Triple Mainstream AMD 785G Roundup

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.

The ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO

Our first AMD 785G contender comes from ASUS, clad in attractive shades of blue on a dark brown PCB. Our next impression is that ASUS has quietly upgraded its motherboard PCBs with 2oz of copper to match that of its competitor Gigabyte, which started this trend last year as part of its Ultra Durable 3 feature. While the concrete benefits of having more copper in the PCB are hard to pin down, we aren't complaining if every vendor ends up following this, like the now-widespread use of solid capacitors.

It is however telling that even a mainstream board is getting this treatment nowadays as it certainly shows the industry as a whole is improving the quality of their products.

Coming back to the ASUS EVO, as we shall dub it, besides the extra copper, it comes with solid Japanese capacitors to further enhance its billing for quality and stability. That aside, the board itself follows a conventional layout that's certainly very usable, though there are some areas which attention is required and which we'll highlight later.

Vendors have tried but never really managed to ditch the legacy PS/2 connectors and the ASUS EVO here does a halfhearted attempt here by leaving one PS/2 keyboard port. That means USB ports are needed to compensate, though with six USB 2.0 ports at the rear, it should be about enough. An eSATA port here gets the thumbs up from us, while the other connectivity options, like HDMI and optical S/PDIF outputs are standard and expected for this chipset.

ASUS surprised us by having minimal passive cooling on this board. Even the heatsink for the 785G chip is a modest sized one. However, that small heatsink still managed to be located rather too close to the PCIe x1 slot, so you're unlikely able to install any large add-on cards in that slot. Here's one instance where the layout falls slightly short.

In case you haven't noticed from the specifications, the EVO is a AM3 motherboard that only accepts DDR3 memory and an AM3 AMD processor. ASUS claims that it's possible to overclock the memory to 1800MHz but our attempt to use DDR3-1866 memory modules with this board only yielded 1333MHz. It also comes with an additional 128MB cache of SidePort memory (using Nanya RAM) to improve the graphics performance slightly.

Another decision that may be contentious with users is the removal of floppy drive support. Not many users will miss it, especially with Windows and BIOS based utilities for tasks like updating the BIOS. However, ASUS has maintained other older technologies here, with LPT and COM headers on the PCB.

Other features include Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD audio courtesy of a VIA VT1708S chip and FireWire support for a rather well-rounded integrated solutions motherboard.

We're not the biggest fans of SATA ports that are aligned in this fashion, though ASUS just about gets away with it by placing them at the very edge of the PCB. There are only five SATA ports though, the sixth (as expected from the SB710) presumably tapped for use by the rear eSATA port. Given its mainstream nature, we were not expecting onboard switches for power, etc and there are none to be found. Clearing the CMOS is done through a jumper.

Finally, ASUS continues to blitz us with its variety of software and BIOS based tools that enhance their motherboards. The company's EPU Engine that regulates power consumption by dynamically changing the power phases is here, though it's a four-phase version instead of the six we have seen on higher end motherboards. Add to that - ASUS' Express Gate that boots up quickly to a Linux based interface, its BIOS flashing utility (EZ Flash 2) and even an auto overclocking software utility (ASUS GPU NOS) for the integrated graphics with its own dedicated chip onboard to control the necessary adjustments.

The ECS A785GM-M

ECS' Black series gets another addition with the A785GM-M, which is the other AM3 board in our roundup. As proudly embossed on the large heatsink covering the CPU power components, ECS is raising its game to make the A785GM-M the choice for mainstream users.

First however, they have removed almost all traces of legacy technology on this board. Gone is the floppy drive support. There are no serial or parallel headers lying hidden on this mATX board. ECS has even gone for two PCIe x1 slots, reducing the older PCI slot to just one. We personally would have preferred more PCI slots but with so many features integrated on motherboards nowadays, these expansion slots are just 'gravy' to the typical user.

As you can see from the rear I/O panel, there are no PS/2 ports, though with six USB 2.0 ports instead, one gets the feeling those may not be sufficient for some users. What's very welcome are the extra two eSATA ports at the rear that are supported by the onboard JMicron JMB362 controller.

