BIOS

MSI has used AMI BIOS for the past three years, and this has not changed with the P45 Platinum motherboard. AMI BIOS has come a long way since its beginning when it was a real chore to deal with; now it's extremely simple, and in fact can sometimes be mistaken for the cleanliness and ease of use that is the Award BIOS.

MSI puts its overclocking features under the Cell Menu. Until MSI changes its overclocking system from Core Cell, you will find all overclocking options under this menu.

Buses

Adjust CPU FSB Frequency: 200 - 800 in 1MHz Increments

PCI-E Frequency: Locked to 100MHz

PCI Frequency: 37.7, 42MHz

Voltages

CPU Voltage: 1.125v to 1.45v on 0.025v Increments

CPU GLT REF0: 0.7614v to 0.7906v in Various Increments

CPU GLT REG1: 0.7614v to 0.7906v in Various Increments

DRAM Voltage: 1.5v to 3.07v in 0.002v Increments

NB Voltage: 0.80v to 2.37v in 0.01v Increments

VTT FSB Voltage: 0.90v to 1.3v in 0.02v Increments

SB Voltage: 0.56v to 1.52v in Various Increments

Overclocking

In our first overclocking experience with the P45 chipset, we managed to pass just over 500MHz FSB with a total of 504MHz. This was done with only moderate voltage adjustments. We could have gone further, however, we didn't have a lot of time to do voltage tweaks before our deadline was reached. We will be re-visiting this board later on with a P45 overclocking and power saving article comprising this board and two others.

Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time of testing the motherboard. Due to time constraints we weren't able to tweak the motherboard to the absolute maximum and find the highest possible FSB, as this could take days to find properly. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking, or as new BIOS updates are released. "Burn-in" time might also come into play if you believe in that.