BIOS
MSI persist with the AMI 3.31a BIOS. The main configuration screen is detailed below.
This will be familiar to many of you. We immediately look towards the frequency/voltage section.
MSI use a very similar BIOS to their Canterwood board. What that means is a crazy amount of voltage for the usual VCore, VDDR, and VAGP options. 2.3v is a little silly, as is 3.3v for VDIMM. It appears as if MSI want to wholeheartedly appeal towards the enthusiast with their very latest range of boards. The FSB goes right up to 500, assuming that your CPU and motherboard are up to it. A pet peeve of ours is the inability to select a certain FSB by keying it in manually. Rather, MSI require you to cycle through every FSB before arriving at your required FSB. It's almost necessary for MSI to specify high voltages as the board, much like the Canterwood version, tends to under-volt a little when placed under heavy load.
The Springdale board also allows you to select a number of asynchronous memory speeds. Synchronous is best for the most part, because clock buffering usually takes a chunk out of performance. The only time one should use asynchronous RAM settings is when running at ultra-high FSBs.
The usual memory latency timings are located in a separate section. Funnily enough, at 200FSB the best settings with respect to performance were SPD (serial presence detect).
MSI's deluxe boards focus heavily on almost every conceivable feature. As most motherboards are jumperless nowadays, the BIOS plays host to the toggling of the features.
The above picture draws a couple of interesting points. Firstly, the CPU's temperature is reckoned to be 62c with moderate BIOS load. That seems highly implausible given that a ThermalRight AX478 and reasonable 80mm fan was the cooling employed. We really do wish that motherboard manufacturers would have some kind of consistency between their temperature readings. Secondly, the annoying Northbridge fan spins at ~ 6500 RPM. That's a little too high if you're looking for a very quiet system. Voltages are strong due to the tuned Samcheer 420w PSU used.
