MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming is currently a pre-order item, available in the UK from Scan for an eye-watering £413.99. Sadly it is not yet listed from our recommended retailers in the US, but as soon as it becomes available, we will update this article. In Europe, you can find it on price comparison Geizhals with many retailers such as CaseKing listing it for around 539 Euros.

Summary

Well after all that I can honestly say I’m a convert. The performance isn’t amazingly GODLIKE, but X99 is already as free as it could possibly be, and therefore we are now being limited by the other components or external hardware. If a more powerful LGA2011-3 CPU was released, I bet we would see near identical performance from the other hardware. The CPU scores would get higher, but scores such as the SATA read/write, etc… would be around the same.

The motherboard is simply stunning, the vibrant red metal protective cover not only provides great looks, but also has a nice ambiance when the LED’s bounce around the inside of your chassis. When taking a closer look at the board itself, you can see that MSI has introduced PCIe shields, which surround the PCIe slots; these not only offer higher strength to prevent slot damage from heavy cards, but also cuts down any possible electronic interference from surrounding components. You do have some LED cables present around the board, but I can live with that as they’re not hanging or getting in the way. Something that MSI has pointed out is the fact that there are very few components surrounding the CPU socket; this is to make the best possible scenario for extreme cooling with LN2 without affecting surrounding components.

Like I said, the performance isn’t amazingly different, but that is because the performance of the X99 platform is already as amazing as it could be.

To give more insight into the performance, I’m going to break this down into sections:

• CPU – The CPU performance is pretty much tapped out now, the X99 platform has more than enough bandwidth to allow the CPU legroom to fully unleash its performance. Throughout the testing, I received an updated BIOS which really gave the CPU a huge boost in performance, as much as 10% in Cinebench.
• Storage – I originally struggled to get good results from any of our storage tests; however, after the new BIOS and a re-installation of the drivers, the performance was almost mind blowing. We are now hitting the limitations of the components, such as 520MB/s read speed for our SanDisk SSD for example. Component makers have seen this limitation and created new devices such as the Intel 750 SSD based on the newly named U.2  interface which can be utilised thanks to a M.2 adapter. The speeds of this drive blew my socks off, over 3000MB/s read and 1000MB/s write over an average of 3 tests. Once all of the motherboard manufacturers adopt this new drive interface, we could see speeds take another leap like when SSD’s were introduced over the conventional HDD.
• Network – The Killer DoubleShot X3 features on this motherboard are amazing in concept, however due to the limitations of our hardware, we could only reach the maximum speed of our control system; which is limited to Gigabit speeds. Both LAN ports were able to provide over 900Mb/s, so I have no doubt that once combined, over 1800Mb/s could be achieved. When coupled with the Wi-Fi, you could easily see over 2500Mb/s if your networking hardware is capable of this of course.
• Audio – The audio performance was great and I think the limitation is on the cable we use for our testing. When plugged into the 6.3mm adapter, I saw slightly improved latency, but audio performance was very similar to the HD audio ports; however that could again be a cable limitation.

This board is just one big feature, I could have happily produced another article solely based on the features because there are that many. Like I said in the video, the MYSTIC light feature is slightly gimmicky, but to have full control of the LED’s, you can’t complain. Something which I do personally really like about this board is the cooperation of the internet features, where both LAN and Wi-Fi can work together to maximise performance. In our tests, we were limited to the speed of the control computer, but if all of these were connected to the internet at once, you could effectively have up to 2867Mb/s speeds. That would be perfect if you have a strong enough internet connection and could make use of it, so this board really screams out to the gamers who would likely have a live recording, an online game and possibly even a YouTube video running simultaneously in the background.

I found three things wrong with this board, and sadly they are all to do with the cover. I understand that red is a colour MSI has donned for the Gaming series, but red is massively played out; if you are going to release a ‘GODLIKE’ motherboard, maybe introduce some GODLIKE colours, gold, silver, blue, orange? Although MSI could have really stood out from the crowd here if they completely covered the LEDs under the shroud and made intricate holes in the shroud for the light to come out, such as the Audio Boost 3 logo, that could have been cut out for the LEDs to shine through. Next up is the actual cover itself; I find that it is far too close to the edge on the I/O side of the board, therefore this could easily be scratched if you get the card stuck between the PCIe slot and the shroud itself. Last is the I/O cover, when I first picked up the board, I poked and prodded the shroud to see if the metal was of good quality (which it is), but I noticed around the I/O it wasn’t stuck down properly. This is a very small niggle and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to come off, but if you are looking at paying big money for a motherboard, you would expect it to be stuck down better, or even screwed down through the PCB.

Pros

• Excellent performance
• High quality audio
• Feature packed
• Attention to detail is second to none

Cons

• Premium price
• Cooling shroud could scratch easily
• Colour scheme isn’t to everyone’s tastes

“Pushing the boundaries of performance, the MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming definitely deserves a place in technology history.”

Thank you to MSI for providing this review sample.