jmke

While the 945G has been around for awhile the performance potential of the chipset is still very good, especially for the budget sector, and provides a solid platform for those interested in a mATX form factor board. The 945G will eventually be replaced by the recently released G965 chipset and we expect there to be an almost $40 difference in price between the two platforms for the time being. Whether the G965 is truly worth this premium or not we will see in an upcoming article.

In the meantime, ASRock recently shipped us their ConRoe945G-DVI motherboard for evaluation. The ASRock board is expected to sell for around $75 and brings with it a full set of features including a separate DVI card that allows for dual monitor usage with the onboard Intel GMA950 graphics chip. While the onboard video is fine for general desktop usage and surfing the Internet, it is not meant for 3D gaming no matter how many buzzwords Intel throws out in their GMA950 specification documents. Our article today is meant as brief review of this chipset's capability as implemented by ASRock when compared to a recent review of other budget chipsets. We will have further performance results from this board and others based on the mATX platform in a future roundup.

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