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.


Gigabyte GA-MA785GPMT-UD2H

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.

Index Blu-ray Playback Performance & Experiences
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  • Hrel - Saturday, August 22, 2009 - link

    You showed Nvidia stats on the first page... I guess you didn't include them cause ATI and Intel can't even compare???

    Next time include the Nvidia results... would've thought that it'd an impulsory action; guess not.
  • crochat - Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - link

    Gary,

    You mentioned a motherboard roundup in your conclusion. I thought it would come sooner.

    Regards
  • AlB80 - Sunday, August 16, 2009 - link

    1. The A-Link Express II is a proprietary interface developed by AMD basing on the PCI Express Gen2 version 2.0 technology, with additional Northbridge-Southbridge messaging functionalities.
    2. High data transfer bandwidth (up to 2.5 Gb/s / Lane)
  • Concillian - Saturday, August 15, 2009 - link

    "Remember when ATI made crappy chipsets that no one bought, and all AMD systems were built with NVIDIA or even VIA chipsets? "

    Yeah, I remember that, thats when they were really AMD chipsets and not ATi chipsets with an AMD label on them. ATi started making good Crossfire chipsets shortly before AMD bought them.

    I like AMD as much as the next guy, but let's not be patting them on the back too hard. They tried, failed, then did what any good American businessman would do... bought a struggling competitor to use their IP.
  • IntelUser2000 - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link

    Gary, you got the clock speed of the G41 IGP wrong:

    http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=543&...">http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=543&...

    G41 and G43 uses a 667MHz core while G45 uses 800MHz.

    Notice the differences here: http://global.hkepc.com/1525/page/3#view">http://global.hkepc.com/1525/page/3#view
  • ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link

    The 785G is just a 780G which has recieved a fine tuning. Which is OK. There are slight improvements in performance over the 780G but nothing to be excited about. 785G Seems to work well with DDR3 memory and Athlon II processors.

    I have an ASUS M3A78EM 780G Mobo with an AMD BE2400 X2 CPU I use as a secondary computer I keep off-line for private matters. It's a fairly powerful rig for the media applications I run.

    The HD 3200 GPU is just as powerful as a Geforce 4200 graphics card. I can play DX8 and DX9 games from the 2002-2004 period (Max Payne, Aquanox, Homeworld2) with acceptable framerates at 1280 x 1024 resolution. I run Windows XP Home.

    The 785G is not bad. But if I had a choice between a 785G mobo and a 780G mobo with the 780G costing $5-$10 less, I would buy the 780G mobo. I can still run Windows 7 with the 780G with the HD3200.


  • ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link

    BTW-

    This article was not boring. It honestly compared the performance capabilities of the 785G to other chipsets of its class (780G and G41).

    Most differences between the 785G and 780G were small and within the combined statistical uncertainty of the benchmark measurements measurements +/-10% (i.e. statistically insignificant). Not very surprising. Most of the larger differences observed were between systems with DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333 memory systems.

    I agree the 785G is a better balanced chipset than the 780G and G41 for multimedia.

    I wish Gary would have used an older benchmarking suite so I can compare the performance between current and systems 2-3 years old. I prefer PCMark2005 and 3DMark2005 since these are reliable indicators of performance. This is important to me because I try to make my purchasing decisions on the criteria of having double the performance for the same cost and power consumption.
  • ClagMaster - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link

    BTW-

    This article was not boring. It honestly compared the performance capabilities of the 785G to other chipsets of its class (780G and G41).

    Most differences between the 785G and 780G were small and within the combined statistical uncertainty of the benchmark measurements measurements +/-10% (i.e. statistically insignificant). Not very surprising. Most of the larger differences observed were between systems with DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333 memory systems.

    I agree the 785G is a better balanced chipset than the 780G and G41 for multimedia.

    I wish Gary would have used an older benchmarking suite so I can compare the performance between current and systems 2-3 years old. I prefer PCMark2005 and 3DMark2005 since these are reliable indicators of performance. This is important to me because I try to make my purchasing decisions on the criteria of having double the performance for the same cost and power consumption.
  • 7Enigma - Thursday, August 6, 2009 - link

    Gary,

    Thanks for the article but could you keep in mind for future articles on non-gaming hardware (i.e. IG's, budget GPU's, etc.) to make sure the game description is in line with the actual article? I can tell they were just copied directly from a previous gaming article, so it's a bit silly to see, "We crank up all the details to max", only to see the data chart show 1024X768 with low settings.

    :)
  • AlB80 - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - link

    DMI 10Gb/s each direction, full duplex
    aka
    4 lane PCIe 1.1

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