Intel P35 chipset has finally received a facelift with the arrival of its successor P45, codenamed 'Eaglelake', The new chipset which will power upcoming mainstream motherboards for Intel processors is the result of a couple of improvements made to the older P35.

The P45 chipset is manufactured on a 65 nm process as opposed to 90 nm, which should result in lower power consumption and operating temperatures, The PCI Express lane configuration has also undergone a change to support multi-GPU mode in dual-8x mode as opposed to the crippled 16x + 4x mode that the P35 provided, In addition to this, each lane runs at double the bandwidth thanks to PCI Express 2,0, Thus CrossFire multi¬GPU setups will run optimally on the new chipset. The P45 also features a new ICH10R southbridge.

The first Intel P45-based motherboard that made it to our Test Center was the MSI P45 Platinum, Boasting innovative features, MSI's new addition to its Platinum series looks quite promising, The board supports all Intel processors that come in the LGA 775 package, and 16 GB of DDR2 memory,

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FEATURES: MSI has thrown a slew of features into the P45 Platinum, the most significant being a new CircuPipe 2 heatsink design, 2-phase power conditioning for the memory and northbridge, and a handful of BIOS features which will give overclockers plenty of headroom, The new Circu-Pipe 2 design comprises of five copper heat pipes laid between the northbridge, southbridge and voltage regulators, The tip of each heat pipe has a set of tiny fins neatly arranged in the form of a V-twin engine over the northbridge. Despite these additions, the components of the P45 Platinum are well laid out.

Six SATA ports and an IDE port are placed perpendicular to the board for easy cable routing. PERFORMANCE: The P45 Platinum posted impressive scores in synthetic and real world tests. If you're an overclocker, get yourself updated on how to use the GTL reference voltage settings in the BIOS they will help you achieve higher scores, especially with quad-core processors. We managed to overclock our E8500 from 3.16 GHz to 4.2 GHz without any hassles. VERDICT: Buy this board if you're looking for a good mainstream board for a .CrossFire multi-GPU setup. If you're using a single graphics card, there's no harm in sticking to the P35.

FOR: Good layout, heat pipe cooling, great performance.

AGAINST: Expensive.

Specifications
Form factor: ATX; CPU socket: LGA 775; Chipset:
Intel P45+ICH10R; Memory support: DDR2-1066 (8 GB maxI; SATA/lDE: 8/1: USB ports: 12 (six via headers); HD audio: 7,1 channel; LAN: Gigabit; Expansion slots: 2 PCle x16, 2 PCI and 2 PCle xl.