ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO - 785G Preview
by Gary Key on July 24, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
We recently previewed the 785G chipset and had to stop testing as the early beta drivers were not mature enough to provide a full performance analysis. We have since received two updated sets of drivers and are glad to report that significant progress has been made in enabling a variety of features missing in the first set. However, a full NDA is in effect on the chipset now so that is about as far as we can take it today.
In the meantime, AMD is allowing limited press coverage (pictures with just a few words of text) on the 785G motherboards. We still have boards from MSI, Biostar, ECS, and ASRock coming along with additional models from Gigabyte and ASUS that we hope to provide a quick glimpse at before the NDA lifts next month.
The star of today's show is ASUS' M4A785TD-V EVO that features AMD's 785G/SB710 chipset combination along with 128MB of DDR3 SidePort memory. The AMD 785G features the updated HD 4200 graphics engine that adds DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 features along with multi-channel LPCM audio output to the mix compared to the previous generation HD 3200 on the 780G chipset. This particular board is part of ASUS' new EVO lineup that features improved cooling (StackCool 3), components, software, and specific BIOS options to provide additional performance over their entry level products.
The SB710 Southbridge provides IDE support, five 3Gb/s SATA ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 options, and a 3Gb/s eSATA connection on this board.
This particular board features DDR3 support which means an AM3 based processor is required. The four DIMM slots support up to 16GB of memory.
The CPU area is open and we were able to squeeze a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme in and still utilize the first DIMM slot with low rise memory modules. ASUS implemented a 8+2 phase power design on this board along with upgraded capacitors. The 785G and MOSFET heatsinks work surprisingly well, especially with radial cooling devices.
The slot arrangement offers a variety of options and spacing is decent. We are not sold on the need for three PCI slots, but otherwise this layout works well. There are two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (x16, x4), one PCIe x1 slot, and three PCI slots. ATI Hybrid CrossFireX support is featured on this board.
The I/O panel contains a PS/2 combo mouse port, optical S/PDIF out port, HDMI/DVI-D/D-Sub ports, eSATA port, IEEE 1394a port, Gigabit Ethernet LAN port, six USB 2.0 ports (total of 12 on the board with the headers) , and the audio panel. LAN support is via the Realtek RTL8112L controller, IEEE 1394a support comes by the VIA VT6308P chipset, and audio output is provided by the VIA VT1708S 8-channel HD audio codec.
We will be back in August with a full review of the 785G chipset along with several motherboards based on this new chipset.
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wicko - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
With a board like this, could I have dual monitors, 1 on a pair of 4890's in CF, and 1 off the integrated?SirKronan - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - link
You can connect four monitors to 2 4890s and still reap the benefits of Crossfire on your primary display for gaming. A single 4890 obsolesces any benefit the integrated would add, unless they do the power saving shut off thingy like hybrid SLI.wicko - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - link
Yes but this requires disabling/enabling CF in the control panel every time I want to either game or use dual monitor. And at that point I wouldn't be able to do both at the same time (if CF is anything like SLI).nubie - Monday, July 27, 2009 - link
I don't think Crossfire is like SLi In that regard.It kind of also depends on what you want the other display to be doing while you are running a game.
Now they call it CrossfireX and also nVidia allows for two active displays in Sli as well. Although I think CFX is still ahead of Sli in that regard.
Personally I want to know how many displays can be active on-board, if one Digital and one Analog, that is fine by me, there is tons of stuff that board would be good for, not the least of which is 3D dual projection or display :)
setzer - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - link
Actually if it's anything like the 780G you can have a 4 screens connected, 2 to a discrete graphics card and 2 to the integrated graphics card.Of course you could also grab a PCI-E x1 Graphics Card and add another 2 monitors and another x16 graphics card for another 2 monitors, plus you can fill up those 3 pci cards with more graphics cards for another 6 monitors tops.
So the count is at 14 screens (assuming graphics card with dual ramdacs) :P
wicko - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - link
Okay now you're just talkin crazy :pI just want to have dual monitor with crossfire without having to disable CF in software. I know with SLI I had to do that.
Goty - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
That board is shmexy.MonkeyPaw - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - link
yeah, those heatsinks are pretty cool looking. I hate when they make PC components look so cool that I don't want to hide them in my case and actually use them!DotNetGuru - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
3 PCI slots... WTF?!?1 PCI slot may be 1 too many, but 3 is unbelievable.
Havor - Sunday, July 26, 2009 - link
3x PCI on a board like this is perfect imoI really looking forward for this ore simulair board to replace my A8N5X S939 board in my HTPC
As i have 2 TV cards and one XONAR D1 soundcard in PCI format and one TV card in PCIe format.
So for me and i think for lots of other people this board will do just fine