I was using the Gaming 5 until I had a shut off for no reason when connecting a USB flash drive...Not sure if anything was wrong with it, or if it was just my front case header, but it's been retired for now. Although it is still in my possession if you have any specific questions. With that said, the quality and presentation of the series as a whole is quite good, and the BIOS is easy to navigate and way better than older MSI boards. I believe the only difference between the 5 and 7 are inclusion of an M.2 port and 8 phases instead of 4, but don't quote me on that.
The main thing I was wondering was how many phases it had and how the UEFI was. I just read a review on the board with stated it has 12 phase. Which I am assuming is split 8 between the CPU and the other 4 between the memory. I had originally decided to get the maximus 7 hero, but Amazon doesn't have it it stock and I really cant wait any longer putting this computer together. So a friend told me to look into this board. Figured it wouldn't hurt any to ask about it.
Yeah, I noticed the Hero has been out of stock on Amazon all month for some reason. As for the phases, I just checked. It's a 6+1 setup. One driver for every two phases. Doubling goofiness. Still, that's more than enough for DC/Haswell. The quality is good, the board looks good (even if it is copying the ROG theme), and the software and BIOS are good. I had no complaints.
I had the board running for around 6 weeks. It did a good job, although I didn't overclock the CPU (never found the time). Due to a weird driver I had USB issues at first too, later on it worked flawlessly. Quite a nice board, great layout, but I wasn't satisfied with the performance "increase" from the CPU. My old board had died, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to upgrade, but now I sold the newer stuff again and started looking for an "old" Z77 board again.
This was the board I've been keeping an eye on for the longest time. However, after seeing that it had a Killer NiC rather than an Intel one, that had me leaning more towards a Z97 PRO from ASUS. However, there are still better connectivity options on the Gaming 7, but to have a quality board over a quantity board, that might be where it's at. Still torn between the Z97 PRO and the Gaming 7 at this point for sure.
What's the issue with the Killer NIC? I've had both Intel and Killer on my last couple of boards and both worked well.
I have the MSI Z97 GD-65 which I believe is now the Gaming 7. I actually love the board, and the Killer nic is fine as long as you use the latest drivers from the website instead of the driver supplied on the disk. Same thing goes for the onboard sound drivers. FYI, you have to install the realtek drivers AND the creative soundblaster overlay to get the right sound reproduction. One last thing about the onboard sound. The color codes didn't match my 5.1 logitech speakers(x-530's) on the motherboard. I had to manually configure/figure them out from inside the software. I now know the top middle is green, and the bottom middle is yellow, and the bottom right is black, lol. Here is some info concerning the phases on the board(and more): sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png Well my z97 GD-65 is just a replacement for the z87 version, and it does appear there are some differences between the GD-65 and the Gaming7. I do know that the gaming 7 offers a few more features than the GD-65 but it may have a worse power delivery system according to the chart I posted. Not much difference though...
Correction it was. Now they have released the drivers on their own instead of with the horrid software it came with. Manually installing them through device manager and the Killer NIC is just as good as an Intel one.
How would one be better than the other? And what would the issue be with either one of them? I never had any issues with either one of them, apart from the usual "Killer software blocks network traffic" stuff... (which usually arose from some unofficial driver release).
The Intel NIC has significantly lower CPU usage during network intensive tasks. It doesn't matter a whole lot, but there you go.
Isn't that just when bandwidth control is enabled though? I noticed with it disabled the CPU usage is significantly lower. Usually around 1-2%. When enabled it uses roughly 7-8%. I just have it turned off at all times, because it really don't seem to make a difference anyway since I am the only one on my internet.
