I don't think that 845 motherboards will be very popular in the next months. People will look only for exceptional motherboards and modest solutions will be penalized. 845D will be on the top of the wishes because it seems that the new motherboards performance will be very close to 850. We have in laboratory an 845D board and we are quite impressed about its performance. Users wait for Intel solution to DDR because we know that Intel boards are done right. Of course that there are boards from VIA and SiS which deal very well with DDR, but the trust in Intel is higher than in other companies. We all had compatibility problems with early VIA releases, drivers problems with most SiS products so Intel can be a possible solution to these issues. I am not a man ready to say no to a product or another based on a previous experience with the product manufacturer. If I have driven a broken Mercedes it doesn't mean that a Mercedes is a dubious car. I am ready to give the second chance, but no more. Most people are not ready to do this and Intel knows it very well. Maybe that's why they come up with products later than the market. They had some of the best engineers so it's really absurd to believe that Intel didn't know to make a DDR board. No, the truth is that Intel was extremely prudent in choosing technologies; they learned a tough lesson with RAMBUS.
Today we will take a look to a 845 motherboard from MSI. 845 Pro2 has been on the market for two months now and many users may have heard about it. It's the last 845 motherboard we will review because I think that with MSI 845 Pro2 there are not many things that need improvement in 845 implementation.

Identification

It's not a problem to notice a MSI motherboard from the first look. The 845 Pro2 packaging quality is very good, a characteristic of all MSI motherboards. Inside the box you can find the MSI Smart-Key, one bracket with two USB ports and Bracket-LED diagnostic led, one ATA100 HDD cable, one floppy cable, one CD with drivers and general utils, the users manual and the motherboard. I have to remark that only one IDE cable may not be enough for most users. Every user has a HDD and a CDROM and because it's not recommended to use the same IDE channel for both you will need two cables. The manual is well documented and organized, describing the hardware installation, BIOS features and software setup. We finally reached the motherboard, which was version 1.0. MSI 845 Pro2 board looks special from the first look due to its red layout. For me the color is less important, but the six PCI slots, one CNR, one AGP and three DIMM provide the necessary expansion and worth much more than color.

The board we tested was not the RAID version, but MSI uses the same layout for both boards so that the differences are minimal. One thing I saw when I took the board out of the package was the onboard CMI8738 hardware audio controller. This chip provides a reasonable performance and CPU utilization even when playing games. The 845 chipset is protected by overheating with a heatsink and a fan. The space on the board is well organized and I don't have many complains. I liked the position of the I/O chip because it's unconventional and uses the space in front of the AGP slot which is generally unused. The ATX header is placed in a good position near the IDE connectors, while the supplementary 12V power connector cables don't generate air flow problems, although the header is close to CPU and cables need to be routed above the CPU fan. The board has only two fan headers, but both are close to the CPU socket. Actually there are three fan headers on board but one of them is used by the chipset fan. Like all motherboards which have 6 PCI slots 845 Pro2 suffers from memory insertion problems when the AGP card is in place.

MSI 845 Pro2 product picture

On board there are several headers and almost no jumpers. The access to CDROM audio, D-Bracket, Bracket USB and wake headers is easy because none of them is placed between the PCI slots. I really enjoy to say bad things about motherboards layout, but in our case there are not many things to say.