MSI P55a Fuzion Review
Fuzion and Overclocking
Published: 7th August 2010 | Source: MSI | Price: £250 est. |
Lucid and Fuzion
All manufacturers of anything are looking for a Unique Selling Point. That thing their product does that nobody elses does. MSI have got probably the biggest one around. The only thing we can think of that would be more impressive is if a company produced a motherboard that could handle every socket type. But enough pre-amble.
The MSI P55a Fuzion has a Lucid chip on board. This has one major benefit. Until now if you owned an nVidia card you would have to purchase another nVidia card and run in SLI. Similarly if you currently owned an ATI card, then Crossfire was your only choice.
This is made especially irritating because of nVidias bizarre practise of not allowing PhysX to work when an ATI card is in the system, accidentally released beta drivers notwithstanding. So if you owned an 8800, and then upgraded to a 4 or 5 series ATI, your previous card was all-but useless.
The Lucid chip has two major benefits. Let's say you like to keep up with the very latest hardware and so you brought a 5870 when it was released. Then nVidia finally released the GTX480 and so you brought one of those. Instead of just having one card in your system, thanks to the Lucid chip and HYDRA engine, you can use both of them together in a Hybrid-X configuration. The secondary benefit is if you're like the above example you can use your old nVidia card together with your new ATI card and get PhysX on your ATI.
Installation is mind-blowingly simple. Insert both cards, install both drivers, install the HYDRA software and reboot. Upon reboot you gain a little utility with a small-footprint in your system tray. As you can see from the second screenshot not every game you can think of takes advantage of the Lucid chip. In fact of our standard benchmarking suite only Crysis and 3D Mark Vantage are compatible. However many other very popular games are, with more being added all the time.
Yes indeed this really is an ATI HD5870 next to a GeForce GTX480 in the same system. And yes, as you can see from the FluidMark screenshot on the right, both cards are detected and utilised.
Of course this isn't just about the Lucid chip, so let's pull ourselves back to see how the MSI P55a Fuzion performs as a motherboard, before returning to see if the HYDRA has any benefits.
Overclocking
As with all overclocking of LGA1156 the first thing is to get the highest possible stable BCLK. With a little tweak to the voltage we managed to obtain a very satisfactory 218MHz. Then it was just a case of trying to obtain stability whilst still having a CPU multiplier than would enable good clock speeds.
On the left we have the overclock that the MSI produced when the OC Genie button was enabled. Very nearly 4GHz. It's curious to see that it used a high BCLK to obtain this rather than going all out with the multiplier, but regardless 4GHz for just pressing a button is highly impressive.
Turning the OC Genie off and going back to the manual BIOS method of overclocking we saw an absolutely stunning 4.33GHz. As with nearly all overclocks as you start to get higher on the multiplier the quickly has to be reduced sharply to retain stability. Nonetheless with 1.37v on the CPU Core (not shown in CPU-Z as it hasn't been updated for this motherboard yet) we had a massive overclock that was stable enough to be used all the time.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by Luigi
That's pretty impressive actually - they've really put some work into making the hydra chip work and the results speak for themselves. |
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Originally Posted by AMDFTW
were is the review |
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Originally Posted by I Hunta x
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o god i feel dumb,i am wandering around this site tho lol i will peal ones eyes nex timeits cos i am uste to them being there in the first post
I shall have to read it more thoroughly later and see exactly what's going on, but from a skim over the surface isn't it just a driver than does what the Physx mod does?
The only real criticism I can find is that at a glance it looks like a cheap Gigabyte. I really wish companies would spend more time on the design and aesthetics of these boards. Currently the only company I can really see pushing for visual perfection is Asus. The Crosshair IV is almost a form of art, with looks to die for.
DFI make some good looking boards. Sadly that is where it ends. With most people using a side window these days that MSI board is pretty bland.
Yes, I know, performance before beauty and this board seems great for that, but looks are becoming more important.
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Originally Posted by AlienALX
I shall have to read it more thoroughly later and see exactly what's going on, but from a skim over the surface isn't it just a driver than does what the Physx mod does? |
The only real criticism I can find is that at a glance it looks like a cheap Gigabyte. I really wish companies would spend more time on the design and aesthetics of these boards. Currently the only company I can really see pushing for visual perfection is Asus. The Crosshair IV is almost a form of art, with looks to die for.
DFI make some good looking boards. Sadly that is where it ends. With most people using a side window these days that MSI board is pretty bland.
As someone who deals with a lot of "cheap" boards, no this doesn't look cheap. Not quite sure which pictures you're seeing there, but you might want to dig out a "Cheap Gigabyte" and compare. Of course looks are subjective, but it most certainly doesn't look cheap.
VB
PS - anyone who can stand up and say the DFI Lanparty X58 is good-looking needs to go to Specsavers. Although the DFI P55 DK is beyond gorgeous.
