With most of the major motherboard manufacturers having a few motherboards on the market for Intel’s Core i7 architecture, manufacturers have been trying to remain competitive with high-end designs and also by reworking past designs. Consumers have a large choice for high-end Core i7 motherboards, the basic versions generally come with two PCI-Express slots and some only officially support Crossfire and come with a single LAN port, while other, more expensive boards come with dual-LAN, and three PCI-Express slots for tri-SLI and tri-Crossfire setups.
After the successful MSI Eclipse SLI motherboard was released, higher end motherboards have come out that are very competitive and leaving the Eclipse SLI with few unique features that would cause consumers to buy it over other motherboards. The newest flagship model from MSI is the Eclipse Plus, a revamp of the older Eclipse SLI, which includes an additional PCI-Express x16 slot; the board sports a NF200 chip for full graphics bandwidth in multi-card configurations - the X58 chipset only provides 36 lanes - typically motherboards based on the X58 chipset have three PCI-Express x16 slots with either a x16/x16/x4 or x16/x8/x8 configuration. The motherboard also sports a more uniform and elegant design with blue and black as the color theme with shorter and thicker heat sinks for the power and chipset. All of the SATA ports are now located in the same row, the Eclipse Plus also drops another PCI slot down to one to make room for the extra PCI-Express slot. Onboard overclocking has changed from switches to a knob, with all of the buttons moved to the corner of the motherboard, making it easier to use with a video card in the lower slots. Another nice feature is the debug LED located in the I/O Panel for an alternative to the D-LED2 kit, which can be blocked by a video card.
Micro-Star International was founded in 1986 and is a major motherboard provider that employs over 2,500 engineers in their research and development team with the goal of improving MSI’s products, and bringing new and innovative products to the table. Products include motherboards, video cards, notebooks and barebones computers, server devices, and more!
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