Review : MSI GNB MAX Granite Bay motherboard

I've got mixed feelings about this particular motherboard. On the one hand it's pretty damn quick. The benchmarks laid down by the MSI GNB MAX are, quite simply, the fastest from any DDR-based chipset to date. That was kind of expected though. Running with dual-DDR, benchmark scores were just a whisker away from PC1066 RAMBUS in the majority of tests, and in some it even eclipsed our resident champion for #1 spot.

Still, I have a feeling that dual-DDR isn't realising its full potential just yet. Taking SANDRA results with a pinch of salt, and with a theoretical 4.26GB/s on tap, we're getting around 3.3GB/s in the buffered benchmark, I had hoped to see a slightly higher benchmark. The technology has time to evolve and I'm sure we'll see slightly better performance from subsequent BIOS's. Another slight detraction is imposed by the fact that DDR modules have to be of the same size if running in dual-DDR mode..