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The MSI P67A-GD65 is a good product, however it is a little rough around the edges. If you stick to automatic settings there will never be a problem, even if you use the OC Genie tool. This is ideal for inexperienced users who want great performance ‘out of the box' and perhaps even a little extra performance, by simply pressing a button.
For veterans, this board will prove to be less of a positive experience. The bios is solid enough, but it can be tempremental. It often won't pick up the correct memory speeds, opting for 1333mhz. This won't prove to be that important to some people, but for those wanting maximum performance then manual tweaking is going to be required. If we manually set our Kingston memory to 2133mhz, then the system wouldn't post, getting stuck in a post loop, requiring a reset. Manually forcing an XMP profile cured this particular problem. Unfortunately if you touch the memory settings, then try overclocking the board with OC Genie, it decides that 20GHZ+ is feasible and gets itself caught in another reboot loop.
Inexperienced users with high performance memory will need to load an XMP profile after letting the board settle on the best automatic overclock and guru's will need to just battle against the bios to achieve the maximum manual overclocks. It wasn't the easiest board to overclock, but 4.7ghz with a CoolerMaster V8 wasn't too bad. Sure, I did manage to get this CPU to 5.1ghz on an Intel board, but for most people 4.7ghz is more than enough.
Overall, I found this board to be good, but there are bios quirks that need to be carefully and painstakingly addressed to get the most from it. We are sure that MSI will continue improving the board over the coming months, with bios upgrades, just be careful with the OC Genie and memory settings and it is actually very stable.
KitGuru says: A weird bios, but a solid, good performance board once you learn to live with the quirks. At £132 inc vat it offers good value for money.
I dont think this is one of their best boards, loads of complaints about it online. noticed quite a few threads in forums I frequent.
do NOT touch this board http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=144484.new;topicseen#new
things like.. just clicking on “spread spectrum” to disable it crashes the bios. So far all I have gotten from their tech support is “please try this new bios 1.8b5” which has the same issue.
A very glowing review really for a board with a lot of issues. I had two of these and complained so much I got a refund then bought an ASUS. much better. the bios is fucked.
Amazing if this would work the way they think it will. it will assuredly stop ‘mistakes’ which seem to hit newspapers all the time.
opps sorry, wrong story post above urghhhh
I have this board, and it has worked ok for me. I can’t overclock anyway, so the button does what I need. ive a 2500k at over 4ghz. Ive no idea how to get it there manually, so I cant complain.
@ Frannie. Hey man, does your 2500k run ok? I saw a thread on anandtech and a user used the auto settings and the cpu was getting alot more voltage than it needed. you might want to check in the bios its not overvolting too much…….
OCGenie is pure garbage. If you want to OC ANY MSI board don’t bother with OCG. Do it manually, old-school way.
With P67 you will be better of with (even) AsRock or Intel OEM board than with MSI.
Hey Suchet, I looked in the bios and temperatures are 50c? is that ok ?
I don’t prefer usually MSI as a Motherboard in the past died on me… However I bought a new ASUS P8P67 Deluxe for my upgrade which died also after flashing a newer BIOS version.. So what? Is ASUS or MSI crap? I believe that all the manufacturers use their customers as testers for their products so to build better revisions.