The chaps over at HotHardware take a look at the features, layout, overclockability and performance of MSI's brand-new P35 Platinum motherboard for Intel LGA775-based processors. They tested the board at both 1066MHz and 1333MHz front side bus frequencies and compared its performance to an nForce 680i SLI throughout. This board is worth checking out just to see the funky-shaped heatsink / heat-pipe cooling aparatus. Here's a bit:

The P35 chipset brings with it a handful of new technologies, like official 1333MHz bus speed support and DDR3 to just name a few. But unlike 925X and 915G, P35 comes in both DDR2 and DDR3 flavors, making the platform all the more attractive to price sensitive end users looking to save a bit on their memory expenditures.

Not only does the MSI P35 Platinum, which is one of the first Intel P35 motherboards on the market, have an excellent feature set, it also showed that it has the raw horsepower to keep up with the EVGA nForce 680i SLI and in some cases, we even saw the MSI P35 Platinum outperform the 680i SLI, albeit by very small margins.� It's also nice to see that MSI is once again trying to implement new and interesting ideas like their 'roller coaster style' motherboard heat pipe cooling technology. Not only does it look cool, it even stays relatively cool to the touch without a fan due to its effective heat dissipation.

The BIOS was also generally good, with a large number of customizable features that allow for some decent overclockability. The only issues with the board that came up during the review process were the inaccuracy of the motherboards debugger and the fact that it was quite difficult to read. The board also only has four SATA ports, which because of today's dirt-cheap hard drive market and more common SATA optical drives, may not be enough for even a motherboard targeted toward the more mainstream computer builder. But overall, the MSI P35 Platinum is a solid motherboard. It is a solid performer, has good features and is overall, pretty well rounded. If you're looking for a new motherboard for your next Intel Core 2 system and want the latest motherboard technology at a reasonable price, the MSI P35 Platinum is definitely a product to consider.