MSI 970 GAMING Motherboard Review
Subsystem and Gaming Benchmarks
All five SATA3 6G connections onboard are provided natively by the AMD SB950 chipset.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64
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On-board Audio
Before proceeding with audio benchmarks, Deferred Procedure Call latency must be first checked to make sure that the system is capable of producing usable results when the Rightmark Audio Analyzer benchmark was run. DPC is a Windows function that involves prioritizing tasks within the OS and high DPC latencies can be caused by several things including hardware device conflict. The DPC checker graphically displays the latency level of the system in real time so as long as the bars are in the green, the system should be able to handle audio and video streaming without drop outs or stutters.
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After leaving the system running for one hour, the absolute maximum peaked at 151 microseconds while the system average for the most part stayed well below that in the low 100’s. This means that there should be no hardware related issues or interruptions in terms of audio/video streaming performance while running the motherboard. Now we can run RightMark Audio Analyzer tests using a short 3-inch 3.5mm audio-loop cable that goes in the rear line-in and line-out ports for a loop-back test to objectively test internal audio performance. The highest 24-bit 96kHz and 192kHz settings were used.
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24-bit, 96 kHz
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| Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB |
+0.70, -0.16
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Good
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| Noise level, dB (A) |
-91.5
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Very good
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| Dynamic range, dB (A) |
91.6
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Very good
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| THD, % |
0.0020
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Excellent
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| THD + Noise, dB (A) |
-84.0
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Good
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| IMD + Noise, % |
0.011
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Very good
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| Stereo crosstalk, dB |
-86.8
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Excellent
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| IMD at 10 kHz, % |
0.0099
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Very good
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| General performance |
Very good
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24-bit, 192 kHz
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| Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB |
+0.56, +0.07
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Good
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| Noise level, dB (A) |
-93.3
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Very good
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| Dynamic range, dB (A) |
93.3
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Very good
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| THD, % |
0.0066
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Very good
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| THD + Noise, dB (A) |
-80.1
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Good
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| IMD + Noise, % |
0.028
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Good
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| Stereo crosstalk, dB |
-86.6
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Excellent
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| IMD at 10 kHz, % |
0.019
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Very good
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| General performance |
Very good
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Network Connectivity
Network testing was conducted with a 24 port Allied Telesis AT-9924T Layer 3 switch and a pair of 10-ft long Cat6E cables connecting the server PC and the test motherboard. The server system is HP DL 365 G1 with linked NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Network Adapters and (2) AMD Opteron™ 2200 Series Dual-Core processors (2.8 Ghz). Interrupt Moderation was disabled.
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Gaming Tests
Since the MSI 970 GAMING claims 8x/8x PCI-E distribution, this is verified with HWiNFO64 under load.
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| R9 290 in PCI_E2 | R9 290 in PCI_E4 |
A quick 3DMark Firestrike Single vs CrossFire to show performance:
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| Single R9 290 @ 16x | Dual R9 290 @ 8x/8x |
