Final thoughts and rating
The purchase of a new motherboard is primarily dictated by the choice of CPU. We recommend that readers would be well-served by looking at Intel's latest Core processors, formerly known as Ivy Bridge, and they work best when sat on top of a Z77 chipset-based motherboard.
MSI has realised that it's arguably more important to offer perceived value than Kitchen Sink features on its mainstream Z77 boards. Starting at £80 and topping out at £150 or so, super-high pricing has been replaced by economic pragmatism. Our reviewed Z77A-GD55, retailing for £120, looks the business. Examine it closer and MSI's built the board wholly around the features inherent in Intel's chipset; there are no major auxillary features such as additional SATA, USB 3.0 or FireWire.
Benchmark numbers indicate that your preferred Z77 board should be chosen on required features more than straight-line performance; a well-tuned board, irrespective of price, performs similarly to any other when evaluated on a stock-clocked basis. In that regard, MSI's BIOS is average, features are average (no Virtu support), while the choice of components, layout and enthusiast-orientated features are all above average.
The Z77A-GD55, then, is a solid board whose pricing needs to drop to £100 for it to be worthy of outright recommendation, for competitor Z77 boards offer a similar feature-set at that price. Enthusiasts who like to tinker with systems in an open-air environment may, however, take a shine to how MSI has gone about its business with the GD55.
The Good
Looks the business
High-quality components
Class-matching performance
The Bad
Competitor boards offer similar perf for less money
HEXUS Rating
MSI Z77A-GD55 motherboard
HEXUS Where2Buy
The reviewed motherboard is available on special offer here.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
