Just like with the CPU specs, you can access memory specifications at any time and from anywhere in the BIOS by pressing F5.

Unfortunately, although MSI Eclipse Plus read absolutely correctly all parameters recorded in the first X.M.P. profile of the two available in Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX memory modules that we use, the board couldn’t boot when this profile was selected. When we selected the second profile, it offered to set some unrealistic memory frequency of 2796MHz. We can’t get this frequency in a traditional way by selecting an appropriate multiplier using “Memory Ratio” setting. Even with 133MHz base frequency the maximum memory speed will be 2133MHz.

As for the memory timings, “Advance DRAM Configuration” parameter will open a sub-page where you can manually set all primary timings.

If we enable “Advanced Memory Setting”, we will get access to all secondary timings as well.

The next group of parameters in the “Cell Menu” section deals with chipset configuration. And then follows a large group working with voltages. You can set them above as well as below their nominal values.

It is very cool to see that there is “CPU Load Line Calibration” function that prevents processor voltage from dropping under heavy load. MSI Eclipse mainboard didn’t have this feature. Moreover, note that when “CPU Voltage”, “QPI Voltage” and “DRAM Voltage” parameters are set to Auto, they get highlighted. We didn’t find any official explanation to that phenomenon, but we suppose (and our practical experiments confirmed that) that the mainboard highlights the voltages, which it will increase during overclocking on its own, if necessary.

The last group within “Cell Menu” section contains only one single parameter called “Spread Spectrum”. It should better be disabled during overclocking, because unfortunately, the board can’t do it itself. It isn’t an issue or a bug, just a little thing that could show extra attention to overclockers’ needs on MSI’s part.

Overall, “Cell Menu” section boasts very good functionality. Informational sub-sections, such as “CPU Specifications” and “MEMORY-Z” may seem a little excessive. They could have been moved painlessly to some section like “System Information”, for instance. Especially, since their contents can be partially accessed by pressing F4 and F5 at any time. However, “CPU Feature” sub-section is something that’s really missing here. It’s a pity that X.M.P. technology doesn’t work in automatic mode and that “Intel C-STATE tech” parameter and all options connected to it get disabled during overclocking. These are pretty much all the suggestions we have about improving the “Cell Menu” section.

“User Settings” section allows saving and loading four full BIOS settings profiles. It is very convenient, although too bad that there is no way to name these profiles or provide a detailed description for them.

The functionality of “M-Flash” section is also of extreme interest to us. Finally, MSI also has a built-in utility for storing and reflashing the BIOS. The marketing materials claim that it is very easy and intuitive to use. I have to disagree. In my opinion, the simplest, easiest to work with and most informative utility is ASUS EZ Flash. Moreover, it also allows saving updates onto devices with NTF file system, which M-Flash can’t do yet. However, the most important thing is that this utility works fine.

Besides, M-Flash supports a very interesting feature: loading the BIOS from a USB flash-drive. If you set “M-Flash function as” to “BIOS Update”, we will be able to select a BIOS image for further reflashing. If we set it to “Boot”, the board will not reflash the BIOS but will boot with the selected BIOS image on the flash drive and will ignore the current one saved in the BIOS chip. It is a very interesting feature! You can check out a new or beta version of the BIOS without risking to lose all the settings. Theoretically, this function could also step in once the BISO chip fails, but in this case M-Flash function needs to be enabled by default and the board should be able to boot with any suitable BIOS image it can locate.

And now a few sad things. The list of BIOS settings of MSI Eclipse mainboard is very similar to the BIOS settings of MSI Eclipse Plus and it also has an “M-Flash” section with the same functionality. I found several BIOS updates for MSI Eclipse on the official company web-site, however, I couldn’t download any of them. I was advised to use Live Update Online or Live Update 3 utilities.

I don’t know the real reason behind this, but being a pretty mistrustful person I suspected that “M-Flash” reflashing function could be causing some issues on MSI Eclipse mainboard that is why they wouldn’t let you actually use it. As for MSI Eclipse Plus, there is only one initial BIOS version 1.0 available for download on the official site at this time. Therefore, we can make an optimistic conclusion that they managed to eliminate all problems on the MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard successfully. However, my experience wouldn’t let me celebrate just yet, because it could be that the problems simply haven’t been revealed yet, as the board is very new and not that widely spread in the market. That is why I used online tools to reflash the BIOS on my MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard and didn’t check out the “M-Flash” function to make sure that I would not accidentally damage the board.