ASRock delivers its third board supporting the Core 2 Duo and Extreme processor. Although ASRock did not use the latest chipset. e.g. 965P or G965, it is able to maximise the power of the proven i945G chispet and give it life as a chipset of choice for the new processors.

The model is ConRoe945G-DVI. This board is based on the proven Intel 945G chipset. It supports supports FSB 1066/800/533 MHz processor, EM64T CPU and H-T Technology. For DDR2 memory, it supports Dual Channel DDRII667/533 x 4 DIMM slots with max. capacity up to 4GB. As 945G is an integrated graphics chipset, it comes with Intel^® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, Pixel Shader 2.0, DirectX 9.0 and Max. shared memory 192MB. The board also comes with 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, 1 x PCI Express x1 slot.

On top of all these, ConRoe945G-DVI comes with support for Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s and has a Dual VGA Output: support DVI-D and D-Sub ports with DVI Graphics-SI card by independent display controllers . It also has 4 SATA II 3.0Gb/s connectors, 7.1 Ch Vista™ Premium level HD Audio (ALC888 Audio Codec). The board is Windows^® Vista™ Premium Logo Hardware Ready. For those who wants to have some o/c, as usual, the board comes with Hybrid Booster - Safe Overclocking Technology and the Untied Overclocking : During Overclocking that allows higher FSB due to fixed PCIE/ PCI Buses

In terms of performance, we can see that it is on par with the big boys. Although it might not have as feature rich as the ConRoeXFire-eSATA2, this board would serve more for the HTPC users which might want to save on a graphics card for video playback. Although in our H.264 decoding, we find that the CPU utilisation is high, this does not stop the X6800 from being able to drive the AVC stream in full frame rate without any stutter. The DVI add on card which comes bundled would be a good thing for better display on LCD monitors.

The board has some basic overclocking features with adjustments of the CPUCLK, ASync settings, ram timing adjustments. You can check the gallery for more details. Although we are using a ES, the BIOS has the multiplier locked,  we can o/c the board to 299MHz FSB x 11. It is strange that no matter what we do, 300MHz just won't POST.

Overall, we did not face any issues with the board. Being a mATX board, I would recommend it to users who wants to build a HTPC. The board is also VISTA PREMIUM Hardware Ready. Thus, you can get ready to take advantage of the upcoming VISTA with Aeroglass and HD Audio features for VISTA when it is out. For pricing information, please check the link below.

Pricing

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Pros

• 8 USB 2.0 ports
• Core 2 Duo support
• DVI out
• GbE

Cons

• Overclocking options
• No eSATA
• No 1394

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.