MSI E350IA-E45 Motherboard Review

A couple of weeks ago at CES AMD launched their Fusion APU, their first product to combine a CPU and GPU on the same chip. Initial models are aimed at the mainstream and budget markets and were accompanied by announcements from various manufacturers of motherboards which support the new "APU" and Hudson M1 chipset.

One of the first manufacturers to announce their APU based system was MSI and today we have that very product, the E350IA-E45, on our test bench. In a selection of predominantly real world tests including media encoding, gaming and HD playback we will look at the performance of the new platform and find out who the consumers are who will benefit most from the first Fusion models.


BIOS and Software

MSI use an Aptio Setup utility for their American Megatrends BIOS and it has a similar layout to most other motherboards. As noted earlier the option is available to overclock the system memory to 1333MHz, rather than stick to AMD's 1066MHz specification. Temperature and voltage monitoring are also available as is M-Flash for quick and simple BIOS updates from a USB drive.

The E350IA-E45 supports System Monitor so that we can keep track of the CPU/GPU and memory use within Windows and in addition to this MSI supply Norton Internet Security with the board. Also, as this is an AMD platform, users should be able to take advantage of AMD software such as Fusion Media Explorer. FME is shown in the video above and is a tool which assists with managing our videos, pictures and music while taking advantage of AMDs CPU and GPU technology.

Detail Specifications

AMD Zacate E350 Dual Core, AMD Hudson M1, DDR3 Single Channel, VGA, SATA III, USB 3.0, Audio

	Supported CPU Zacate-FT1 APU  Northbridge Chipset AMD Hudson M1  DIMM Sockets 2 DIMM's  Supported Memory Single Channel DDR3 800/1066/1333* (OC)  Max. Memory 8 GB  Expansion Slots 1 PCI Express x16 slot with x4 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)  Serial ATA Controller 4x SATA 6Gb/s ports by AMD® Hudson M1  Onboard VGA Available VGA Max Share Memory Up to 512MB   Audio Chipset integrated by Realtek® ALC887  LAN Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller RTL8111E  USB 2x USB 3.0 ports by NEC® uPD720200F1  Internal I/O 1 x ATX 24-pin power connector   1 x ATX 4-pin 12V CPU power connector   CPU x 1 / System x 1 FAN connectors   1 x Front panel audio connector   1 x Front panel connector   2 x USB 2.0 connectors   4 x Serial ATA 6Gb/s connectors   External I/O 1 x PS/2 keyboard or mouse   1 x Graphic Card port   1 x HDMI port   6 x USB 2.0 ports   2 x USB 3.0 ports   1 x RJ45 LAN jack   1 x Coaxial SPDIF-out port   1 x Optical SPDIF-out port   1 x 6 in 1 audio jack   Form Factor Mini-ITX Form Factor  Dimension 17.0cm(L) x 17.0cm(W)