A close look at the 880G
AMD provides its partners with considerable leeway when designing motherboards based on its chipsets. Retail boards based on 880G can be paired with a choice of southbridges, and MSI goes for the top-of-the-line specification on the 'E45 with the SB850, as found on the also-IGP 890GX. Connecting north via a 2GB/s A-Link Express III interface, SB850 provides a useful array of connectivity options - including six SATA 6Gbps ports and Gigabit Ethernet.
Arriving in a micro-ATX package, MSI's 880GMA-E45 is a relatively clutter-free solution. The conservative heatsinks on both the north and south bridges suggest overclockers aren't the target market, but MSI does bundle its OC Genie tweaking utility and promotes the use of "Military Class" components, including aluminium-core solid capacitors and ferrite-core chokes.
Notice the red-coloured 'OC switch' at the bottom? The two dipswitches enable board-based overclocking of the HTT clock, by up to 20 per cent if both switches are pushed down.
There's ample room around the AM3 socket for third-party coolers, and four dual-channel DIMM slots are available to house up to 16GB of DDR3 at officially supported speeds of up to 1,333MHz, although the board provides ample BIOS options to tweak the settings further.
The IGP runs at a standard 880G speed of 560MHZ and memory bandwidth is taken from the system's. MSI doesn't throw in SidePort memory, which is conspicuous by its absence. We can't fathom why MSI would leave this out on a high-end 880G, frankly.
A single PCIe x16 lane is available for an easy graphics upgrade from the IGP, whilst two PCIe x1 slots and a single PCIc slot complete the board's line up of expansion options.
In addition to offering the usual floppy and IDE ports, the £90-£95 board provides support for next-generation storage devices via six SATA 6Gbps ports - two sitting straight up, four angled - all powered by the SB850 southbridge. RAID modes 0, 1 and 5 are supported, as well.
Turning to the I/O panel, we see VGA, DVI and HDMI connectivity - but you'll be unable to use both DVI and HDMI simultaneously, as AMD's chipsets continue to offer no support for dual digital outputs.
Four USB 2.0 ports are available - another four reside on the board itself - and an NEC controller provides a further two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports. There's no eSATA or FireWire, sadly, but the board does offer Gigabit Ethernet and six-way analogue audio jacks - via which 7.1 HD audio comes courtesy of a Realtek ALC892 chip.
In keeping with most other manufacturers, MSI is touting the board's Unlock CPU Core technology as a potential means of unlocking a CPU's hidden cores. If your luck's in, that could mean transforming the quad-core Phenom II X4 "Zosma" part, if it ever becomes available in the channel, into a full-fat hexa-core chip.
MSI also manufacturers two cheaper 880G boards - E41 and E43 - that miss out on some of the tastier features such as USB 3.0 and the SB850 southbridge.
BIOS
The Cell Menu (read overclocking section) has also been steadily tweaked to an extent where it's one of the best available for easy overclocking, and MSI includes six BIOS-saving slots for easy access to certain configurations.