MSI Makes Huge Entry into Overclocking
Pushing systems to the limit with liquid nitrogen.
MSI kicked off its Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) event today at Pole Position Raceway in Las Vegas. The event, the first major event of its kind by MSI, brings a certain air to MSI motherboards that was not previously there. Make no mistake though, whatever pre-conceived notions that you had about MSI motherboards can be chucked out the windows.

To demonstrate how serious it is about the stability and overclocking potential of its new line of motherboards, a large group of professional overclockers were invited to overclock and benchmark MSI's Big Bang-Xpower motherboard.
Paired with an Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, the players were also given a selection of hardware:
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang-XPower (X58 chipset)
BIOS: A7666IMS.148
Graphics Card: MSI N580GTX
Driver: 263.09 WHQL
Memory: Patriot Sector 7 PC3-1600 (3*2G)
HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS
PSU: Antec CP-1000
Tools being used:
CPU-Z V1.56
GPU-Z V0.48
CPU Tweaker V1.5
Maxon Cinebench V11.529
wPrime V1.55/V2.04
MSI Afterburner Setup 210MOA (V2.1.0 MOA)
Team's participating include:
- Over The Edge (USA)
- OCAlliance (USA)
- Team XS (USA)
- I2I3 Extreme (Brazil)
- Team Pure (USA)
- Team Overclockaholics (USA)
- Overclockers Anonymous (USA)
- I2I3 Overclocking Team (Brazil)
Overclockers were asked to log scores primarily using SuperPI 32M and 3DMark 2011. Keep in mind that the Big Bang-Xpower isn't part of MSI's newest line-up, which is called Big Bang Marshal -- a Sandy Bridge P67 based lineup coming out soon.
You can watch a live stream of the event on justin.tv here.
Check out some photos of the show!


























I have always had high opinon of MSI, rock-solid motherboards.
I agree with this statement completely. Only other thing I would say is Biostar has always served me well for a budget brand, they get kicked around a lot like msi, but offer compelling budget products.
The only ASUS board I've bought was a crosshair 1 for $240. Biggest piece o crap I've ever dealt with.
Thanks for the link, it is actually mildly entertaining. Can only watch LN2 smoke for so long though...
I love Asus to death but i am also a firm supporter of using products that do 95% of the performance for 75% of the price. Always support the underdog!
I just made that transition from Asus to MSI. I had a high end asus board die on me and replaced it with a high end MSI board. On the Asus board I could only get to 3.9ghz on my x6 1090T, but on the MSI I can get to 4.3ghz. All good on my end. :-)
Yeah, where's the Babes?
They call that EFI, and speaking of which MSI was supposed to put out one last year!