Overclocking

We managed to get the board to a superb 482MHz Windows stable with an exceptional 495MHz FSB POST before Vista permanently gave up on us. Unfortunately the overclock had corrupted our OS installation, but we still got a good score out of it beforehand with an E6850 G0 on a 6x multiplier. It shot straight up to 450MHz on standard volts as well.

Stability

Well we set both the Prime95 torture test and a 3DMark 06 loop running as we walked out the door on Friday evening and much to our surprise the board was still running the stress test when we got back to the office on Monday morning. This puppy keeps on running - despite the infancy of DDR3 and the fact it's sitting on a test bench without extra cooling for the heatpipes it doesn't matter. MSI has certainly excelled itself here.

Warranty

The MSI warranty for the board is just two years. This is a little low considering you've just invested £150+ in a top of the range motherboard. We'll always prefer a longer warranty, especially if you want to use the board as a hand-me-down in a couple of years time when you upgrade, but we understand that motherboards don't hold their value as well as other components so just another year or two would be good.

Power Consumption

Built on the same PCB with similar components the Platinum and Diamond should be similar in power use, however the lower voltage and more efficient DDR3 drops the power consumption quite a bit for the Diamond when the system is loaded.

Value

For £150 the board is certainly an expensive P35 motherboard, but then so is the Asus P5K3 Deluxe - another DDR3 board we featured a while back. The Gigabyte GA-P35T-DQ6 drops in at only £125-135 depending on where you shop but you have to remember that the MSI comes with a £25 X-Fi card and a SkyTel VoIP card thrown in. These features certainly add to the overall cost and, for a premium model, they are the extra features you'd expect. However, the value is only increased if you actually need either of these mutually exclusive items. The SkyTel card is good for those that just want to use a normal phone with Skype and it's quite an elegant solution but it does take up a whole PCI slot.

I can see far more people using the WiFi or dual Gigabit Ethernet on the Asus P5K3 than needing the SkyTel, but then you've still got to fork out for a decent soundcard rather than suffer from having to use the ADI SoundMax 1988B. Compared to the Diamond - which has only a single Gigabit Ethernet socket, no WiFi option and one fewer internal SATA ports, but offers two better sound cards - it's going to come down to which features matter the most.

The basic P35 Platinum motherboard is the exact same core PCB but with DDR2 and only costs £105. After you've thrown in a £40 Creative Xtreme Audio card, you've still saved some money on the P35 Diamond. And that's before you've even taken the price premium you're going to pay for DDR3 at the moment.

If you've got your heart set on a DDR3 motherboard, there's always the P35 Platinum Combo for £130, but the performance won't be directly tailored for just DDR3. If you need the SkyTel card then the P35 Diamond should be a good buy, otherwise grab yourself the Platinum - which now looks like even more of a bargain - and an X-Fi card separately.

Final Thoughts...

The MSI P35 Diamond performs well but isn't exceptional and the additional extras are a welcome effort but might not appeal to everyone. I constantly found myself writing "disappointed" here and there, which I still am - it just doesn't live up to what we'd expect from a Diamond-series board - especially since I've seen what the X38 Diamond has in potential. At most it's an expensive Platinum and makes the real P35 Platinum a far better purchase than when we originally reviewed it.

There should have been more effort put into the core bundle since you're buying the best P35 motherboard MSI makes - and while the X-Fi and SkyTel are certainly part of a reflection of this, it's just not all there and doesn't mean you can't buy the same X-Fi card for £25 anyway. Without these two extras you might as well be buying the P35 Platinum with expensive DDR3 slots because the core motherboard is lacking extra features. How about at least another Gigabit Ethernet or some WiFi? A reorganised SATA port array? I still detest the use of internal SATA for the more infrequently used eSATA, and wish MSI wouldn't permanently sacrifice ports in this way. Offering an eSATA Matrix RAID 1 array is good, but those who will use this function is low and it only needs at most one eSATA port.

Overall it shouldn't detract that this is still a good board with fantastic stability and great performance, but it still doesn't represent good value for money. If you're really pinning over DDR3 and to splash out this kind of cash on a motherboard - wait for the X38 Diamond. Or, if you can't wait that long, we'd suggest you save some money and get some fast DDR2, the separate X-Fi card and the P35 Platinum for essentially the same result.

• Performance
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• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
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• x
• x
• x
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• x
• x
• -
• -
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• 7/10

What do these scores mean?