MSI P55-GD85 LGA 1156 Intel Motherboard Review

Test Results

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The results for this review have quite the story behind them. The first time I compiled the results the Gigabyte P55A-UD6 was beating the MSI P55-GD85 by ~5% in each benchmark. Turns out I forgot to disable turbo mode on the Gigabyte so it was running at 166×22. I corrected that and now the MSI beat the Gigabyte in nearly all the tests, but by only around 0.5%. However, it was consistent across the board. Doing more digging, I find that when I set 166MHz baseclock in BIOS on the MSI it yields a 166.6MHz baseclock which yields a 0.3% overclock and partially accounts for the performance increase. So with that discovered I’m still satisfied with the results as the two boards typically are within 1% of each other with the only major blowout being the Sandra bandwidth test where the Gigabyte has a 15% lead. Since that is primarily memory I pulled out CPU Tweaker and took a peek at the timings and sub-timings.

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So if you squint or click for the full-sized image you’ll immediately note the difference in baseclock. The second thing would be the RTL timings; the MSI P55-GD85 set them slightly tighter at 40 versus 42 on the Gigabyte while the Gigabyte set tRAS tighter at 24 versus 27 on the MSI. In short, even with the .6MHz baseclock advantage accounted for there is a slightly larger performance gap which could be all down to memory or margin of error.