AMD's 785G Chipset - Revolutionary or Evolutionary?
by Gary Key on August 4, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup -
Our primary board for testing today is the Gigabyte GA-MA785GPMT-UD2H that features DDR3 memory support along with 128MB of SidePort memory. We selected the Gigabyte HD 4770 video card for our discrete graphics card duties. The WD VelociRaptor 300GB is our hard drive of choice for secondary storage purposes, while Kingston’s 80GB (Intel X25-M) SSD is our primary drive choice. Pioneers’s BDR-203BKS Blu-ray playback capable drives fills in for optical duties. We purchased OCZ’s impressive DDR3-1600 C7 AMD 4GB kit for DDR3 memory duties along with GSkill’s Trident DDR2-1066 C5 4GB kit. We chose the retail coolers for our standard results.
Our power supply choice is the excellent Corsair 520HX, and considering our standard test bed is limited to a single video card this power supply works perfectly. Our case choice is the Lian-Li PC-V351B. We utilized the ASUS VH242H 23.6" 1920x1080 LCD monitor for display duties. Finally, we have dropped Vista 64-bit for good and moved to the Windows 7 64-bit Retail release for our testing today - it just works better.
There are several 785G motherboards available for sale as of today with additional models arriving at various resellers over the next two weeks. We just received several boards from MSI, ASRock, ECS, ASUS, Gigabyte, Biostar, and Foxconn that will be part of an 785G roundup next week. In the meantime, for the more performance oriented crowd we highly suggest you take a look at our primary board from Gigabyte today or the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO and MSI 785GM-E65. Prices for the 785G products should range from $75 up to $100 depending on the model and features.
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MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
I was really curious about that section so I'm glad that I can actually view it. Thanks!fic2 - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
I find the choice of a 10k RPM VelociRaptor odd for either HTPC or integrated graphic system. I have my doubts that it would be the HD choice of either user profile.b15h09 - Friday, August 7, 2009 - link
VelociRaptor because it eliminates a potential bottleneck. This isn't a real world system test.Taft12 - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Yes, I would expect a WD Greenpower drive or one of those new slow-spinning Seagates.Fox5 - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
I remember roadmaps putting the 880G launching this month, but we're just getting the 785G. The 880G seems to be the chipset worth waiting for. Virtualized 3d hardware? Yes please.fzkl - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
A lot of us know that when it comes to an HTPC, Intel is the worst option of the lot. To make things fair, why isn't this a 3-way roundup with the Nvidia GeForce 9300?rtallmansu - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Even more odd to me is why you would compare an Intel G41 with a ICH7 and not a G45 chipset with the newer ICH10. G41 buyers are not interested in any of these performance metrics, were as someone might want to know how the G45 compares for HTPC duties in HD playback.Shaffan - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Such a pity you did not test the RAID performances : RAID5 in particular. I heard the integrated RAID5 of Intel chipset is much better than the one of AMD, but I can't find a decent comparative test about this !flipmode - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
SB710 = no RAID 5mybook4 - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - link
Gary, you put in a lot of effort into this article, thank you! However, I found one part misleading.Most of the application benchmarks are dependent on only cpu, not gpu. It confused me that these benchmarks were in an article that compared 780G vs G41. I understand if you were trying to compare the platforms as a whole, but wouldn't that also constitute a component price match (price an amd 780g system with an equal priced G41 system then compare).
PS. I am a little sick of people saying that anything under 60fps is unplayable. Most people that frequent this site play Crysis at under 40fps.