Posted on Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 14:33 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
MSI has released a new micro-ATX motherboard named G45 Digital. It's designed for Intel LGA775 based home theatre systems, it features the Intel G45 chipset with Intel X4500HD integrated graphics, support for up to 16GB DDR2 800MHz memory, 2nd Gen DrMOS, APS, HDMI, DVI, Gigabit LAN and HD Audio 7.1 with SPDIF.
The MSI G45M Digital is passively cooled and equipped with Intel® X4500HD chipset, making this mainboard a perfect solution for a Home Theatre PC: small sized, silent and capable of playing all HD content fluently. Through hardware decoding acceleration, users can enjoy Blu-ray high definition movies. MSI G45M Digital also provides HDMI, DVI, D-Sub multiple display output, as well as 8-channel HD audio quality; enabling users to experience the best multimedia applications.
Server-Class DrMOS Technology and MSI APS (Active Phase Switching)
“Tom’s Hardware” mainboard-efficiency test in November 2008 concluded that MSI mainboards with DrMOS and APS offer the most efficient power saving solution: “Unlike other solutions, APS works”. DrMOS enables the G45M Digital motherboard to work cool and efficient. Therefore, the MSI G45M Digital only needs 4 DrMOS chips, unlike traditional discrete MOSFET designs with 12 or even 16 MOSFETS. The reduced number of MOSFET components now results in less power loss and less heat.
APS switches the number of power phases corresponding to the needs of the CPU load. With fewer phases the system works more efficient at lower CPU loads. APS is manageable in the BIOS, making it OS independent, unlike other comparable solutions that are currently in the market.
Multimedia features on MSI G45M Digital
The MSI G45M Digital built-in Intel® X4500HD video core provides excellent video performance. Compared to the previous G35 built-in video core, the Intel® X4500HD was improved by 72% in 3D computing performance. Without using other independent video cards, the system can cope with most 3D games in the market. In addition, the MSI G45M Digital supports DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 applications and high-resolution HDMI (supporting HDCP and 8-channel LPCM audio) and DVI and VGA output. Next to that, the board supports SPDIF optical, eSATA 2 and Firewire. Users are able to playback HD-DVD and Blu-ray high-definition HD video smoothly with hardware decoding acceleration as well, even when the CPU is in low-load.
