We’ll use it to evaluate the changes MSI has introduced in its mainboards recently. The Z87-G43 model we’ve picked up from MSI’s product range is in the same category. We are yet to review flagship and special models targeted at gamers and enthusiasts while the tested mainboards are all midrange or even entry-level products. We started out by testing the ASUS Z87-K, then proceeded to the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H and finally checked out the Z87 Extreme4 from ASRock.
#MSI Z87 UEFITOOL SERIES#
We are currently in the first stage of our series of reviews of Z87-based mainboards. With so many changes to check out, we were looking forward to testing MSI’s new product series and learning if they had got rid of their past problems without acquiring new ones. The sloppily made and much criticized MSI Click BIOS II is replaced with MSI Click BIOS 4, skipping the version number 3 for some reason. Instead of the familiar MSI Control Center the mainboards now come with the new exclusive utility MSI Command Center but it has a similar scope of capabilities.
MSI has taken over a year to develop the new product series which is said to be dramatically different from the previous one from such aspects as power system, PCB layout and design, etc. So we used to be quite critical about MSI mainboards based on different chipsets and intended for different CPUs, but the company has done some good work prior to the release of Intel’s 8 series chipsets. The only thing we could give MSI credit for was that its mainboards were generally more economical than their competitors. The last pair of MSI mainboards proved to be slower, even though not by much, than similar products from other brands. We couldn’t use their BIOS restore feature properly although the very fact that the BIOS had to be restored was a problem already. We had problems updating their firmware and saving BIOS settings in profiles.
#MSI Z87 UEFITOOL SOFTWARE#
Yet even though we use but a limited selection of hardware components and software applications, we have had a lot of problems testing MSI mainboards. We also benchmark its performance and measure its power consumption. Our tests are brief so we can only learn about the behavior of the tested mainboard at its default settings and in overclocked mode. It takes a lengthy and meticulous examination with various peripherals and applications to check out each of a mainboard’s features and capabilities. Otherwise, we might end up with quite different system settings from what we wanted. When we changed one option, we had to make sure this hadn’t affected some others. The second reason for our gripes was the fact that the BIOS parameters of MSI mainboards were interrelated in some complex and inexplicable ways. Since power-saving technologies are supposed to lower the CPU’s clock rate and voltage at low loads, that peculiarity made energy-efficient overclocking impossible. Notwithstanding the general appearance of overclocker-friendliness, they only let you increase their voltage by fixing it at a certain level. In our latest reviews of MSI mainboards we were not very enthusiastic about them for a number of reasons. But it began as a manufacturer of mainboards and this product category remains prominent in what MSI has to offer. Micro-Star Corporation currently outputs an extensive range of products under the MSI brand, from small things like USB splitters to large and expensive servers.
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