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Power, Heat, And Efficiency

Extreme P55: Four LGA 1156 Motherboards Over $250
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MSI surprised us again by having the lowest full-load power consumption, in spite of its added PCIe bridge. EVGA’s P55 Classified 200, which was the other motherboard with Nvidia’s PCIe bridge, had the highest power consumption.

MSI also has the lowest voltage-regulator temperature, although EVGA’s voltage regulator was also surprisingly cool for an all-digital part. Smaller, more decorative heat sinks let the Maximus III Formula get a few degrees warmer.

Dividing average game and application performance of each motherboard by its average power consumption gives us an efficiency value for each.

Higher power consumption hurt EVGA’s efficiency, although most gamers will likely consider the board’s enhanced graphics support as an overbearing factor in their purchase decision, rather than a couple percentage points on efficiency.

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  • 0 Hide
    Raptorial , 21 January 2010 16:25
    The only thing for me is: why did you not test 2 VGA cards? Two of the boards use a NF200 chip, now you won't see the results from this...

    Whyle this is why the EVGA and MSI are expensive.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the MSI P55-GD80 performs better with 1 VGA card then its expensive brother.
  • 0 Hide
    LePhuronn , 22 January 2010 04:18
    I'm still going 1366 simply because for what I do I prefer 12GB RAM over 8GB - that's honestly the only reason now.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , 23 January 2010 20:26
    You should have tested this against a 150$ board and a 50$ board. That would have been interesting.
  • 0 Hide
    Redsnake77 , 28 January 2010 20:20
    When are you gonna do the three card crossfire / SLI review comparing the msi and evga P55 boards with X58? There's seems little relevance to reviewing these cards at all without including a 3 card metric, as that is their primary function. You wouldn't spend double the amount on either of these two boards otherwise.