An Average Joe - MSI 785GM-E51

Conclusion

Conclusion

Although AMD appears to be heading towards six-cores in the near future, its consumer processors are treading water in the performance and enthusiast segments. The entry level quad-cores and low-power processors will retain a certain place in the market, with Intel's Core 2 series nearing the end of its life cycle. What will worry AMD are the future Lynnfield and Clarkdale processors expected to arrive early next year. In which case, even the AMD 785G chipset's performance may not be sufficient to halt the tide.

At the moment though, users have quite the choice when it comes to the AMD 785G chipset. The 780G created a decent amount of mindshare and the 785G builds on it. MSI and Gigabyte are examples of vendors that have invested heavily in the chipset, with multiple models available. The MSI 785GM-E51 is unfortunately not one of the manufacturer's stronger models and lacks some features that are found on its competitors, with SidePort memory probably the most significant omission. Of course, MSI has other models with such an option, like the MSI 785GM-E65.

The MSI 785GM-E51's proposition hence lies in its pricing and the MSI-only technologies that it has. Locally, the MSI 785GM-E51 is available for around S$172, which is somewhat affordable, if not exactly entry-level pricing. Compared to the ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO which goes for S$188, the MSI is certainly slightly cheaper. It's not the same though, since the ASUS does have a better feature set but one can argue that MSI's unique features are probably worth something to certain users.

Personally, we find the power efficiency ones to be the best of the bunch while the overclocking ones to be extraneous when it comes to an integrated, mainstream board likethe AMD 785G. In short, there are more choices available out there so do the proper comparisons and get the one that fit your requirements closely. We did our sums and while the MSI 785GM-E51 is a decent board, it's probably not one that shines out from the competition when factoring all its aspects.