The latest in MSI's AMD 770 chipset-based motherboards is in its final stages of development

Nov 10, 2009 15:27 GMT  ·  By

The AM3 Phenom II and Athlon II series-supporting motherboard 770-G45 is nearing release. This is the third such motherboard developed by the company and also the most rich in features after the 770T-C45 and the 770-C35. Among those features are the four DDR3-1600 slots, two PCI-Express x16 that enable CrossFireX setups, six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, an integrated Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 channel and an Easy OC Switch that allows configurations to be easily accomplished without the need to access the system BIOS.

The CPU will receive power through a simple 6 phase VRM circuit, which supports the Active Phase Switching. Seeing how the board will be able to use the Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs, it is likely that systems with the 770-G45 as a base will be able to achieve high performances.

Not only that, but the OC Switch will allow the full use of the AMD Overdrive Advanced Clock Calibration feature, which provides overclocking possibilities. The 770-G45 also has several built-in USB 2.0 ports PCI-Express x4.

The previous two chipsets released in this series were the 770T-C45 and 770-C35. These two also supported overclocking, but only had at most one PCI-Express 2.0 x16. Another unsupported feature by 770T-C45 was DDR3.

Although no details concerning its price and availability in stores have been made public, it is estimated that the board will be sold at prices surrounding $100.