Product Reviews

MSI's 945P Neo uses the same Intel 945P chipset as Asus's P5LD2 Deluxe motherboard. While Asus has taken this opportunity to add SLI capability to its board, MSI provides the first example of DTS Connect. Invented by the same people behind the DTS surround-sound format used in many cinemas, this encodes all PC sound into a DTS-compatible audio stream and sends it over a single S/PDIF connection. Stereo content is upmixed to 7.1 channels.

This means you can use your existing DTS surround-sound decoder to play all PC audio in surround sound. However, most people use analogue outputs to connect directly

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to their PC's speakers, so its main appeal will lie with the minority of people who have only digital inputs on their surround-sound systems.

Other than this, it is business as usual for this passively cooled motherboard. The 945P chipset means it supports all LGA775 processors, including dual-core and those with a 1,066MHz FSB.

We installed our 3.6GHz Pentium 4 and 1GB of DDR2 RAM in two of the four memory slots. The scores of 148 in Shopper's application benchmarks and 5,582 in PCMark04 were marginally better than from Asus's P5LD2.

The 945P has the usual storage options, including three IDE connectors and four SATA2 ports, which can be used in RAID arrays. There's also the standard range of ports, although FireWire is available only by connecting the blanking plate to the motherboard's header. Expansion is provided by three PCI, one PCI-E x16 and two PCI-E x1 slots.

The 945P Neo performs well for the price, but we believe that DTS Connect will appeal to only a small number of people. If you have digital inputs on your surround-sound system, then the 945P Neo is a good choice, but for everyone else nForce 4-based boards offer a beeter range of features.