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Alright, check it out.
This is the Phenom II board, from MSI
that's out there for the overclockers.
Now, we've already discussed some slightly lower models
such as the G65.
But this is the G70.
Definitely the board to have if you want to do some overclocking.
If you're going to be doing some hard core gaming or some overclocking
you're going to like the features that come with this thing.
Check out the layout.
Incredible. Four PCI Express 2.0 slots.
Phenom II. Really fast memory support,
and I'm talking about really fast memory support.
Remember, the new memories that are out there now
are going above 2,000 MHz if you can do more than 1.65 volts,
which a lot of people are concentrating on
at Intel and stuff aren't really remembering that
if you go above 2.2 or 2.1 volts
you can crank out some nasty frequency from DDR3.
Also, on top of that, you can check out, obviously,
the big big Northbridge and Southbridge coolers.
There is an integrated heat pipe coming through here,
I don't know if you can see it, there you go,
it comes all the way over here, all the way to your Southbridge.
Now this is the SP750 Southbridge.
And this is the 790 Northbridge, up here.
It's actually called the RD790.
It is socket AM3. It is 140 watt support.
So you can do any Phenom II that you want up here; X3 and X4,
your 940, your 950, all that good stuff
are going to work on here.
Even the big ones, the 955 are only 125 watts, and this will do up to 140.
So this is a great combination of Northbridge and Southbridge.
You also have a host of overclocking features
that I will talk to you about in a second.
But before that let's get all the basics out of the way.
Now, this is HyperTransport 3.0
up to 5200 MT/s, which is about 2600MHz.
That's the latest System Bus from AMB for the Dragon platform.
Up to 16GB of DDR3. We already talked about how fast it is.
Let's get specific now. 16GB.
1333, 1600, and 2000 MHz are native.
And you can go all the way up to 2133 via overclocking
if you want to get down and dirty and do it you can.
Tons of voltage. 2 phase power for the memory,
as you can see right here.
You've got two sets of caps and chokes.
So dual phase power.
The CPU socket for overclocking, let's talk about phase there,
is actually a little different.
It's got something called Active Phase Switching.
It's a hardware based phase switch.
So, very good for efficiency. Very good for overclocking.
We'll talk about that more with the overclocking features in a second.
Let's continue though on the basics.
Let's talk about SATA ports.
Now, looking over here, you got six SATA ports right there.
You have another two right here.
And they're actually on a different hardware.
This is a hardware ray chip, right here.
These are the software ones. So these are going off the SB750.
These are going off of a separate controller, so if you want to do RAID 0,
really nice off of these.
Everything else can go through here. But you can also do RAID 0, 0+1, 5, and JBOD
through here, which is really nice.
Slots. This is where this board is phenomenal.
Four PCI Express x16 slots on this board.
If you fully populate them and you want to do CrossFireX,
which is what this board is designed to do,
you'll be able to do Quad Crossfire X support
and it's going to give you x16/x16/x8/x8 throughput and bandwidth.
Um so that's what you're going to get. You're also going to get two PCI,
regular standard PCIs, and a PCI Express x1,
which are all very very nice.
And, I also discovered, by looking at this board,
I don't know if you can see it, but over here,
if you read the inside of the slot,
yeah you can't read it,
it says, "Foxconn."
So you know that Foxconn builds these boards for MSI
in their factory, which I hope you guys know that Foxconn builds boards
for a lot of people.
Now, let's take a look at the back panel
because there's a lot of good stuff back there too.
Check it out.
Starting from the top, very very nice.
You have dual PS2s, which are useful occasionally
when you're setting up a new computer.
You have your multi channel audio outputs
coaxial analog and your SPDIF, which is your optical
that uses the toslink cable.
That USB 2.0 and eSATA is right here.
More FireWires and USB 2.0s, Dual Gigabit Ethernet
is also right here so you got double
and you can team those together if you want,
or you can set up a separate network.
You can do a bunch of different stuff with two Dual Gigabit LANS.
And then this is your audio. Again this is very nice audio.
