MSI Big Bang Fuzion LGA 1156 Intel P55 / Lucid Hydra 200 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Where do I begin... I suppose "everything" isn't a pro, but it might as well be, THIS BOARD ROCKS! I specifically got this board for the Lucid Hydra chip so my old GTX260 didn't have to go to waste after I upgraded to an ATI 5870. I was more than a bit skeptical, but after my board arrive and I hooked up my two GPUs, it most definitely did NOT disappoint. With a single ATI 5870 running by itself, Crysis on 'Very High', 2xAA, and 1680x1050 resolution, the 5870 cranked out 20-35 FPS With the ATI 5870+GTX260 (5870 as primary), Crysis on exact same settings (drum roll please).. 30-85 FPS, maybe once or twice with some crazy smoke and flames did I see 28/29 FPS. Besides the Lucid Hydra, this board has a plethora of goodies. The 'Super Pipe' heat sink on the chipset is fabulous, keeps the important parts on the mobo very cool, allowing for maximum overclock stability. Im only allowed 1,000 characters, or I could go on for pages about how wonderful this mobo is.

Cons: Well, I love this motherboard, but of course.. not everything can be perfect: Lucid Hydra is AMAZING, but naturally as can be expected, it's not perfect. First off, don't install the Lucid drivers that ship on disk, nor should you download the ones from MSI's website, go to LucidLogix site, and download the latest ones from there. When I first tried the Lucid chip, I was using the MSI drivers, which were 1.4.0 I think. And set my 5870 as main with the GTX260 as secondary, and when I tried to run a fullscreen game, the display output switched from the primary 5870 to the secondary GTX260, so I had to unplug the monitor and plug it into the GTX260, and then tried a game out, but there was no acceleration from the 5870 and the game lagged real bad. After updating to the drivers on Lucid's website, games worked just fine, however I did have a problem with 3dMark Vantage, which gave me "unable to initialize full screen" and refused to run.

Overall Review: If you have old GPUs, or even modern ones in SLI/CrossFire, GET THIS MOTHERBOARD! I saw a 100%+ increase in FPS in Crysis from a secondary GPU that is less than 50% as powerful as my primary GPU. Obviously results will vary, but this thing is AWESOME!! *Note: When I tried using my GTX260 as primary (in order to use my 3D Vision rig, as well as PhysX acceleration) and tried to run a game, Lucid popped up with a dialogue box, asking me to "Please set AMD/ATI as primary display", and when I tried to run a game in 3D Vision it worked, but there was no acceleration from the ATI GPU. My theory, is that Lucid requires the more powerful GPU to be the primary. **Also Note: Windows Experience Index does NOT utilize multi GPU's using Hydra. SLI and CrossFire I couldn't tell ya.

Pros: The board works as advertised. You can run multi GPU cards of different speed / memory / pixel Pipes / Brand / Chipset etc. I am using a Zotac Nvidia GTS 250S and an XFX ATI HD 4870. Different brands are hard to match but I was hoping for similar specs. With Hydra on 3dmarks06 scores me at ~6K for first video tests. With Hydra off, ~3k for video tests (grand total ~12K, 3dmarks blames my processor) After I opened the box the board has quite an array of OC options and comes with the OC Genie. Automaticaly OC your system to its highest state. Pentium g6295 @ 2.8 OC'ed to 3.6. I also like that the board does not have on-board audio, but rather comes with a PCI 1x sound card. I could list more things that are nice, but I would just be listing the specs and you can already see that. The main point is the board works!! The Lucid Hydra Technology works but it does have a cost. With a second monitor, was able to watch DVD LOTR and play full spec Bioshock 1280x1024.

