Installation

I found the installation nice and easy. There's enough of room around the processor socket and I was able to fit a large HSF ... the Gigabyte Volar CPU cooler. Overall, there were no problems at all with installation. What I liked about the MSI X48 Platinum is the clear CMOS switch located on the rear ATX I/O panel. It comes in handy after a failed overclock attempt.

{imggallery 345}
Test Setup

Procedures

In our tests we used the motherboard's standard BIOS settings first. ALL settings were set to default (AUTO) for maximum compatibility. Memory clock was set to DDR3-1066 with the memory timings was set by SPD. We also used the latest video, audio and chipset drivers. Dual channel memory mode was enabled using Kingston's HyperX DDR3-1375 PC3-11000 2Gb Kit.

Here's a list of software/games we used for benchmarking. In all the gaming benchmarks we used a resolution of 1024x768 with maximum settings turned on (x4 AA and x16 AF)

 - CPUZ 
 - Science Mark 2
 - PC Mark 05
 - 3D Mark 2005
 - 3D Mark 2006
 - F.E.A.R. (DX9)
 - Call of Juarez (DX10)
 - Crysis (DX10)

Windows Vista with native DX10 was used as our operating system.

For overclocking, we manually adjusted various BIOS settings including ram timings, FSB, CPU and DDR voltages. (Please see article index: Overclocking)

The BIOS

The BIOS was easy to use. Here, you can adjust various options including CPU frequencies, FSB, and of course voltages for memory, chipset and processor itself. Memory timings can also be adjusted.

{imggallery 346}
The BIOS uses MSI's D.O.T. overclocking feature, it's easy to use however, we prefer to manually overclock. So we decided to manually set the options for CPU multiplier, frequency, FSB, DDR3 frequency and voltages to get the maximum overclock.