My core i7-920 and MSI x58 ECLIPSE review

[amitash]

INTEL CORE i7-920 and MSI X58 ECLIPSE:

Well i finally managed to get my hands on the new and improved generation..So lets get right on it:

Current Config:

CPU--INTEL CORE i7-920 (stock: 133*20)
Motherboard--MSI X58 ECLIPSE (intel x58/ICH10R)
Memory--6GB (3x2GB) G-Skill Tripple channel DDR3 1600Mhz PC3-12800
GPU--GeCube Radeon HD3870X2
Tagan BZ700--700W modular PSU

The i7-920:

The processor arrived in the standard box with an i7 badge on the front :

*img370.imageshack.us/img370/8660/image130wt9.jpg



These stock settings were written on the side:
freq--2.66Ghz Core--45nm
QPI--4.8 GT/s Socket--LGA 1366
L3 Cache--8MB

*img224.imageshack.us/img224/5108/image133fc7.jpg

As usual the processor came bundled with the stock intel heatsink and an instructions manual with an official core i7 badge stuck to the back. Pretty standar packaging from intel.

The X58 ECLIPSE:

Now The package this motherboard arrived in is flashy to say the least (An advert for the crown jewels would be more appropriate)..

The blindingly shiny front panel with the name and some basic support features:

*img377.imageshack.us/img377/9834/image134as4.jpg

The front panel opens like a book to reveal all the main features of the board as well as a look at the DrMOS and northbridge heatsinks .



Motherboard Features:


Socket 1366 CPU (Max Support) i7
FSB / Hyper Transport Bus 6.4GT/s
Chipset Intel® X58
DDR2 Memory N/A
DDR3 Memory DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600
DIMM Slots 6 Max Memory (GB) 24
PCI-Ex16 3
PCI-Ex8 N/A
PCI-Ex4 N/A
PCI-Ex1 2
PCI 2
IDE 1
SATA 10 RAID 0/1/5/10/
LAN 10/100/1000*2
TPM 1
USB ports (Rear) 8
Audio ports (Rear) 5(Creative® SB X-Fi Xtreme)
Serial ports (Rear) N/A
Parallel ports (Rear) N/A
1394 ports (Rear) 1
eSATA 2
VGA-- N/A
DVI-- N/A
HDMI-- N/A
Display Port-- N/A
Form Factor ATX
AM3 Support-- N/A
DrMOS-- Y
Sideport Memory-- N/A
SLI-- Y
3-way SLI-- Y
Hybrid SLI-- N/A
CrossFire-- Y
Hybrid CrossFire-- N/A


As you can see the motherboard comes with an impressive array of features including 3 PCI-E slots abd SLI AND Crossfire support!!! Now thats Gamer heaven.
It also boasts the latest Creative X-fi sound card and the stylish heatpipe cooling for the North bridge and the MOSFETs

*img401.imageshack.us/img401/7251/mobodn8.jpg


Now I was most impressed with the layout of this board..It looks very good in Black and blue and has a crisp, clean layout...The angled SATA ports are a welcome addition indeed...I did have one problem though: The location of the motherboard power socket is right next to the ddr3 memory socket which renders the last memory socket useless IF you want to install the Green Power Genie....It was so cumbersome infact that i decided not to put the Green Power Genie on the mobo....If u are willing to xclude that one fact then the layout is just about perfect.

DLED-2:

*img213.imageshack.us/img213/4122/image146em5.jpg

Now i loved this feature on the motherboard, the LED display comes with a detachable thermal diode to measure temps anywhere u want on the motherboard
(I decided to tape this to the North bridge heatsink). This wonderfull display shows all the current status of the BIOS like Vcore, NB vcore, CPU BCLK and if the Computer fails to boot it will tell u the cause like DDR fail, VGA fail, CPU fail etc..



Test Setup and Overclocking:

Because of the wonderfull board layout, it proved very easy to install all the components on the motherboard and there is plenty of space around the cpu socket for aftermarket coolers to go.

Overclocking this setup was a breeze on this motherboard, the bios is EXCELLENT. The cell menu in the bios contained over 2 pages of Overclocking options, The voltages of almost everything can be changed.
Now there was this one feature on the BIOS called "intel Turbo Boost". This is one feature i approve of alot...What this does is increase the cpu clock multiplier from 20 to 21 effectively OCing your PC.
The motherboard also came with a hardware OC switch which could vary the base clock between 133(default)/160/200Mhz...I left this option alone
One thing i noticed is that if you leave the CPU voltage to "auto" and load your cpu, the voltage increases from 1.28v to 1.375v!!...This was alarming so i manually set the voltage and left everything else alone...After 5mins in the BIOS i could OC to 3.01Ghz just by loweruing the memory multiplier to 5x, increasing BCLK to 150Mhz and actually decreasing Vcore to 1.28v...The system booted easily and was stable through 2hrs of prime95 and all the benchmarks I ran Listed later in the review. Unfortunately i couldnt go any higher as im on the stick cooler..
Let me say this though: this is ONE HOT CHIP...Load temps got as high as 76C so im waiting for a bracket to fit my TRUE into this..Maybe then I can take this chip to 3.5-3.6Ghz.Although intel hasnt listed the thermal specs yet

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/419/cpuzgi7.jpg




Benchmarks:

1.SiSoftware Sandra cpu-arithmetic test:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/6092/sandraarithjp4.jpg


As you can see this is ONE FAST chip..Leaving the competition in the dust.

