MSI BIG BANG XPOWER x58

[nyenthrodumy]

Does anyone know if this board is any good? Looks like a great board but I haven't seen any good reviews on it, most I've seen are just box openings and telling you all the features of the board. That's also the top of my budget on a mobo, just wondering if the performance is going to be that much more over the Asus Sabertooth if any. I'm not going to be running more than 2 cards and most likely just 1 6970 or something depending on there performance.

 

[Jujumonkey]

Does anyone know if this board is any good? Looks like a great board but I haven't seen any good reviews on it, most I've seen are just box openings and telling you all the features of the board. That's also the top of my budget on a mobo, just wondering if the performance is going to be that much more over the Asus Sabertooth if any. I'm not going to be running more than 2 cards and most likely just 1 6970 or something depending on there performance.

i looked at the big bang boards to. in theory being able to pair up an ati AND an nvidia graphics card is amazing, getting eyefinity and physx and cuda all at the same time. However, and its a pretty big however, the fuzion drivers need to be adapted to support any particular game or the fuzion wont work. There's a list of compatible games on the fuzion site. if your favourite games are in the list then its a no brainer, but if theyre not then you might have to think twice about getting a big bang board

 

[alienware]

I still don't quite understand why some one would want to spend loads on a board that straps together AMD and Nvidia cards (badly).

Why would you spend a fortune on two cards that don't match?

If you want Physx/Cuda ETC why not go SLI? If you don't why bother mismatching two cards?

I don't understand the real reason that people would want something like this. With X58 and P55 you can run both SLI and Crossfire (seperately). If you are an ATI/AMD fan you would choose Crossfire. If you love the green team you would go with SLI. If you were a fan of both.. Well, you'd be silly to use this due to the costs involved and the poor results. It's driver based. SLI and Crossfire are annoying enough as it is (due to one needing profiles and the other needing actual drivers) but this just throws something else into the mix to cause hassle.

The AMD board reviewed recently was cheap enough for me to actually want. But I wouldn't want it because it can run mixed cards I would want it because it's the only one on the market that can run both SLI and Crossfire with an AMD chip.

I can't even see the point in this technology for people that want to fold. Of course one could say that if you had a 5970 and wanted to fold you could then add in XXXXXX Nvidia card and fold away but why would you? If you were folding you would firstly already be on the green team and would want multiple Nvidia cards, not an ATI.

Strange. Very strange. Seems to be an example of "because we can" but with no real solid reason.

 

[Jujumonkey]

I still don't quite understand why some one would want to spend loads on a board that straps together AMD and Nvidia cards (badly).

Why would you spend a fortune on two cards that don't match?

If you want Physx/Cuda ETC why not go SLI? If you don't why bother mismatching two cards?

I don't understand the real reason that people would want something like this. With X58 and P55 you can run both SLI and Crossfire (seperately). If you are an ATI/AMD fan you would choose Crossfire. If you love the green team you would go with SLI. If you were a fan of both.. Well, you'd be silly to use this due to the costs involved and the poor results. It's driver based. SLI and Crossfire are annoying enough as it is (due to one needing profiles and the other needing actual drivers) but this just throws something else into the mix to cause hassle.

The AMD board reviewed recently was cheap enough for me to actually want. But I wouldn't want it because it can run mixed cards I would want it because it's the only one on the market that can run both SLI and Crossfire with an AMD chip.

I can't even see the point in this technology for people that want to fold. Of course one could say that if you had a 5970 and wanted to fold you could then add in XXXXXX Nvidia card and fold away but why would you? If you were folding you would firstly already be on the green team and would want multiple Nvidia cards, not an ATI.

Strange. Very strange. Seems to be an example of "because we can" but with no real solid reason.

i agree with you mostly, but one point that the article did raise was that an ati card fan could fit an old cheap nvidia card next to his modern ati card and get physx and cuda in his games whilst enjoying the power of a modern ati card. i thought that was a very good selling point, but the lack of support for all games put me off a lot

 

[alienware]

Thing is old Nvidia cards are pretty useless for the latest Physx. Even my 8800 Ultra reduced frames with my 5770CF considerably. And when you consider that a 470 GTX can do all of the above only faster... Well, seems even more pointless.

Thing is on Physx alone you don't need Fuzion. There are patches around that do the same thing for free.

And with a patch that allows SLI on any Crossfire board.. Even more pointless.

I tried three cards for Physx and none of them were really suitable. Cool of course being able to run it next to an ATI card but inevitably a bit of a waste of time. You would need to pair up two very recent (and thus expensive) cards making it silly.

Ah well, just my opinion

 

[nyenthrodumy]

I was just asking because I've had alot of msi boards and I have yet to have one problem. At the moment that seems to be there top of the line board. I wouldn't mix any cards, I would either get one or the other. I just figured since it's new technology they put it on there best mobo. Hell I ended up not going intel and sticking with my AMD. The only reason is I figured as soon as I bought the intel system intel or amd would have there new stuff out within a few months. I'm just going to wait until there out and them build a new system.

 

[Runebeard]

The Lucid Hydra stuff isn't all bad, if you look back at a couple of MSI mobo reviews on here, the AMD 870A version works really well, but as this is a lot newer than the X58 Big Bang version it uses a different Hydra chip as well. It does mean you do have to buy a decent card from each manufacturer to take advantage of it, but if you've got the cash I wouldn't say it was a terrible thing to do. I did not know, however that it is limited by game support, which would steer me away massively as that would be the equivalent of having an ATi card with a rather expensive (and therefore largely redundant) dedicated PhysX card.