14 DAY TRIAL // Like ASRock and Gigabyte, Micro-Star International has a bunch of Ivy Bridge-compatible motherboards ready to welcome the third-generation chips.
According to this page, there are, in total, six platforms based on the Z77 chipset, two on the H77 and one on the B75.
That makes a total of nine, which is three less than the lineups of the aforementioned two rival companies.
Don't be confused by that web page, by the way. The first five platforms are X79 models.
That said, we'll leave it up to you to go over there and look at all the specs of each board.
Here, we'll draw attention to the most relevant features that Micro-Star International will be counting on as its competitive edge.
For one, MSI made liberal use of Military Class II components: DrMOS II (DriverMOSFET, boosts efficiency and provides thermal protection), Hi-C CAP (Tantalum based capacitor with automatic recovery), Super Ferrite Choke (SF, 30% more power at 10% better efficiency) and Japanese Solid Capacitors (long lifetime under high workloads).
Secondly, the formal press release made a point of the “advanced connectivity,” brought about by an integrated USB 3.0 controller and the Intel's Thunderbolt technology.
Thirdly, there is the MSI OC Genie II, which overclocked the CPU, graphics and memory, with the push of a single button.
The CPU will be set at 4.2 GHz (18% better performance), the memory will be pushed to 1,866 MHz and even the performance of the graphics card will be optimized.
As for storage, prospective buyers probably know enough to expect the Intel SSD caching technology (sets an SSD as cache for the HDD, improving performance by 4.5 times).
MSI's Z77, H77 and B75 will be priced according to how many of the above perks they possess. Built-in THX TruStudio Pro surround sound should be present on all of them.