Both use AMI BIOS. Is anyone here familiar with both?
I'm planning a Z790 build currently. Pro rig.
I've narrowed it down to the Asus Prime Z790-A Wifi and the MSI Pro Z790-A Wifi.
Both boards are essentially the same. The MSI board has a couple of extra ports and better audio codec. Leaning in that direction.
My last few builds are all Asus and I am very familiar with an Asus BIOS.
MSI BIOS has the same items, but is set up radically different.
The easiest way to compare is download their manuals, and leaf through the BIOS settings.
For the ASUS boards... ASUS has been listing the BIOS settings only in the TUF motherboard's manuals of the same chipset.
So in your case, looks for the manual for the ASUS TUF Z790 manual.
For all motherboards, you can generally tell if the BIOS settings are included in the manual, by the size in MB.
Manuals with the BIOS settings will be approx. 6-7MB or greater in size.
The BIOS manual for the ASUS board...
https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/m..._EM_WEB_EN.pdf
I can't seem to find the BIOS manual for the Z790 MSI board... anywhere. :/
I went all the way back to an MSI Z390 board to find a manual "with" the BIOS settings, to give you an idea...
https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/E7B17v1.0.zip
Last edited by Ghot; 01 Dec 2022 at 16:11.
Thanks Ghot
Yeah, isn't that interesting? I also looked for the MSI info and came up short. I was searching for the Z690 BIOS cause the 790 is probably too new for any of that.
I know it will be mostly the same furniture in different rooms, but I wonder if one or the other provides more customizing/overclocking options. I'll look over what you gave me here.
Some folks are saying that the MSI BIOS is 'simpler' - cleaner. That there are not as many overclocking settings as you get in an Asus BIOS.
If that is true I'm wondering how limited it could be.
Although it doesn't really matter in this case as this is an office rig that can game, not the other way around!
All my more recent builds have been Asus also. I feel like I'm stepping out on my wife looking at MSI!
Asus seems to 'get' people who tinker. What I fear is that MSI BIOS could be like a laptop bios: "Go away. You don't need to change anything here!"
I wonder why the Asus Z790-A has 4 - M.2 ports and only 4 SATA 6gb/s ports while the MSI board has 4 - M.2 ports and 6 SATA 6gb/s ports? That's the big kicker for me. I need my HDDs.
I'll have to take a deeper dive into the specs to see if they are playing with the lanes to get better performance from all 4 M.2 ports for NVME's.
Found it. This information satisfies my curiosity. I think I can live with an MSI board.
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Looks like the same furniture in different rooms!
Well, the MSI Pro is the exact same setup as the Asus Prime but with a couple better specs, and $60 cheaper today with Newegg rebate.
She's smiling at me. Sorry honey!
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