The DG45FC Is Not A Thing Of Beauty, Aaron Brezenski

Ξ August 15th, 2008 | → | ∇ |

Firstly, I’m referencing the Intel blog of Intel Product Manager and Engineer, Aaron Brezenski, here about the Intel DG45FC G45 motherboard.

Mr Brezenski calls his board “a thing of beauty”, but I have to disagree, in fact - I strongly adstain from calling any motherboard Intel makes “good looking”. The fantastically named, DG45FC, may be cute in its mini-ITX form factor but it’s the epitome of mediocrity with its blue PCB and uninventive looking components. Intel’s design team could learn a few things from the Taiwanese, that’s for sure.

At £90, it’s not a bad buy, but I’d probably still rather an AMD setup with an underclocked 4850e and a Jetway JNC62 or maybe something 780G. The good thing about the G35 was that by the time we tested it the video playback quality was excellent, however yet again Intel’s software seems to let it down for early G45 reviews. It does offer 7.1 channel LPCM passthrough which is missing from the 780G, but Nvidia’s 8200 has it, although I still prefer the software and performance of the 780G from AMD.

Intel could really use a special low power chip like AMD offers - it has its E2xxx series, but they are still classed as 65W chips - chuck us a 35-45W 1.8GHz with 1MB of cache and we’ll be happy for a HTPC. I can’t see it wanting to infringe on its mobile line though, where there is more monies to be made.

If you want Intel mini-ITX though it looks like Intel’s own is the only way to go - everyone else has done micro-ATX. That’s somewhat disappointing, I was looking forward to the Taiwanese bending the rules a bit on the small(er) scale.

Also - if anyone has a HQV disk I’d love to borrow it just to test G45/8200/9300/780G again. I can’t seem to find my own