Hardware Anywhere: Introducing the all new AMD 785G motherboard chipset

AMD 785G chipset overview

Introducing the all new AMD 785G motherboard chipset

Aah, chipset dominance (!) AMD has been hammering down that yellow brick motherboard chipset road real hard lately. It's a good market to be in, and well... is surely something that AMD can use, more market share and pairing chipsets with your processors equals more revenue.

Hello everyone and welcome to another AMD chipset review. AMD today releases the new AMD 785G chipset. A chipset that positions itself in the mainstream segment as you can run all the latest Socket AM3 Phenom II processors on them, yet comes with a smaller price tag than the very popular AMD 790G chipset.

In the somewhat higher ranked segment of AMD chipsets we now have the AMD 780, 790 and this new 785 chipset. It's getting a little crowded, but remember... this chipset was introduced so that you can purchase a motherboard for like 80 to 90 USD, yet have a plethora of features and maximum performance. The only thing where it lacks a tiny little bit is enthusiast overclocking. And since massive 'hardcore' overclocking does not apply for like 98% of you... this might be a very interesting platform from a price-performance strategy point of view.

So today we'll look in-depth at that new AMD 785 chipset, and see if it indeed performs as well as the AMD 790 chipset. To do so we'll slap a Phenom II X4 955BE processor on to the motherboard and check it all out.

Now we are bringing you this review in co-operation with ECS, as they were the first to ship in their mATX based A785GM-M motherboard, and this piece of machinery is stuffed and loaded with features yet will remain very affordable. Let's have a peek at the chipset, and then obviously the ECS motherboard, followed by an in-depth performance review to see if the chipset can keep up with that sexy AMD 790 series.

Say hi to this AMD 785 chipset based motherboard, and then head on over to the next page please:

AMD 785G chipset overview

Final Words & Conclusion

Well then, from the 780 or 790 chipset point of view, really not a lot has changed with the AMD 7858G chipset... unless you are into building yourself a nice HTPC or work PC with high-definition content playback in mind.

Despite that, personally I'm quite excited by this release. I myself am a huge HTPC buff and the integrated R4200 graphics chipset offers full UVD 2.0 compatibility. As such you gain a lot of cool new features that make building an HTPC very simple and cheap. I mean, you do not need to purchase a graphics card whatsoever as the embedded GPU not only accelerates, but now also allows you to post process the media file and thus enhance image quality at a much better scale. I love that. I do hope that AMD will launch its next chipset with a couple or more shader processors though. For post processing in software like Media Player Classic HT at 1080P this embedded GPU is borderline capable if you flick on some shaders like image sharpening.

From a gamers PC value point of view, there's nothing wrong or 'changed' with this motherboard series though. Performance is roughly equal to the 780 and 790 chipset, but the product itself is a little cheaper and that's where the value is to be found. I mean this motherboard series costs you roughly 80 to 90 USD. And that's a bargain for what you are receiving as when you pop in say Phenom II X3 720BE and a Radeon HD 4870/4890... you'll have the exact same performance as any high-end Phenom II based system.

When we look at the ECS board we have to say we really like it, it is very feature rich and really .. everything is in the right place. But there are three small quirks I want to mention:

The Black Series motherboard PCB color for whatever reason moved from Black to Brown ... it's really an unsightly color isn't it? I have no idea as to why ECS is doing that lately as face it, nobody really likes a brown PCB.

The integration of a diagnostic POST LED is truly lovely. But the manual does not have the codes for them. E.g. you have no idea what the codes really mean. ECS however promised to include a paper note with codes with upcoming batches.

My last remark is eJiffy - it wasn't mentioned in this review as it perturbed me. eJiffy is a small software Linux suite kind of like a lot of motherboard manufacturers have these days. After the BIOS post it will allow you to manage low-level functions like internet in a proper GUI. These things are handy when you cannot boot from your C drive for whatever reason, as you still can browse to the manufacturers' website and download a new firmware to solve your problem. Software like eJiffy needs to be loaded from a little flash memory on your motherboard, so whenever you have a problem you can always load up that little software suite. Here's the thing, to cut costs eJiffy now needs to be installed on your C drive. There's no flash memory whatsoever on the motherboard. And that's just not okay. My advice to ECS is do it right... or just don't do it at all.

With these minor negatives out of the way (and really these are minor in the big overall picture) this really is a value rich motherboard. We have very decent baseline performance straight out of the box, we can overclock pretty easily depending on the processor of course and we do get a very nice feature set. We love the three display connectors, analog and digital TOSLINK output for audio, Gigabit Ethernet, lots of SATA connectors and of course the passive cooling design versus the 80 to 90 USD pricetag. What was good to see from ECS are the BIOS improvements, as of lately they have been working on them quite hard and it shows.

Also notable is the easy install feature from the ECS driver CD. You just pop in the driver CD, hit install and from there on in every device is installed automatically, we didn't have a single hiccup, we absolutely like to see that.

Feature rich is what this mainboard series is and we enormously like what it has to offer, it's just really fun for the money.

All in all AMD's 785 is a much welcomed chipset in this arena, but admittedly it's getting crowded in the 700 series of AMD's chipsets. We feel the integration of the Radeon HD 4200 is a good choice. As such the motherboard comes very much recommended for HTPC owners, casual PC overclockers and gamers (buy a proper graphics card though) and of course it is a fine platform for generic desktop/business usage.

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Bottom line: You really honestly can't go wrong here, paired with a proper processor it's just an awesome good deal for the money.