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MSI Big Bang XPOWER Intel X58 motherboard review

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.

We enabled maximum settings, including hardware tessellated animated crowds and dynamic water via ULTRA settings.

Very minor gains from the MSI board with around half a frame extra in the average and minimum frame rate results.

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20 comments

  1. bugger me with a bargepole, thats bloody impressive.

  2. MSi really are pulling out all the stops recently to get seen in high end circles. I think its working !

  3. Looks like a mega product again from MSI. price is high but I expected that after reading the review.

  4. Love the design, they look to have covered everything from design to connectivity. the OC genie is a great idea and I was surprised to hear it worked well, thats a bit of a shocker.

  5. Very good review Zardon, thank you.

  6. That bundle is crazy good, so much in it, no wonder it costs so much. Seems a good price I think its cheaper than the asus rampage board just released.

  7. Seems to be low stock levels of this everywhere, must be popular or a low build rate for MSI.

  8. hard to get in some parts of the world, so ive heard, yah.

  9. They need to realise a board like this for the 1156 platform also. that platform has such crappy boards throughout the ranges.

  10. Good review and I was interested to see the power drain was lower than competiting products. thats always a good sign.

  11. MSI are underrated in the motherboard market, but I love to see them creating these products to go head to head with ASUS and the top level players on the market right now. This looks to be better than the Ramage from what ive seen on kitguru and other review sites.

  12. Its a really good looking board, I hate all the ordinary capacitors we normally see around the CPU socket, but those HIc capacitors are a huge selling point, for me anyway.

  13. I think AMD motherboards are better equipped, but this one really helps Intel 1366 buyers. so much on it and a great variety of high quality components onboard.

  14. I currently own a gigabyte board which i love, but I want to move to 1366, I think this would be top of my list, its well priced considering the quality throughout.

  15. Its impresive, but I feel ASUS still have the quality edge. the rampage board is the cream of the crop.

  16. @ Derek, normally I would agree, but I cant see there being any better 1366 motherboard on the market right now. MSI are really doing their homework before releasing these products.

  17. excellent, really excellent. way out of my price range, but I can dream

  18. MSI rock, they really do, I loved the review of the R5870 card on kitguru last month. all their changes arent just for show or talk,. they really make a difference

  19. Very good product, the price isnt as bad as I thought, I had surmissed it would be £320.

  20. No real weaknesses indeed. even the sata ports are in the right places. so many makers (yes im looking at you intel), put sata ports right under a long graphics card which is useless, even with a 90 degree designed connector.