Triple Mainstream AMD 785G Roundup
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Page 1 of 13 - Introduction
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Introduction
A Minor Update
AMD's 780G chipset was perhaps one of the first signs that the company was finally getting its act together after taking over graphics chipmaker ATI. The integrated graphics solution onboard, the Radeon HD 3200 immediately set the standard for the segment, with NVIDIA's MCP78 chipset (GeForce 8200 mGPU) the only credible competitor. It was the perfect answer to critics over the ATI purchase since it was the exact kind of synergy (pardon the corporate speak) touted for the acquisition. Hence it was with quiet anticipation that we approached our first AMD 785G motherboard (the successor to the 780G) when it arrived early this month.
As our graphics performance update showed, the 785G is less of a performance upgrade and more of an update to support the latest standards like DirectX 10.1, courtesy of its Radeon HD 4200 graphics core. Actual clock speeds are identical to the 780G and early excitement over whether the chipset had multi-channel LPCM support via HDMI turned out to be unfounded. The 785G is exactly the same as the 780G in that respect. The chipset however gets full hardware acceleration for HD video playback from its upgraded Universal Video Decoder 2.0.
You can read the article for more details on the changes but to cut a long story short, the 785G will perform similarly to its predecessor for just about everything. Despite that, we anticipate quite the flood of 785G boards in the marketplace, with vendors hungry to replicate the success of the 780G. Three such 785G motherboards have already landed in our lab - two AM3 variants that use DDR3 memory and a single AM2+ version that only accepts DDR2.
These three boards, from ASUS, ECS and Gigabyte are listed below with their specifications. All use the same Southbridge (SB710) that adds Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) as a feature, though it's probably unnecessary on the mainstream 785G. Two of them come with 128MB of DDR3 SidePort memory for better graphics performance. And finally, all of them are in the microATX (mATX) form factor, which shows what kind of usage vendors are expecting from this chipset. We also had a DDR2-based MSI's version in our lab but due unresolved testing issues, we've kept it aside for the moment. Meanwhile, look out for our standalone review on the DDR3 version soon.
ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO | ECS A785GM-M | Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H | ||
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CPU Support | AM3 processors only | AM2+/AM3 processors | ||
Chipset | AMD 785G + SB710 | |||
Graphics | ATI Radeon HD 4200 with 128MB DDR3-1333 SidePort memory | ATI Radeon HD 4200 (No SidePort memory) | ATI Radeon HD 4200 with 128MB DDR3-1333 SidePort memory | |
Memory |
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Storage |
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Audio |
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Networking | Realtek 8112L PCIe Gigabit LAN | Realtek 8111C Gigabit LAN | Realtek 8111C Gigabit LAN | |
IEEE 1394 |
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Rear I/O |
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Internal Connectors |
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Expansion Slots |
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Special Features |
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Form Factor | mATX (24.4 x 24.4cm) |
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