Mainstream Or Hardcore? Two X58 Motherboards Compared

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You need Intel’s LGA 1366 interface and an X58-based platform in order to run the latest six-core processors, but which board should you pick? We're comparing a mainstream and flagship platform from the same company to explore the worth of high-end X58.

Test Settings And Benchmarks

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System Hardware
Hardware Details
Performance Benchmarks
Motherboard (Socket LGA1366) MSI BigBang Xpower (Rev. 1.0), Chipset: Intel X58, BIOS: 1.0 (02/08/2010)
Motherboard (Socket LGA1366) MSI X58 Pro-E (Rev. 1.0), Chipset: Intel X58, BIOS: 8.9 (02/08/2010)
CPU Intel Intel Core i7-980X (32 nm, 3.33 GHz, 6 x 256KB L2 and 12MB L3 Cache, TDP 130W)
RAM DDR3 (triple-channel) 3 x 2GB DDR3-1600 (Corsair TR3X6G-1600C8D 8-8-8-24)
Graphics Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 GPU: Cypress (725 MHz), Graphics RAM: 1024 MB GDDR5 (2000 MHz), Stream Processors: 1440
Hard Drive Western Digital VelociRaptor, 300GB (WD3000HLFS), 10,000 RPM, SATA/300, 16MB Cache
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling, Silencer 750EPS12V 750W
System Software & Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Updated on 2010-03-03
Drivers and Settings
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility Ver. 9.1.1.1025
Intel Storage Drivers Matrix Storage Drivers Ver. 8.​9.​0.​1023