MSI G33M (MS-7357)

The last of the three boards is the G33M by Microstar International (MSI). From a feature standpoint it lies between the ECS and Gigabyte boards, featuring eSATA, UltraATA (one channel for two devices) and Firewire. It also has a four-phase voltage regulator, but there are no digital outputs for audio or your display.

This motherboard has a total of five SATA ports. Four of them are provided by the ICH9 Southbridge; the fifth is part of the additional Marvell controller, which also provides the UltraATA port. Two of the ICH9 SATA ports are routed to the back panel to provide the two eSATA ports. A close look at the backpanel shows that MSI has integrated many USB 2.0 ports; six of them can be used without additional adapter cables; ECS and Gigabyte provide four ports. However, all three motherboards can support as many as 12 USB 2.0 ports if you purchase the required cables and slot brackets, or connect USB 2.0 headers that may be waiting in your case as front USB ports.

Like Gigabyte, MSI did not forget to implement proper overclocking options. You can alter CPU, memory, Northbridge and FSB voltages, adjust the FSB clock and the PCI Express clock, and select various memory multipliers.

We measured an idle power consumption of 83 W for the entire system (without the display), which fell between ECS and Gigabyte. Considering that there is a four-phase voltage regulator, this is an acceptable result. The maximum power draw under load was still clearly below the requirements of the Gigabyte board (109 W vs. 116 W) and very close to that of ECS (107 W).

ECS doesn't overclock; Gigabyte does by 0.5 MHz and MSI decided to run the G33M at 1.6 MHz above the spec. This helps to win some benchmarks.