We aren't sure if there really is a need for the large heatsink above but surely it won't hurt. Also, ECS has at least managed to shape its Northbridge heatsink that it has no chance of interfering with the PCIe x1 slot beside it. In fact, we were quite pleased with the layout on this board, as we didn't find any flaws to even nitpick. We also noticed that ECS has gone for solid capacitors completely on this board, which reflects the current trend.

ECS gets the alignment of its SATA ports right. Add to that the two rear eSATA ports and this board has the most number of SATA connectors among the three. Other features that bring it on par with its competitors are FireWire support, HD audio

CODEC (Realtek ALC888S) and one of ECS' newer features, eJIFFY, a Linux based, quick booting user interface that's akin to ASUS' Express Gate in concept. However unlike its expensive competitor that has this interface stored in a flash chip onboard, one has to install eJIFFY onto a hard drive partition first before it works and it provides basic browsing (using a variant of Mozilla Firefox), an IM client and a photo gallery utility.

What the A785GM-M lacks solely however compared to its rivals is SidePort memory. While it's just 128MB of extra DDR3 memory, it gives competitors the edge when it comes to graphics performance. We were quite surprised that ECS has omitted this feature when it has attempted to bridge the gap between its products and those from top tier vendors.

Next, while ECS has stated support for DDR3-1333, we could only get our Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 module to run only at 1066MHz. The same happened with the other DDR3 module we tried from Patriot. Since our memory modules are not in ECS' qualified vendor list, we highly recommend that you check this online before deciding which memory module to use.

Finally, another sign that ECS wants to be in the big league are the inclusion of these onboard control buttons. Although these basic buttons may not be as fancy as those found on some other boards, they are not present in the other AMD 785G boards today. There's even a LED status indicator, but with no guide to what the numbers represent, it's probably useful only to ECS technical helpdesk.

The Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H

Our last 785G board is also the only AM2+ version. That means while you can install the latest AM3 processor on this board, the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H works with DDR2 memory and not DDR3. Gigabyte claims that it can support up to DDR2 1200+ when overclocked, but like our experience with the ASUS and ECS, getting it to run at its maximum memory frequency is not child's play.

In our case, the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H would run our Kingston HyperX DDR2-1066 memory at 800MHz, so your experience may vary with what brand of memory you use. Fortunately, Gigabyte has wisely gone with the SidePort memory option on this board, giving it a potential performance boost that may reduce any advantage that higher clocked DDR3 memory may have over DDR2.

Existing users of Gigabyte's 780G motherboards may notice the similarities between this 785G board and their own. One can overlay the older 780G version over this 785G board and they will likely match on many areas. However, one feature that older boards lack is the Ultra Durable 3 technology that now looks to be standard on Gigabyte motherboards. So you'll find 2oz of copper in the PCB (if you can measure it that is) along with a solid capacitor-only design.

Like ASUS, Gigabyte is not ready to completely ditch the PS/2 port yet, though it is pushing in that direction. The number and type of ports at its rear panel are similar to that on the other two 785G boards, with a single eSATA port that leaves the number of internal SATA ports at five. Like its rivals, expect to find the whole complement of onboard features, from Gigabit Ethernet to HD audio CODEC, FireWire and in the Gigabyte's case, there's also floppy drive support.

One of our main issues with the Gigabyte 780G board that we tested (MA78GM-S2H) was in its layout. We encountered a problem where a long, dual-slot graphics card, when installed, will prevent users from fully utilizing their SATA ports. It remains the case for this 785G board, since they both have a similar layout. The same can be said of its heatsink interfering with the PCIe x1 slot. The rest of the board was fine but the SATA ports in particular can be deal-breakers.

Gigabyte is another vendor that is not short of proprietary technologies and software to include with its motherboards and some of them, like its BIOS flash utility (Q-Flash) remains one of our favorite. Energy saving technology (Easy Energy Saver) and BIOS corruption protection (DualBIOS) are probably familiar names to most enthusiasts. You can be assured that the full array of these tools is present but we expect consumers to use a couple of these features at most.

BIOS Settings

Motherboards are not just about their features and performance. The internal tweaks and workings of its BIOS either make it usable or frustrating. Of course, if you're not interested in changing any settings and content with the default, you can skip this section.

