The 945G-M3 is based upon Intel’s 945G chipset. This supports all current Intel Pentium 4 single-core and the dual-core CPUs up to and including the 960 3.6GHz dual core and the 3.73GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs. The CPU support list does not include the 965 or 955 Extreme Edition CPUs, as those are fated for the 955X and 975X chipsets at this moment. This likely will limit support of the Pressler CPUs, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Memory support on the board is limited by the fact that there are only two DIMM slots on the board. If you use 2GB memory modules you can fit up to 4GB on the ECS board. DDR2 667MHz memory is supported with up to 10.7GB/second of memory bandwidth on this platform. ECS has a Qualified Vendor List of memory modules on their manual. Currently the list includes only two types of DDR2 667 memory, Nanya and ELPIDA. DDR2 533 list has memory from Elixir, Infineon, Kinston, Samsung as well.

ECS chose to use a mini-ATX form factor with their 945G-M3. This limits the expansion possibilities on the board, meaning that there is onlyroom for a PCI Express x16, a PCI Express x1 and 2 PCI slots on the board. The PCI Express x16 slot works with any PCI Express x16 video card with a 7900GTX and X1900XTX being tested for compatibility purposes.

IDE hard disk drives are virtually non-existent on today’s modern computers. The ECS board does sport four SATA ports, the maximum that the Intel ICH7 chip supports. High-end motherboards sport 6 or 8 or even more SATA ports. Rounding out the drive support is a IDE port and a Floppy Disk Drive port. This is the minimum that I would expect from a motherboard today.

Onboard Intel graphics, namely the Graphics Media Accelerator 950 found on the 945G-M3 is excellent for the purposes that Intel market for, namely business users and the very casual gamer. GMA950 has two pixel pipelines and a frequency of 400MHz for the core. GMA950 supports Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, but Hardware T+L and Vertex Shading is done on software mode. To play many modern computer games you need Hardware T+L and Intel’s compatibility list is ridden with games that won’t run without it.

Onboard audio is provided by a REALTEK ALC880 CODEC. This chip supports Intel’s HDA (High Definition Audio) standard, the replacement for AC’97. 8-channel audio, and a frequency of 192/96/48/44.1GHz with 24/20/16-bit audio is supported. DirectSound, EAX 1.0, 2.0, A3D and other APIs are supported by the ALC880. REALTEK has released at least three newer chips, the ALC881, the ALC882 and ALC883.

The Back Panel Input and Output ports are pretty standard to most motherboards available today. One serial, one parallel, one VGA, 4 USB, one IEEE-1394, one LAN port, 6 audio jacks, a PS/2 Mouse and a PS/2 Keyboard port make up the back panel. I would hope the next generation of Intel integrated graphics included a DVI-I port, as the world has moved to LCDs.