MSI P67A-GD65 Intel Socket 1155 Motherboard Performance Review

MSI P67A-GD65 AMD CrossFireX Scaling

As with the previous page where we tested the NVIDIA SLI scaling between the chipsets, we want to do the same for the AMD CrossfireX technology. When we decided to run this series of tests, we were able to get in touch with our friends over at XFX and they kindly sent over a pair of XFX Radeon HD 6950’s.

Again we will start with Rebellions Aliens Vs. Predator for our CrossfireX testing. The MSI P67A-GD65 saw a boost of 92.8% at 1280×1024, this is just behind the 96.7% improvement that the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe was able to hit. The ASUS P8P67 saw a boost of 85.9% and the ECS P55H-AK gained 92.9% over the single card configuration but wasn’t able to perform as well as our Intel “Sandy Bridge” platforms. Cranking the resolution up to 1920×1080 the MSI P67A-GD65 saw an improvement of 97.1% while the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe improved by 98.7%. The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe does have slightly better scaling capabilities over the MSI P67A-GD65, ultimately there is only 1.4% difference between the final frame rates at 1280×1024 and .5% at 1920×1080 between the MSI P67A-GD65 and the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe.

Metro 2033, which is an NVIDIA “The Way it’s Meant to be Played” title, should give us some interesting results in crossfire. The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe saw the largest boost from adding a second XFX Radeon HD 6950, it was able to improve by 42.2% at 1280×1024 and 54.4% at 1920×1080. The MSI P67A-GD65 wasn’t a slouch though, at 1280×1024 we saw a gain of 30.5% and 41.7% at 1920×1080. These numbers are a bit misleading, the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe scaled better at 1920×1080 because it didn’t perform as well in single card configuration. Ultimately the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe did have better performance in CrossfireX though it was only 2.2%

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe was able to improve by 53.5% at 1280×1024 and 67.6% at 1920×1080. The MSI P67A-GD65 saw an improvement of 53.3% at 1280×1024 and 66.6% at 1920×1080. The ASUS P8P67 hit 151.3% of the single card performance at 1280×1024 and 161.3% at 1920×1080. The ECS P55H-AK scaled to 119.2% at 1280×1024 and 138.7% at 1920×1024. Ultimately the MSI P67A-GD65 has the best single card performance and Crossfire performance in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

In our NVIDIA SLI testing we can see that there isn’t a great deal of difference between the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe and the MSI P67A-GD65. Though there is some, if we compare the MSI P67A-GD65 to the similarly priced ASUS P8P67 there is a bit more of a difference. The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe is equipped with a PLX chip for added PCIex lanes, the ASUS P8P67 and the MSI P67A-GD65 are not. When there is a dual card configuration in the MSI P67A-GD65 both PCIe X16 expansion slots will run at X8. The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe will also run two of the PCIe X16 at x8. The ASUS P8P67 will run the second graphics card at x4, this is what is giving the MSI P67A-GD65 and edge over the ASUS P8P67.