Review: MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R Motherboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 30 May 2006, 17:51

Tags: MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R Motherboard, MSI

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qafq3

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Specifications

Specifications

Motherboard MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R
CPU Support Intel Core Duo, Core Solo, Celeron M
Northbridge Intel i945GT
Memory Support 2 slots, DDR2 only. Supports DDR2 533MHz and 667MHz. 2GB max, dual-channel - 1.8V
AGP None
PEG x16 from i945GT
Southbridge Intel ICH7R
Audio 8-channel high-definition feed from ICH7R to Realtek ALC880 CODEC
Audio Connectivity 5 ports on I/O, optical S/PDIF-Out
PCI 2x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots
PCI Express 1 x16 slot and 1 x4 slot
IDE 1 ATA100 compliant port from ICH7R
IDE RAID None
SATA 4 SATA2 ports from ICH7R
SATA RAID RAID0, 1, 0+1, and 5 from ICH7R (Intel Matrix Storage Technology)
Additional SATA RAID None
Networking Dual Gigabit PCI-Express Ethernet Controllers. Intel 82573L
USB 8 USB 2.0 ports from ICH7/R. 4x I/O USB 2.0 and 4x onboard
FireWire 2 ports from VIA 6307 2-port controller, one on I/O, other accessed via pin header and supplied bracket
I/O PS/2, DVI, VGA, RCA (video), FireWire400, Dual RJ45, 4x USB2.0, 5-port speaker jacks, optical S/PDIF-In
Form Factor micro-ATX, 244mm x 244mm
Expected price £125
Additional features Extender board, Yonah support


Yonah support is the most telling feature. MSI already has some experience in designing a desktop motherboard suited for mobile Intel CPUs. The 915GM Speedster-FA4 was architected for Intel's single-core Pentium M processors.

What's also interesting here is the extender board that MSI bundles in. More on that later.