Cons: SLI / Hydra / X-fire all have their limitations. I was just more comfortable with Hydra over the other two. Other websites say you cannot use card specific technologies with Hydra. You cannot combine them. PhysX and DX11 will only work if that card is the primary card (PCI 16x slot 0), you can plug into the secondary, to bypass this but you will not have video until the OS has loaded and sometimes Hydra thinks its a second monitor :(. I could still use CUDA enabled applications (baddaboom, folding@home) if the monitor was plugged into the Nvidia card. Some games outright will not work with Hydra, but this is a pretty new technology. I remember that some games didn't like SLI back in the day, so those issues should phase out. Even though there is an awesome heat pipe for the bios and Hydra chip, it is too big for water cooling. I had to bend a few fins to get the CPU water block in place. Also I had to remove the heatpipe, install the WB and then slip the heatpipe under the WB cli

Overall Review: The cost of this board is certainly going to drive some people away, but remember that this is a MSI P55 series mobo. Research the P55 line to get an idea if this board is right for you. If you plan to OC, run dual or triplicate GPU, this is the board for you. One thing about dual video card, you are limited by the MOBO, and I found that helps when selecting a video card. You know off the bat that you normally cannot have SLI or X fire cards, so looking at the thousands of cards to choose from, you could cut your selection in half. This Mobo opens the doors to all PCIx Video cards. When I was selecting my video cards, I felt a little overwhelmed. The normal limitation was not there to guide me. Cost helped narrow down a card, and when it comes time to upgrade I know that I can just get whatever is top of their game at the time, be it Nvidia or ATI. I also had a water-block leak and the Mobo appears to be sealed with a film, so no damage done. just wiped off the water.

Pros: Just like everyone else says, read the specs list. When I opened the box I was almost overwhelmed at all the goodies this thing comes with.

Cons: The sound card. Mine doesn't work for some reason? I've got my speakers plugged in to Line Out, but no sound comes out. Also, for some reason, mine is making some odd high pitched noise, almost like it's trying to use morse code or something. I'm assuming its coming from the board as I've never heard it before, but I don't know what would be causing it and why? Any help would be appreciated with both of my concerns.

Overall Review: This board is fantastic. It's nice to know my 2 5850's are running at x16 and not x16 and x8. What the point of buying another card if youre getting half the speed? And, of course, there's the Lucid Hydra chip, but I won't get in to how great that is. Yes, the board is expensive, but if you read the specs sheet you'll see why. If you have the money, get it. You won't look back...

Pros: Everything! Packaging by msi(with this model) is unmatched from what ive seen and purchased. it was like opening a birthday gift it was so pretty. i was in awe of how neatly and thoughtout the package was. A+ i had not a single issue during this build which puts it way above the rest of my builds which all had something that needed attention to. the specs are fabulous.....except one thing ;( see cons

Cons: no 6 gbs sata the price. im poor and tbh this was a difficult buy because of the price.

Overall Review: i have 4 machines all within a certain area performance wise and this machine with mix matched cards is equal to or slightly better than the last 3 ive built. the others are msi 890gfx-nf70 6core BE 4.0 xfx 5970 8 gigs gskill turbulance tight timings. 2133 msi 980 3x zotac 285 gtx amd 965 BE 4.0 8 gigs amd BE memory 1t 1600 asus m4 amd BE callisto 4.0 4gigs gskill ripjaws 1600 3x 260+ gtx (2zotac,1 palit) all systems are running 4 velociraptors in raid configurations. hmmm maybe this is why im poor. lol also id like to add that newegg went above and beyond the call of duty when i had some issues in the past because of the lack of realeased drivers bt certain companies put alot of people into a possition where troubleshooting was getting old and not fun. newegg helped with replacements but in reality it was the vendors not producig the proper drivers. 5 EGGCELLENT EGG TO NEW EGG.

Pros: - It worked (stock). - Great deal buying combo on Newegg.

