The Conclusion

The ASRock 945G-DVI was intended to be a budget board.  If you keep this in perspective, then the results here should be very pleasing to the intended target of this board.  It performed very well at default speeds against the Gigabyte DS3, which is a proven overclocking monster.  With the ability to overclock to around a FSB of 300, you can get some additional speed for you HTPC or office PC by using this board.

The added DVI riser card that fits into the x16 pcie sot is a nice bonus, and will certainly come in handy to those wanting to run a dual monitor setup for office applications.  Gaming would necessitate buying a graphics card though, so you should keep that in mind.  If you do go ot and buy a graphics card for this board, you will be pleased with the performance you will get at default, and even the mild overclock that this board is capable of. 

The minor layout issues are just that, minor.  The board has been well thought out, and the space around the CPU socket is very spacious, a dream for anyone that uses large HSF combos or water cooling. 

ASRock could improve the overclocking potential of this board with a bios that would allow for the vcore and vdimm adjustments, but once again, that is not the target audience.  It would also be nice to see a DDR2 800 option available, but for a board that costs just $74.99 it's hard to say too many negative things because the ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI works without a glitch thanks to the use of a time proven chipset.

The Legit Bottom Line

If you are looking for an inexpensive (not cheap!) motherboard to build a budget or HTPC system, this is a board that you should look at.  It is fast, easy to work with, and at around $65-75, it is a bargain for such a great performer. 

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