Micro-Star International (MSI) has announced the official release of its new flagship X99 chipset motherboard, the X99A Godlike Gaming. The new mainboard offers plenty of features for gamers and non-gamers alike.
MSI's X99 chipset-based mainboards were unveiled to the public during the COMPUTEX Taipei B2B computer exhibition held in Taiwan from June 2 to June 6. Subsequently, two of the Taiwanese multinational information technology company's X99 motherboards took home awards -- the MSI X99A Gaming 9 ACK for its extraordinary ingenuity and outstanding design and the MSI X99A XPOWER AC Motherboard for uncompromising overclocking capabilities.
The recently-released flagship, X99A Godlike Gaming, combines the best of the two motherboards while armored in MSI's trademark color combination, red and black. Godlike Gaming further customizes its design and appeal by being the first mainboard to incorporate RGB LED lighting that supports more than 2,000 colors. Presets for the color schemes are available, but for those who want a more personalized feel, MSI's Mystic Light can be installed for both PC and mobile devices. The app allows a customized set of colors as well as effects for the LED lights.
The E-ATX motherboard is limited to i7 processors that are compatible with socket 2011-3. It offers eight DDR4 memory slots that can support up to 128GB of RAM with a maximum frequency of 4351 MHz. As a point of comparison, the average DDR3 RAM that runs on most systems these days are clocked at anywhere from 1600 MHz up to 2666 MHz.
The fully-loaded motherboard has two Ethernet ports and an integrated network management software called the Killer Network Manager. It allows the two Ethernet connectors and the built-in Wi-Fi adapter to work in harmony at the same time, just like a multi-wan router would. Using the Killer Network Manager, it is possible to shape the network traffic and decide which of the three connections a software will be running on. For instance, Ethernet port 1 can be dedicated solely for games, the port 2 for streaming and the Wi-Fi for general browsing. In such a setup, spikes and latency issues at game time can be avoided. MSI specifies a max throughput of 2.867Gbps, which is plenty for anyone.
According to MSI's fact sheet for the new motherboard, the network manager, through "Advanced Stream Detect™", automatically prioritizes games above other applications. It also allows the modification of an application's' traffic priority and the customization of each application's bandwidth.
MSI's current flagship comes equipped with Audio Boost 3 Pro, powered by Nahimic Sound Technology. The company says Audio Boost 3 Pro can deliver crystal clear sound and music through 8-channel HD Audio or high impedance headphones. The integrated audio system involves an EMI-shielded HD audio processor, a 6.35mm golden dedicated headphone out port, five optical SPDIF ports, dual headphone amplifiers, dedicated AMP switches for both front and rear, Chemi-con audio capacitors and an isolated audio PCB.
X99A Godlike Gaming also comes with OC Genie. According to MSI, "OC Genie is the world's first built-in hardware overclocking technology on motherboards. With this one-second overclocking option, we're giving you even more performance. Just hit the button and your PC gets another adrenalin shot, delivering up to 20% of free extra performance for the CPU and memory."
Aside from all the customized features, the motherboard comes with one SATA express port, 10 SATA III ports (two of which are reserved for the SATA express port), eight USB 3.1 ports (four at the front and another four at the rear) and six USB 2.0 ports (four at the front and two at the back). Cross and 4-way SLI are also supported.
MSI is yet to announce the price for X99A Gaming Godlike, but estimates suggest a $500 price tag.
