ASRock Announces Two 785G Products
by Gary Key on July 31, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
The AMD 785G has been available for sale off and on over the past few weeks along with product previews at various sites. Our preview was short as driver and BIOS problems kept us from providing additional detail on the chipset capabilities. We originally expected the launch date to be in late August but it is "officially" launching in a few days. As such, we have been busy testing this small wonder of silicon with a variety of driver sets since our first boards arrived earlier in the month.
Unfortunately, right up until the last driver release on Wednesday, testing has not been as smooth as we expected for a chipset that is more evolutionary than revolutionary. However, the final pieces of the puzzle are coming together now as we work on the initial chipset review and then an extensive motherboard roundup featuring several boards expected to be available on launch day or shortly thereafter.
BIOS releases are also coming at a fast and furious pace as final tuning adjustments are completed with C1E/CnQ and core unlocking capabilities at the top of the refinement list. Gigabyte and ASUS provided their first samples earlier this month and then we started to wonder if other products would be available on the new launch date. Fortunately, products from a variety of suppliers started arriving late this week with more to come early next week. Exactly what products will be available at launch is something we will discuss in the 785G article.
In the meantime, ASRock is introducing two 785G motherboards today. The M3A785GXH/128M features an ATX design equipped with the SB710 Southbridge, 16GB of DDR3 support, 128MB of DDR3 SidePort memory, three PCIe x16 slots (x16/x4 or x8,x8,x4), single PCIe x1 slot, and two PCI slots. The usual assortment of Gigabit LAN, 8-channel HD audio, AOD/ACC functions, HDMI/DVI/VGA output, and six SATA 3Gb/s ports are included.
The M3A785GMH/128M features a uATX design that is equipped with similar specifications to its ATX sibling. The primary difference being the layout with a single x16 PCIe 2.0 slot, single PCIe x1 slot, and two PCI slots. Both boards fully support ASRock’s Instant Boot, EZ OC, and IES technologies. They are also EuP (Energy using Product) and Windows 7 hardware ready. We will have a full review of both boards in early August.
ASRock M3A785GMH/128M 785G uATX based motherboard.
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Visual - Friday, July 31, 2009 - link
weird that they use a switch card, i guess for crossfire. i thought their days are way in our past, now they should be able to make switching with just a bios setting or even automatically based on the plugged cards.i also wonder, what is it switching exactly? some sort of 16x+4x vs 8x+8x configurations? is the chipset not able to have real 16x+16x pci express?
deimos3428 - Friday, July 31, 2009 - link
The switch card is typical for Asrock boards, as is the socketed BIOS chip. It's not a big deal if you don't change your rig around daily. Most people are either using Crossfire or they're not.You're not going to see 16x/16x without a 790FX.
AlB80 - Saturday, August 1, 2009 - link
1. Asrock are cheaters. Only 790GX can have 8x+8x CF.2. M3A780GXH/128M and sibling M3A785GXH/128M looks like as M3A790GXH/128M, but 790GX+750 was changed by 78xG+710.