Introduction

It certainly has been an exciting quarter for Intel Corp. First we saw the release of the first major change in architecture for Intel in about 5 years with Core Architecture hitting the laptop sector, and then shortly after, Core headed to the desktop in the form of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme.

Core Duo is designed for the power conscious market, such as portable market, but it also has been given a place in Intel’s vision of the Digital Home. Core Duo and Core Solo are both part of the VIIV platform that Intel has put forward for the Digital Home platform. Core Duo and Core Solo are still the most energy efficient of the Intel processors on the market - even beating out the Core 2 series. After all, they are designed to fill a performance niche and not a power saving market.

Digital Home has never looked as good as it does these days, with Intel’s power efficient processors leading the way. Companies like ASUS have already put their foot forward in releasing a board complying with the VIIV standard and today MSI has jumped into the deep end with another Mobile on Desktop solution.

Our last Mobile on Desktop board we looked at from MSI was the 915GM Speedster, designed to take the Pentium M and Celeron M series of processors. Today we have been given the latest sample to fit into the VIIV market, the 945GT Speedster.

After taking a close look at the motherboard we’ll sit down and compare it against the older 915GM board.