This is not regular audio.
I doubt you can see it but the chip is right there,
that's the ALC889A. Very nice on board audio.
It's one of the few chips that will actually do true Blu-ray audio
and they're very proud of it obviously because they listed it right there.
They're very proud of that. Even the newer boards on there
that have all these SPDIFS and stuff still don't do true Blu-ray audio and HD.
So that's very important to know that you have that.
Now, let's talk about these overclocking features that I was . . .
I was all so happy about.
First of all, DrMOS system obviously high-end VRMs and VOS-MOSFETs.
All of the nicest hardware you can imagine.
So pretty much everything you can think of.
Ferrite core chokes hidden underneath there, don't know if you can see them.
Right there, ferrite core chokes.
The caps that are in front of them, all these caps,
all solid-state, with the ferrite core chokes in the back.
They are all very very nice.
It's obviously using DrMOS instead of the traditional MOSFETs.
So that's slightly different.
Multiple discreet chips versus, like, one big one.
Also on here, very nice, besides the cooling,
if you come all the way down here to the bottom.
I'm going to show you this is more buttons than you've probably have ever seen.
You have got quite a few besides power, reset, and clear CMOS.
You've got Green Power for energy savings
and you have the OC Gear button,
which is actually going to let you overclock your front side bus on the fly.
So you're going to hold the button and you're going to crank it over to the right
or to the left to overdrive your . . .
pretty much your front side bus.
Now, here's the thing though. What's special about this is it's . . .
it's integrated into the hardware.
So, you're actually overclocking without resetting the BIOS,
without resetting the computer, without doing anything.
It's actually overclocking on the fly.
Another cool feature that you're going to see, obviously,
that is becoming very common in these things
is a LCD poster.
So that's going to give you all your post codes.
It's going to tell you if anything is wrong.
Another one, it's a feature that you can't see,
but between all your memory slots,
between up here by your DRAM memory, by your processor,
by your VRMs, your Northbridge and your Southbridge
they are all LED indicators.
They are very small. You can't really see them.
But, they will tell you how much voltage you're running through here,
how much frequency.
And you get a bunch of interesting stuff on here.
So you're always knowing, you always have an idea
of how hard you're running your system and how far you're overclocking.
So, definitely very nice stuff.
Also a very nice BIOS.
And multiple BIOS chips as well are going to be really useful
if you're overclocking on this board.
That combined with the Active Phase Switching and the DrMOS,
which is a very nice way of . . .
and elegant way of doing your MOSFET design.
It's got a bunch of different little chips
instead of one big integrated circuit.
And that increases your efficiency,
it helps with overclocking,
it gives you better more stable current.
Really good stuff.
You get a ton of PCI Express slots, you have a great BIOS for oveclocking
and of course it supports the Phenom II platform,
which is a great overclocker in itself.
It's really easy to get to 4.25 on a Phenom Quad-Core,
on just a crappy little air cooler.
And on water, um, you can probably get close to 5GHz on water,
which is really really impressive.
You can't do that at all with Intel,
especially with Intel Core i7, they run really hot
and they just don't overclock that far.
And, if you get extreme with a board like this
and you're doing liquid nitrogen
you can definitely get into the above 6GHz range, which is huge.
And, and that's something that a board like this is worth it.
If you're not going to be overclocking extensively
get the 65, the G65, you don't need the G70.
But, if you want to have a gaming monster
with a lot of PCI Express connectivity, very fast memory support,
lots of Active Phase Switching for the CPU,
lots of power options, DrMOS, all this good stuff.
This board is . . . you're going to love it, it's great.
It's the GD70 from the 790FX line from MSI.
Very good stuff. This is what's replacing their Platinum.
They got over that naming system. They have a new naming system.
And this is pretty much one of their better 790 boards.
So, awesome stuff.
If you have any questions on it email me, and I will see you guys next time.
For more information on the MSI 790FX GD70 Motherboard
type in M452-6060 into the search engine
of any of these major retailers.
For Computer TV, I'm Albert.