2.Sandra CPU-Multimedia:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/6638/sandracpucy3.jpg

Again the i7-920 clears the QX9770 quote easily.

3.Sandra Memory Bandwidth:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/8172/sandrabandyt0.jpg

And once again the mantra is repeated..This time due to the superior Tri-channel Memory controller the bandwidth offered touches the roof.

4.Sandra Memory Latency:

*img146.imageshack.us/img146/6330/sandramemlatqt8.jpg


This time the i7/x58 combo is much closer to the competetion

5.Super pi 1M:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/4881/superpi1mtt6.jpg

A very Good Super pi score, My old Q6600 OCd to 3.1Ghz did it in 20s

6.Super pi 32M:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/3487/superpi32mld1.jpg

The 32M benchmark proving to be 8Mins faster than the Q6600 and nearly 3mins faster than the QX9770


7.3DMark Vantage:

*img510.imageshack.us/img510/9471/vantagetk2.jpg

Observe the cpu score in this one... A whopping 19158!!

9.Cinebench R10:

*img185.imageshack.us/img185/1871/cinegq2.jpg*img368.imageshack.us/img368/4774/cine2ot1.jpg

The trend continues...a massive cinebench score for multicore performance.


Conclusion:

As the Benchmarks show intel have clearly made hefty progress with the new core i7 and x58 technologies...Power consumption is a tad high for these chips but they do offer one hell of a performance. As Anandtech said: This chip is like a cheeta drunk on a case of red bull. As far as value for money is concerned, the prices in india are as of now not available but rest assured the high end setup will require a deep wallet...But this chip offers uncompromising performance making it a tempting offer. It will be the best option for people with a high budget....
As for the motherboar the Eclipse is a solid performer with plenty of features. The X-fi card totally blew me away with the sound quality..I feel MSI has got a sure fire winner here.

Thank you for reading this review
Fell free to request ANY benchmarks and corrections whatsoever and i will include it as soon as possible.



UPDATE:
Booting....CPU INI..... mobos dead....
Everything was running fine I was happy...hell i posted this review but now suddenly there was no post from the motherboard...DLED2 said it was stuck on cpu-ini...after a quick google search i found out that many people had the same @@@@@@@ problem...Some tried to flash to a newer bios and mobo died...for some it just well...died spontaneously like mine and i was even running it at stock speed.
I contacted MSI and they conveniently told me that it was a problem with their BIOS and had to RMA..whats more the MSI people have even removed the bios from their site...Am very angry with MSI so i contacted newegg and they told me that they had suffered problems with this product too and that they will RMA...But i asked for a Refund and they agreed....Luckily i can send it back with my aunt as shes leaving day-after...I have already ordered the Gigabyte X58 EXTREME motherboard from here in blore and it equals all the features of the MSI board and also has a few extra features and a mamoth NB heatsink and the fact that it wont spontaneously die on you ....getting it on friday. Never expected such poor quality from MSI.

 

[desiibond]

Congrats and thanks for putting the review on Digit Forum.

Yes, I read the CPU whitepaper and internals and it was clear that this is going to be one hell of a processor with lot of improvement.

You are now in a different league of PC owners.

 

[ashu888ashu888]

^^

I agree to that comment totally..
-------

btw to the OP: Congrats a TON man for ur new PC and also for this review.. btw plz ans these below..

1.) how much money u spent on this config ?? and
2.) for wat purpose u gonna use this ? ?gaming ??
---------

Cheers n e-peace...

 

[topgear]

Congrats for being the 1st corei7 owner in this forum.
Thanks for the review.

One question : Where from did you buy this components ?

 

[╬Switch╬]

Nice scores.
What were the costs btw?

 

[hellgate]

so u've already got a Core i7 920 4 ur self.thats gr8.
congrats on ur new setup.

 

[amitash]

One question : Where from did you buy this components ?

I bought the parts from newegg, my aunt got it here.

1.) how much money u spent on this config ?? and
2.) for wat purpose u gonna use this ? ?gaming ??

1. RAM and mobo were available cheaper than usual on newegg due to their black friday/thanksgiving sale
core i7 920--299$
x58 ECLIPSE--300$
DDR3 3x2GB--240$

2.I am going to use this for mainly gaming and a little folding, It wil give a considerable boost for gaming as i never bought the penryns along with everyone else so the i7 seemed a good upgrade for my 65nm Q6600. I had originally planned to buy a penryn quad+new x48 mobo+4GB DDR3 + 4870 from my dealer here in B'lore which would have cost me around 54k ...but as i have said earlier there is no point for me to get a 4870 as my 3870x2 can already play most games at max settings with AA xcept crysis...So instead of spending so much i gave up the gfx card and bought the forementioned config for 40k (Already paid for, $ went for 46Rs in foreign xchange place)..Will upgrade to an ATi 5xxx series or the GT300 series when they come out.

