is required.

In addition, the Intel Smart Response technology improves the system's performance by supporting a SSD/HDD configuration. Essentially, Smart Response technology allows a small SSD to work as a cache data bank for the system, while a larger hard drive serves as the system's main storage unit. This is done through an intelligent block-based caching algorithm that allows the data from the SSD to be accessed directly, thus preventing the data from having to be retrieved from the HDD. This reduces the time needed to access the data and eliminates a bottleneck that has been plaguing systems for years.