Intel's Sandy Bridge platform got off to a strong start at the 2011 CES earlier this year before an issue with the P67 chipset sidelined motherboard production for several weeks. The chipset design error wasn't catastrophic by any means and likely wouldn't cause any issues for years to come, but it certainly needed to be corrected regardless. Board manufacturers worked with Intel to replace "bad" boards with those featuring the revised B3 chipset and business is pretty much back to normal at this point.

With two of our staff members now benching on Sandy Bridge platforms, you can be assured that we will continue to bring you the latest Socket 1155 motherboard reviews as new products roll off the assembly lines. That is exactly what we are doing today as we take a look at MSI's P67A-GD80 motherboard which is scheduled to hit the market next week.


The GD80 is one of two enthusiast / gaming class 1155 boards from MSI -- the other being the insanely over-the-top Big Bang Marshal with eight PCIe x16 slots. You may recall that we looked at the P67A-GD65, MSI's top-of-the-line performance board, in January and came away thoroughly impressed. The GD80 improves on the G65 with a full 12-phase DrMOS Digital VRM, three PCI-e x16 connectors, 10 USB 3.0 ports and dual Gigabit Ethernet jacks.

Let's move ahead and take a look at the complete specifications list before diving head-first into the P67A-GD80.