EDIT: this forum does not allow you to post more than 15 images I had originally pasted a few more benchmarks and more pics of my rig and bios OC settings totalling upto 30 images, had to cut down on alot

 

[ratedrsuperstar]

one thing i noticed was i got 26.xx MOPS on my OC'ed e7200@3.57Ghz and i get around 23.xx(somewhere close to ur score) on my currently Oc'ed setup at 3.34Ghz

 

[amitash]

^Can you post a pics of that? And use the latest sandra 2009 sp1 please

 

[Pathik]

Congrats dude. The first Core i7 on Digit?

 

[amitash]

^think so

 

[shantanu]

congrats man.. !! awesome scores there

 

[nvidia]

Congrats dude! Nice review!

 

[amitash]

UPDATE:
Added updated cinebench scores

Thanks for the props everyone

Now im on a quest to see the max clock speed i can hit at 1.2v

Another update:
Well at 1.2v (thats undervolting by 0.8v) the system only proved bootable at stock speeds and was stable 30mins under prime, i upped the vcore to its default 1.28v with vdrop that came to 1.26v and the system is stable at 3.2Ghz BUT the temps reach 85C (2hrs prime)...So this proves that intel still cant make a stock heatsink that can do anything else xcept cool at stock speeds

 

[topgear]

^^ Buddy why you have used 3870X2 GFX card.
The benches score would be much better if you have used 4870X2

 

[MetalheadGautham]

^^Some people need to READ all the posts before commenting

@amitash: The buy looks quite decent IMO. I think its definitely a good idea to wait for HD58(5/7)0(X2). I heard ATI is going to use Hynix 7GHz GDDR5 memory in their HD5870 GPU and perhaps in HD5850 too, but for the later, I think they might use Samsung 2200MHz DDR3 (NOT GDDR3) memory, as they hinted before, because they wanted to use DDR3 to cut costs over GDDR3 in lower end. BTW, your RAM is faster than your current GPU's RAM .

 

[hellgate]

@amitash even i'm also thinking of getting a Core i7 920 based rig.the mobo i chose was Asus P6T Dlx.
so sud i get the Asus or the MSI mobo that ur using.i dunno when i shall be able to get it cuz theres no sign of these in the Indian market.

 

[amitash]

@amitash even i'm also thinking of getting a Core i7 920 based rig.the mobo i chose was Asus P6T Dlx.
so sud i get the Asus or the MSI mobo that ur using.i dunno when i shall be able to get it cuz theres no sign of these in the Indian market.

Both motherboards are great and both Overclock amazingly, the MSI has broken the memory bandwidth record and i have found a few ppl running it at 3.8Ghz+ with the TRUE, both cost almost the same in USD with Msi being some 20$ more, but it offers more features than the asus like the X-fi audio card, more USB ports, DrMOS, D-led2, the MSI green power genie (although im not using that), Both boards are exactly the same in most every other aspect....I would suggest the MSI but performance-based, both boards are identical.
EDIT: I would also like to add how easy this motherboard is to overclock...all i had to do for 3.3Ghz was:
1.set DRAM Timings to its default 9-9-9-24 (do not leave this at auto or it wont boot)
2.Leave all the QPI settings to its default
3.Turn off EIST,Speedstep and turbo boost..leave multiplier at 20
4.Set RAM multiplier to 4x
5.set PCI to 37.3
6. Set cpu vcore to +0.0 (the actual Vcore was 1.2v, +0.0 means i dont overvlolt) DO NOT LEAVE THIS AT AUTO.
7.set QPI voltage to +0.0 again DO noT LEAVE THIS AT AUTO.
8.increase baseclock (BCLK) to 160Mhz

Because my vcore settings were NOT on auto, the vcore didnt spontaneously increase and my temps are down to 76C from 86C...Thats nearly a 650Mhz OC on a stock cooler

 

[Faun]

awesome review Congrats.

 

[topgear]

^^Some people need to READ all the posts before commenting

@amitash: The buy looks quite decent IMO. I think its definitely a good idea to wait for HD58(5/7)0(X2). I heard ATI is going to use Hynix 7GHz GDDR5 memory in their HD5870 GPU and perhaps in HD5850 too, but for the later, I think they might use Samsung 2200MHz DDR3 (NOT GDDR3) memory, as they hinted before, because they wanted to use DDR3 to cut costs over GDDR3 in lower end. BTW, your RAM is faster than your current GPU's RAM .

If I remember correctly - You are the guy who had once a big confusion between zebronics Bijli & peace cabinet. You told a peace cabby a bijli.
On that thread by you I had to tell you several times that that's not bijli but peace.

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89848&page=2

ya. I read all the posts. I know he has one 3870x2.
But what I was tried to said is if he could arrange to manage a 4870X2 somehow the benchmark scores would be much more better not gaming experience.