Predictably, the big names here, ASUS and Gigabyte provide the better BIOS, with more options and presented in a logical, intuitive manner. With these mainstream chipsets, the options are fewer than if this was geared towards enthusiasts, thus we found fewer voltage adjustments for example.

ECS meanwhile needs more work on its BIOS. We couldn't locate any way to change the CPU multiplier, which made overclocking harder. The overall feel of the BIOS could also be more comprehensive and user friendly.

All three boards at least have the means to overclock the graphics core of the Radeon HD 4200, with some very high and unrealistic frequencies too. The best we managed was on the Gigabyte, which doubled the clock speed to 1000MHz from the default 500MHz. One of our own internal testing found that pushing the GPU clock from 500MHz to 800MHz resulted in a 23% increase in 3DMark06 performance, so one can extrapolate the performance from there. It's nothing to scoff at. Below, we have collated some of the important BIOS settings.

Test Setup

Our previous AMD 785G graphics performance update had compared the 785G against our older collected results. The discrepancy in driver versions probably made the 785G look better than it should be. Hence, now that we have the time and the motherboards, we have retested everything on an updated platform. This includes a newer AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor (3.0GHz), a faster Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA hard drive and the most important, updated drivers.

Besides the three 785G motherboards (which turned out to be running different memory frequencies due to their memory compatibility support), we have thrown in an AMD 780G board (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) and a GeForce 8300 board (Zotac 8300) as reference. The full configuration details are as follows:

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 (3.0GHz)
• 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 5-5-5-16 (Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H and Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H and Zotac 8300)
• 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @ 1066, 7-7-7-20 (ECS A785GM-M)
• 2 x 1GB Patriot DDR3-1866 @ 1333, 7-7-7-20 (ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO)
• Integrated GPU Memory size set to 256MB
• NVIDIA nForce driver 15.26 and ForceWare 190.38 for Zotac 8300
• Catalyst 9.8 drivers for AMD 780G reference
• AMD SB Driver version 8.631 and Catalyst driver 8.631 for all AMD 785G motherboards
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)
• LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter & HD DVD-ROM
• CyberLink Power DVD Ultra version 8.0.2021.50

Results - SYSmark 2007 Preview

Since all three 785G motherboards had to operate with different memory timings by chance, it was an opportunity to see if that made any difference. For the case of the ASUS, it seemed to help as it was the best performer among the three in SYSmark 2007. What was interesting was the high score for the NVIDIA based Zotac 8300, which saw a dramatic improvement compared to our initial review. This is likely due to the updated NVIDIA drivers used.

Meanwhile, the older AMD 780G was equal to the newer 785G, which was expected since the SidePort memory on the 785G probably did not have a significant impact on this system benchmark. From the score breakdown, the Zotac 8300 had an impressive lead in the Productivity section, which perhaps hinted at a better storage controller than AMD's.

Results - SPECviewperf 9.0

In this benchmark, the differences between the 785G boards started to appear. While the ECS and Gigabyte were mostly similar, the 780G was clearly another notch below them. The ASUS continued to lead and here, the Zotac 8300 was outclassed. Here then is a reason to get the 785G over the 780G - for tasks that tax the 3D and memory subsystem.

Results - Futuremark PCMark05 Pro

The other system benchmark in our test, PCMark05 again had the ASUS as the top overall scorer, with the Gigabyte 785G tying with the Zotac 8300. While the ECS did well in the memory and storage sections, it was definitely slower than the other 785G boards in the graphics section, a result probably of its lack of SidePort memory. The Zotac 8300 also maintained the pace, with very decent scores across all subsections.

Results - 3DMark06 and AquaMark3

With updated drivers, it should be a level playing field among all the integrated graphics chips on these motherboards. And the SidePort memory enhanced AMD 785G motherboards emerged as the winners in 3DMark06, with the ASUS EVO just pinching it from the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H. The ECS managed to stay ahead of the 780G Gigabyte board while the NVIDIA representative came in last here.

It was a more mixed picture in AquaMark3, with the Zotac topping the graphics portion, though it appeared to be the slowest when it came to the CPU subsection. Again, those boards with SidePort memory had a slight advantage.