Not seen their X58 but in all honesty I wouldn't look any farther than Asus for that..
I think the board here looks cheap because (and most importantly) the NB/SB coolers look a bit pathetic if I'm being honest, especially on a board of that price. Everything just looks a bit sparse.. Mind you, after seeing that animal of a Gigabyte thing recently I would think that
I just took another look and I stand behind my criticism. The 8 pin AUX is in the worst place they could have put it. My Asrock (which was £30 lmao) has a molex there for the PCIE lanes and it's a royal PITA.
On the topic of looks, it looks fine - but the best looking boards are the newer Asus boards (mainly the ROG ones)
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Originally Posted by delusion77
I dont suppose you could show us 2x 5870 cfx vs fusion and 2x gtx480 sli vs fusion in game performance? I think this new tech is pretty cool as it gives a lot more freedom when upgrading. On the topic of looks, it looks fine - but the best looking boards are the newer Asus boards (mainly the ROG ones) |
A the board has gone already
B we cant test 'everything'
Feel free to look around the site for other reviews. The main reason we try to keep all test systems identical is to ensure that you can pull data across from other reviews and still find them valid.
Happy to help.
VB
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Originally Posted by ppuff
Hey guys I see it on Newegg for $175, if it is in fact the same board then the price smokes your guestimate. |
When I got my Crosshair a year ago I paid £125. If I was about to pay double that I would want double the function, better cooling on the bridges and so on. The MSI doesn't have much of anything. Sure it performs very very well, but at £250 they'll have a ruddy hard time getting any one to buy it.
Mind you according to Scan the Big Bang board is £262. That's insane man. Actually on closer inspection the Big Bang board has triple PCIE slots, heatpipes accross the upper cooling system (NB & VRMS) and looks much much sexier.
Edit. Actually, looking over this review board again makes me change my opinion of it somewhat. It is nicer than I thought. Tom you need to stop spoiling us with filthy smutty images of £400+ motherboards. It's like making sweet love to gorgeous models and then being chucked back into bed with a regular lass
http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=...-8&sa=N&tab=wf
Also... If it's only Physx he wants the 460 for it's a terrible waste of cash. A 240 would do it, 8800GT would do it, 9800GT would do it and so on. Recently on this site I ran a test using a 8800 Ultra alongside a 3870x2 and my Physx score in Fluidmark was identical to that of some one who had a 8800 GTS.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Physx technology that is integrated onto the cards that can run it (240, 8800 GT and so on) is all the same. I mean, if you think about it logically those PCI Physx cards are apparently every bit as good as the Physx that runs on any Nvidia card. I think that the Physx is on the die of the main GPU but a seperate entity.
Also, when I run my 8800U as a Physx card it *never* gets hotter than idle temps. Which just goes to show to me it's either not working very hard at all or if it is then it's not breaking any sweat at all.
I know that this site does not review things in the interest of geeks and science like I do. Fair play to that, they are a new product reviewer. But I would be terribly interested in seeing the two cards used here alongside eachother in a regular dual PCIE slotted board running GenL's Physx mod.
I'm not trying to stir anything up with that, I just find this sort of stuff terribly interesting and geeky. Tech porn, if you will.
That's the way that the hardware world is. Sometimes to get the first look at things you get it before it's really buyable. So in a couple of weeks it should be much clearer what the street value is.
"I know VB likes the colour scheme and is very enthusiastic about it but seriously, come on, £250?" - I did say the "rumours are" matey. Not that it's a guaranteed price.
I would say a fair price for this board here in the review would be £200, but then I have no idea what they are paying Lucid for these chips it uses or how much they cost to produce.. One thing I didn't say was fair play to MSI for actually trying to be different. I have been very impressed recently with Afterburner which IMO is the best piece of software ever for taking your cards by the scruff of the neck and getting them to behave.
I know it's only really a GUI for Rivatuner but that doesn't detract a single thing from it IMO. Utterly awesome tool.
That should bring it up to a 10 for price
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Originally Posted by Telltale
Good to see that it's listed as only £150 on Scan: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-P...3Gb-s-RAID-ATX That should bring it up to a 10 for price |
I'd be very surprised if they actually retail it at £150 once they've got some in stock. If so it's completely a no-brainer.
Bargain. I'm gonna ask for one for my 21st I think. I cba to go back to the review but did it say if you have an ATi card that running it with the lucid+hydra setup you can get phys x from the chip?
Even for a full sized board that supports SLI and crossfire (and hybrid with the right drivers) it's a good board but I don't think I would buy it purely for Lucid.
Just my opinion of course and I am probably wrong as usual
Edit. I was wrong I think. According to Scan it doesn't support SLI. S'a bit odd isn't it?
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