Cons: I have very little experience in overclocking, which led me to one of the features of this board: OC Genie. This board was made for overclocking and came with a no-brainer manual to guide you through using it. However I could not get a stable setting that would not auto shut down my system. This scared me so I didn't even let my friend,an actual hardware engineer who tried helping me to get it work, attempt to manually overclock the system out of fear that I couldn't RMA it in the event that future problems would occur. I also had trouble installing the sound card into my case and motherboard. Took me 30 minutes to adjust both in a way that would fit. I have a CM Storm Sniper and was unable to snap it in with the PCI braces it came with so I had to screw it in manually. System also shut down on me when I attempted to use 3D Mark Advantage while on Hydra mode to see what kind of ratings I would get. On Mode A it's supposed to be compatible, but I guess it wouldn't work for me.

Overall Review: I showed this board alot of respect with the other parts I bought: 8GB (4x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3 w/ Airflow Cooler Corsair H50 High Performance CPU Cooler Corsair HX850 PSU MSI R5770 Hawk x 2 I guess you can say I showed MSI alot of respect too in buying 2 of the same Radeons. For there was no point in buying this board if one of the features, OC Genie/Overclock, wouldn't work. I didn't get an Nvidia card due to known limitations of Hydra's compatibility on games. On stock settings, my 3D Mark score was in the 14000's. Which I guess wasn't bad, but if it hit over 16000 I probably would've reconsidered in not RMA'ing it (which I did along with the video cards). What disappoints me the most is that I am now stuck with the Core i7 - 1156 that I bought for this motherboard since it's RMA only allows replacement. If I would've known better, I would've spent the extra $$$ and invest in a 1366 board and proc. Now I'm stuck browsing for other boards til my RMA is approved.

Pros: The possibilities are endless with this motherboard especially with the Lucid Hydra chip installed. I just download the latest drivers from the LH website letting you combine both an ATI 5870 and Nvidia 480 or 470 the best of both worlds. Also included is the OC genie for easy overclocking, but I rather do it via bios instead because of the voltage settings in OC are a bit high. Games that you can play on both a Nvidia/ATI card combination are growing everyday... just need to keep updating the LH drivers.

Cons: I need to buy a GTX480 with ATI 5870 to combine... right now I'm just using ATI 4850 with Nvidia 250. :(

Overall Review: The performance is great when merging these cards (ATI/Nvidia) together. FPS on old cards (65 to 70) using 3DMark... Big Bang Fuzion indeed. :)

Pros: One of the better designed boards I have run across. The performance is way up there, and for a bleeding edge technology this boards bios is quite stable. The Hydra chipset is unique, and works as advertised. The most useful aspect of the lucid hydra is something few think about. This board with two cards can allow you to play quake 4 on one screen and watch Avatar on a second screen with no slowdowns or adverse affects to the gameplay.The components run very cool under full loads, on average I see 114 f for the NB and 111 f for the SB.

Cons: Creative labs software is flakey, but simple enough to leave out of the install. I had very mixed results with MSI boards in the past, but this one shows they can do much better.

Overall Review: For those whom are seeking a latest hardware solution for linux.. This board will amaze you. Kubuntu 10.04 runs flawlessly on it, but forget the mixed SLI video card support. As of yet Lucid has no plans to support linux with games. However the chip does seem to function with two cards in place, allowing 2 independent X screens with good acceleration on both.

Pros: I got the sound to work! I'm still not sure what the issue was, but it works now, and it's fantastic. My blu-ray movies sound right in the room.

Cons: It still makes a high-pitched noise. I can still only describe it as high pitched Morse code. It happens occasionally, sometimes it lasts for hours, sometimes it stops, its just got a mind of its own. It is beyond irritating. I have yet to make any kind of connection as to whats doing it, but I hope I can resolve this board's only issue. Any help would be appreciated...by the way.

Overall Review: This truly is an awesome board. I just bought a Zalman CNPS10x Performa, and as some users of this HSF complained of RAM slots being blocked, I think the size of this board couple with its layout left are the reason I have ample space, even with the big HSF. The BIOS options are plentiful; and if you are still a BIOS n00b like myself then the OC Genie and OC Dashboard make it as easy as possible. This board is great.