MSI introduces six P45 motherboards
MSI has introduced eight new motherboards, six of which are based on Intel’s P45 and two on Intel’s P43 chipset. The motherboards must be distinguished by the energy-efficient Drmos technology.
The most interesting boards of the new MSI lineup are the P45 Diamond and the P45 Platinum, the latter of which will be available in a version with and a variant without support for DDR3 memory. The Diamond is the version that overclockers will be most interested in: as standard, this motherboard has the option to cool the chipset via water cooling using the Circu-Pipe Liquid technology. The two Platinum models feature the new generation of Circu-Pipe heat pipes, which are thinner and lower than the previous generation to leave more room for the CPU cooler. The cooling pipes of the Circu-Pipe 2 technology converge at a distinctive fan of five ends with cooling fins attached.
Intel’s P45 may not look very interesting on paper compared to the P35, for example both chipsets have an fsb of up to 1333MHz, but the chipset still brings some interesting improvements. For example, it supports PCI-e 2.0 and the chipset is baked at 65nm instead of 90nm, which offers advantages in terms of heat development and energy consumption. In addition, it is the last chipset to use the LGA775 socket and the Nehalem, which introduces a new socket, will not be widely available for a reasonable price until late 2009. Since it will be the last upgrade before Nehalem for many, motherboard manufacturers are doing everything they can to provide their P45 products with the necessary extras. This P43 chipset is a stripped-down version of the P45 and will not support dual x8 PCI-express slots, while DDR3 is bound to a maximum speed of 1066MHz.
For example, MSI introduces its Drmos technology with the P45 line. This three-in-one chip combines the top and bottom mosfets with the interface to drive them, resulting in significantly lower power consumption and, according to MSI, a 30 percent cooler mosfet compared to those from other manufacturers. MSI also equips its motherboards with solid state capacitors, real-time energy consumption display and extensive possibilities to adjust the voltage for the memory, the chipset and the CPU. In addition, the voltage of the memory and the chipset can be increased in steps of 10mV, while that of the CPU can be adjusted with 12.5mV increases. In July, MSI also promises an upgrade of the old bios to successor efi, although of Windows users only owners of the 64-bit version of Vista can use this.
The P45 Diamond is also equipped with two PCI-e x16, two PCI-e x1 and two PCI slots, while eight SATA and two eSATA connections can be found. The Platinum models have to do less with an eSATA connection, but, unlike the high-end model, do contain an integrated 7.1-channel audio chip. The Diamond has no onboard audio, but MSI includes Creative’s X-fi Extreme card.
The motherboards will be available in early June for an as yet unknown price. The G45 micro-ATX and ATX boards and the G43 micro-ATX boards should follow in July, while the special editions of the P45 should also see the light of day by then.