Now that the market for Intel Core i7 supportive motherboards is well laid out, starting with a ~$200 Gigabyte EX58-UD3R all the way up to a ~$400 ASUS Rampage II Extreme, MSI finds the time ripe to introduce its flagship motherboard based on the Intel X58 chipset with the new LGA 1366 socket, the Eclipse Plus. Featured on MSI's product roadmaps as a then undisclosed model, the Eclipse Plus is a notch above the Eclipse SLI with greater expansion options, with components and features packed with keeping the serious performance enthusiast in mind. The Eclipse Plus will be releasing shortly.

To begin with, the Eclipse Plus features four PCI-Express x16 slots for 4-way ATI CrossfireX or 3-way SLI. Unlike with the Eclipse SLI, where the three PCI-E x16 slots which are directly routed to the X58 northbridge and get arranged as x16, x8, x8 electrically when all three slots are populated, the Eclipse Plus uses NVIDIA BR-03 multiplex chips to provide full-bandwidth x16 connections to the installed graphics cards. The BR-03 not just routes data to the graphics cards but as noted with nForce 780a motherboards, the nForce 200/BR-03 chips perform broadcast functions so the same pieces of data which are meant to be supplied to all member graphics cards of a SLI system are "broadcast" by the BR-03, easing congestions on the PCI-E x16 link that connects it to the Intel X58. The rest of the features are similar to those of the Eclipse SLI as listed in the roadmap slide.


Source: Syndrome OC