MSI Eclipse SLI X58 motherboard

Peter G. 1 Dec, 2008 at 9:44pm ET Article published in Tech

Comments

1. 
   1 Dec 2008 ~ 10:15pm Khaos Dude... Don't DO that! You had me nervous there.
   
   Luckily, their gripes are about price and cable inclusion. I tend to agree with them, the Eclipse SLI is stupid expensive, but the good news is that the board is fast and performed pretty well in tests.
   
   The X58 Platinum is a lot more reasonably priced, I believe. Whew. Bullet dodged.
2. 
   8 Dec 2008 ~ 8:01pm BuddyJ t-break loves it:
   http://www.tbreak.com/articles/27/1/MSI-Eclipse-SLI/Page1.html
3. 
   8 Dec 2008 ~ 8:43pm Khaos Anandtech has an overview of all the big players in the X58 high-end market here:
   
   http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3471
   
   They compare the MSI Eclipse to a luxury touring coupe. *shrug* It again gets rated down for being really, really expensive. Gets good marks for being fast, well laid out and pretty to look at.
   
   Perhaps most troubling is this report regarding the on-board audio:
   

   Gary Keys @ Anandtech wrote:

   An audio output panel is missing since MSI utilizes a riser card that features Creative Lab's CA0110-IBG audio chipset.
   
   Our first reaction was very positive until we looked at the chipset specifications and realized that hardware audio processing capabilities - including the EAX 5.0 implementation - are done through software and the CPU. Also, most of the software features from a standalone X-FI card are not available in the software package that MSI provides. They did include access to Creative's 24-bit Crystalizer and speaker virtualization features along with other hardware settings.
   
   Of course the big question is the audio quality provided by this solution. RightMark Audio Analyzer indicated poor THD and inter-channel leakage, but in actual usage we could not tell any real differences between the Creative and Realtek solutions in music playback quality. The ADI solution on the ASUS board sounded a bit clearer and dynamic in music playback. In gaming, we thought the Creative solution was slightly better than the ADI chipset and noticeably better than the Realtek solutions on the Gigabyte and EVGA boards. If gaming or music playback is a priority, we still suggest an add-in card for best performance.

   
   It is very disappointing that the included Creative X-Fi audio riser provides no hardware acceleration. In my opinion, that's the final nail in the coffin for this $350 motherboard package. It seems that 99.9% of users would be happier and better off getting the $215 Platinum -- and a sound card with hardware acceleration if they're big into gaming.
   
   For $120 you basically get:
   
   -- An EAX software emulator.
   -- Additional SATA ports through a JMicron controller, which has been getting poor marks for RAID performance anyway.
4. 
   2 Feb 2009 ~ 8:24pm BuddyJ Tweak Town approves: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1734/msi_x58_eclipse_sli_core_i7_motherboard/index.html
5. 
   9 Feb 2009 ~ 10:05pm BuddyJ Viper Lair:
   http://www.viperlair.com/index.php/reviews/msi-x58-eclipse-motherboard.html