MSI Readies X58A-GD65 Motherboard

This looks to be the more mainstream board based on the XPower technology. At €220, it's in direct competition with the X58A-UD5. It'll be interesting to see what board takes the upper hand!

MSI is ready with a new feature-rich "value" LGA1366 motherboard, the X58A-GD65. Among LGA1366 motherboards, this model is priced at a relatively-affordable 210€, building on X58's feature-set, coupled with USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s using additional controllers on board. The X58A-GD65 uses an 8-phase VRM with high-C capacitors. It uses simple heatsinks over the VRM, X58 IOMMU, and ICH10R southbridge. Expansion slots include three PCI-Express x16 slots, of which the first two are wired to the X58 with full-bandwidth, while the third one is wired to the ICH10R, and is electrical x4; other slots include two each of PCI-E x1, and PCI. ATI CrossFireX is the only multi-GPU standard supported.

Connectivity includes six SATA 3 Gb/s ports from the southbridge, two SATA 6 Gb/s from an additional controller, two eSATA ports, two USB 3.0 ports, 4+6 USB 2.0 ports, 8-channel audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, FireWire, and one gigabit Ethernet connection. To lure enthusiasts, MSI advertises military-grade components used in critical power-delivery circuits, active-phase switching, support for six-core processors out of the box, and DDR3-2133 MHz memory support.