Bundle and initial thoughts
MSI's Trinergy bundle is well equipped, with all the required cabling included as standard - including a selection of SLI/CrossFire links. The box-art is eye catching, and we like the fact that the majority of MSI's bundled cables are now black - as opposed to red on previous boards. Going one step further, even the I/O back panel cover is finished in black.
Offering something a little different, MSI also throws in a test report sheet - detailing how the board fared at the hands of an MSI engineer prior to being packaged and sealed for retail. Our sample board, tested on November 13th by names we can't read, achieved a base clock (BCLK) of 197MHz using one-touch OC Genie overclocking. The test report even includes third-party benchmark results, including numbers for 3DMark, CINEBENCH and a couple of games. A very nice touch, we reckon.
Initial thoughts
At first glance, MSI's Trinergy appears to have the makings of a high-quality, extreme P55 motherboard with features that'll appeal to many an enthusiast. Unfortunately, it could become little more than an appetiser for 2009's successor - the Big Bang Fuzion, one of the world's first motherboards equipped with LucidLogix multi-GPU HYDRA technology. It might just be worth holding out to see how multi-GPU scaling compares on the HYDRA-powered board.
Readers should also note that there's no support for USB 3.0 or SATA 6Gbit/s - both seemingly surfaced too late in Trinergy's development. Although USB 3.0 devices are few and far between, and user's may currently be hard pushed to require the bandwidth obtained by the third-generation SATA interface, these are ultimately future-proof features that we'd hope to see on £200+ boards.
Then again, if you're in the market for a P55 board that facilitates true three-way SLI/CrossFire configurations, the MSI Big Bang Trinergy looks mighty decent.
