At the start of this year we helped introduce Sandy Bridge along with coverage on 5 different LGA1155 motherboards. One of those boards was MSI’s P67A-GD65, one of their 16 different P67 motherboards that are currently available. We found the UEFI BIOS, easy overclocking support, and low price point to be great and gave it both our Top Honors and Editors Choice awards. Today we are going to take a look at their P67A-GD80, the GD65’s bigger brother. With a similar feature set I have high hopes.
Supports Intel® Sandy Bridge processors in LGA1155 package.
Chipset
• Intel® P67 (B3) Chipset
Main Memory
• Supports four unbuffered DIMM of 1.5 Volt DDR3 1066/1333/1600*/2133*(OC) DRAM, 32GB Max - Supports 1GB/ 2GB/ 4GB/ 8GB DRAM size - Supports Dual channel mode
Slots
• 3 PCI Express gen2 x16 slots - PCI_E2 supports up to PCIE x16 speed when PCI_E4 is empty, or PCI_E2 will support up to PCIE x8 speed when PCI_E4 is installed - PCI_E4 supports up to PCIE x8 speed - PCI_E5 supports up to PCIE x4 speed (due to the limitation of the chipset, when the PCI_E5 has been installed with a PCIE x4 device, 2 eSATA ports, 2 onboard front USB 3.0 connectors, 2 PCI slots and 1 USB 3.0 rear IO port (the top USB 3.0 port at the side of audio jacks) will become unavailable.) • 2 PCIE x1 slots - When both of the PCIE x1 (PCI_E1, PCI_E3) slots have been installed, only the PCI_E1 slot is available, using one PCIE x1 slot is recommended.• 3 PCI Express gen2 x1 slots • 2 32-bit v2.3 master PCI bus slots. - Support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface.
On-Board SATA
• SATAII controller integrated in Intel® P67 (B3) chipset - Up to 3Gb/s transfer speed. - Supports four SATAII ports (SATA3~6) by P67 (B3) PCH
• SATAIII controller integrated in Intel® P67 (B3) chipset - Up to 6Gb/s transfer speed. - Supports two SATAIII ports (SATA1~2) by P67 (B3) PCH - SATA1~6 ports support RAID 0/1/5/10 mode by Intel P67 (B3) PCH
• eSATAII controller integrated in Marvell® 88SE9128 chipset - Supports two eSATA ports (back panel) - Supports RAID 0/1 mode
USB 3.0
• 1 USB 3.0 internal connectors by NEC® D720200 • 1 USB 3.0 internal connectors by NEC® D720200 to VIA® VL810 hub • 2 USB 3.0 rear I/O ports by NEC® D720200 • 4 USB 3.0 rear I/O ports by NEC® D720200 to VIA® VL810 hub
Audio
• Chipset integrated by Realtek® ALC892 - Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing - Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec - Meet Microsoft Vista Premium spec
LAN
Supports two PCI Express LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Realtek 8111E.
IEEE1394/ FireWire
-VIA® VT6308P chipset - Supports up to two 1394 ports. (Rear panel x1, pinheader x1) - Transfer rate is up to 400Mbps.
Internal I/O Connectors
- ATX 24-Pin power connector - 8-pin ATX 12V power connector - 6-pin ATX 12V VGA connector - CPU x 1 / System x 4 FAN connectors - CD-in connector - Front panel audio connector - Front panel connector - 1 x chasis intrusion connector - 3 x USB 2.0 connectors - 2 x USB 3.0 connectors - 4 x Serial ATAII connectors - 2 x Serial ATAIII connectors - 1 x IEEE1394 connector - 1 x Clear CMOS jumper - 1 x SPDIF-out connector - 1 x TPM module connector - 1 x Voltage Check Point - 1 x Power button - 1 x Reset button
Back Panel I/O Ports
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard port - 6 x USB 3.0 ports - 1 x Clear CMOS button - 1 x Coaxial SPDIF port - 1 x Optical SPDIF port - 1 x IEEE1394 port - 2 x eSATA ports - 2 x RJ45 LAN Jacks - 4 x USB 2.0 ports - 1 x 6 in 1 audio jack
BIOS
The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface(DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
At the start of this year we helped introduce Sandy Bridge along with coverage on 5 different LGA1155 motherboards. One of those boards was MSI’s P67A-GD65, one of their 16 different P67 motherboards that are currently available. We found the UEFI BIOS, easy overclocking support, and low price point to be great and gave it both our Top Honors and Editors Choice awards. Today we are going to take a look at their P67A-GD80, the GD65’s bigger brother. With a similar feature set I have high hopes.
