Military Class 4 Components |
MSI's fancy name for high quality components, the
Military Class 4 Components certified motherboards, are equiped with Hi-CCAP, Super Ferrite Choke and Dark CAPs for better stability, durability,
efficiency and current as well as DrMOS 4, which is the name of the new MOSFETs which
should deliver more than 600+ Watts for extreme
overclocking. |
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DigitALL Power PWM |
For quite some years and like all the large motherboard manufacturers, MSI has been also equipping its motherboards with
digital power design. |
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OC Pen Drive |
MSI started a new way to give users latest drivers
with no more DVD in bundle but an 8GB pen drive named the OC Pen Drive
which includes the drivers needed for the motherboard and all overclocking
tools. We can also do more with this pen drive, save and load BIOS
profiles with one click which means gamers and overclockers can easily
share their settings and need only to load it to another motherboard with
same model and BIOS version. |
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OC PCB |
The Z97 XPower does not just give you 32-phases for
those that like to go crazy on the CPU voltages but is also using
50% more layers for Xtreme overclocking. So, if you are an extreme
overclocker with some LN2 to spare, you know what it means when you are
running to break the world record and the mainboard starts to fail
because some part of it is wet and you need to unmount the whole system.
The rest of the features and design solutions include a clean CPU
socket area which should have more compatibilty with LN2 containers,
V-Check points for voltage monitoring and buttons for overcloking on the
fly for Bclk and multiplier. While many overlcockers will not exactly like
the "overclock on the fly" features which can be done easily in
the BIOS, it
can be used when system is at the limit and when benchmarks finish and
the system come back into idle from load and also it helps in some
benchmarks like 3Dmark Vantage or 3Dmark 06, when in order to get higher score
you need to run higher game tests as well as for CPU tests when you underclock
the CPU frequency. |
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OC Fan Stand
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OC Fan Stand is the new feature from MSI that helps extreme overclockers
a lot and also very nice solution for gamers with hot
graphics card(s). Basically you can install the OC Fan Stand close to
memory or the CPU and any other part of motherboard to cool the
components. This
feature avoids the issue of fan falling or touching certain components
and there is no need to find a way to fix the fan on, for example graphics card PWM area
or the LN2 container. |
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Audio Boost
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MSI equips its latest and greatest motherboard with an improved audio
solution which includes the Realtek ALC1150 chip, studio level
600 Ohm headphone amplifier. At the I/O shield we find golden audio
jacks which is to improve the audio signals as well as EMI shielded audio
codec, high quality capacitors and the PCB
separation. |
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Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Module
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MSI bundles its motherboard with an unpluggable mPCIe
card equiped with a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module from Intel. The latter
supports 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and Intel WiDi. |
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M.2 Support
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The
new XPower Z97 motherboard from MSI features an M.2 slot which is placed between the
two PCIe slots. This motherboard can be equipped with SSDs in M.2 format
and it is wired directly to the Z97 PCH via two PCI Express lanes,
therefore offering x2 bandwidth. In other words up to 10 Gbps can be pushed over the bus through this slot, almost doubling
the performance compared to the SATA-III port.
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ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 Preview 