3D Gaming Performance

The focus may be on the 785G motherboards but the Zotac 8300 took the headlines in our 3D gaming benchmarks here by taking the top spot in both Unreal Tournament 3 and Quake 4. The margin was especially impressive in Quake 4, where the Zotac had almost twice the frame rates of its nearest competitor. As for the AMD boards, they followed the order that we have observed so far, with the ASUS followed by the Gigabyte and the ECS.

Paired with a decent, modern CPU, one can probably play these games at mid-range resolutions and settings.

HD Playback Performance

Moving onto our Blu-ray playback testing, where we measured the CPU utilization while running a Blu-ray movie. All the boards here did extremely well, with the CPU mostly idling at less than 10%. Although the NVIDIA solution had slightly higher rates here, it was not significantly worse off than the AMD chipsets and effectively produced a similar, smooth and lag-free playback.

As for the AMD 785G, having the latest version 2.0 of the Universal Video Decoder, with full hardware acceleration appeared to have minimal effect on our tests, since the AMD 780G which is on version 1.0 had the same low CPU utilization.

Temperature

Despite having one of the smallest heatsink among the motherboards here, the ASUS EVO had the lowest temperature measured. This was followed by the ECS, which somewhat justifies its dual heatsink combination. Both the Gigabyte boards were running warmer than the rest, with the newer 785G version faring worse. And finally, we have always known the NVIDIA GeForce 8300 to run hot and the Zotac proves that point.

Power Consumption

Comparing the AMD 785G motherboards in power consumption, they all had very similar power draws for idle and peak so while different vendors may boast of various energy saving technologies, the fact is this chipset is not exactly a power guzzler and even with these features enabled, it's not likely to make much difference. Like its warmer temperatures, the Zotac 8300 suffered here with the highest power consumption. Oddly, the older 780G motherboard has a lower overall power draw than all of the other boards in this comparison.

Conclusion

After more rigorous testing of the AMD 785G chipset in this roundup, it became apparent that the performance gains from the 780G are very minor. It's quite likely that the SidePort memory that's found on these models is the main reason for the performance boost that we have seen. Once we updated our drivers for the AMD 780G and GeForce 8300 chipsets, they are competitive with the newcomer.

From our benchmark results, differences in memory frequencies do not seem to have a significant impact, so one can opt for the lower cost AM2+ version that uses cheaper DDR2 memory instead if there's a tight budget. Fortunately, these mainstream boards remain mostly affordable, with even the most expensive models under US$100. Pair that with a decent but inexpensive Athlon II dual-core processor and you're assured of relatively low power consumption and respectable multimedia performance. Gaming too is possible though one has to pick and choose the right games and settings.

Perhaps due to the fact that the AMD 785G is so similar to the 780G, most vendors have boards ready at its launch, with some of the designs remarkably similar to their 780G counterparts. That's both good and bad. Some design and layout flaws have carried over, like what we saw with the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H. Other, more positive aspects include the polish that we have seen from these boards, from the comprehensive features to a familiar, user friendly BIOS.

The table below shows how the three 785G boards rated during our assessment. The ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO was an easy choice as the best of the bunch reviewed today. It generally topped the benchmarks among them. It had the lowest temperature measured and its power consumption numbers were in line with the others. The only improvements we spotted are some minor ones concerning its layout but there's no doubting its overall quality and build. Of course, you'll have to pay for it at around US$95 (or S$188 locally), it's close to breaking the US$100 mark.

Next up, the ECS A785GM-M had some very nice touches that while not exactly innovative, showed that the company was competitive in terms of features. We also liked its layout the best of all. What held it back was simply the choice by ECS of not equipping it with the SidePort memory found on the others. This hindered its performance and its BIOS settings was the weakest of the three as it missed some crucial settings.

Its list of proprietary applications and tools was also the most meager, though this takes some effort and time to develop and eJIFFY is a step forward at least. Comparing the prices, it is also one of the cheaper models available at US$85 (no local price available).

Finally, while the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H came in second in most of our benchmarks, it was not our top choice due to its layout, which has inherited the flaws of the previous generation. The board also seemed to be slightly warmer than the others. Nevertheless, it remains a very decent and polished solution and with the weight of Gigabyte applications and technologies behind it, users will get a very good experience using this board. It's priced close to the ASUS board locally with prices ranging from S$180 - 190.

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