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Review: AMD 785G chipset. ASUS M4A785TD-V motherboard under the spotlight

by Tarinder Sandhu on 4 August 2009, 05:00 3.5

Tags: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO (785G), ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qatdq

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System setup and notes

Motherboard ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H  Intel DG45ID
Price £71.30
£113
£80
Chipset AMD 785G + SB710 AMD 790GX + SB750 Intel G45 + ICH10
CPU AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE (3.1GHz, 1MB L2, 6MB L3, dual-core) Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz, 3MB L2 cache, dual-core)
BIOS revision 0201 (08/07/2009)
F4 (04/07/2009) IDG4510H.86A.0107.2009.0624.1357
Mainboard software Standard Vista drivers + AHCI 3.1.1540.127 Intel Inf 9.0.0.1008 + IMSM 8.7.0.1007
Memory 4GB (2 x 2GB) Crucial DDR3-1,333 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair PC8500 DOMINATOR DDR2-1,066
Memory timings and speed 9-9-9-24 1T @ DDR3 1,333.4 5-5-5-15 2T @ DDR2-1,070.8 5-5-5-15 2T @ DDR2-800
Integrated graphics ATI Radeon HD 4200 @ 500MHz/1,333MHz ATI Radeon HD 3300 @ 700MHz/1,333MHz Intel GMA X4500 HD @ 533MHz/800MHz
Integrated Graphics driver 785G press driver (8.634-090717a-085165E-ATI)  15.13.4.64.1829_PV (7.15.10.1829)
Discrete graphics None. IGP-based.
Disk drive(s) Seagate 500GB SATAII (ST3500320AS)
Operating system Windows Vista Business x64 SP1

Tests

Benchmarks

SiSoft SANDRA SP1b v15.72 memory bandwidth
ScienceMark 2.0 memory latency
HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places
HEXUS DivX 6.8.3 encode + enhanced multithreading
CINEBENCH R10, 64-bit
POV-Ray v3.7.0 beta 25a, 64-bit

HDTach - SATA average read speed
HDTach - SATA burst speed
HDTach - USB average read speed
HDTach - FireWire average read speed

Company of Heroes: OF v2.400, DX9 - 1,024x768 low-detail
Company of Heroes: OF v2.400, DX10 - 1,024x768 low-detail
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5 - 1,024x768 low-detail
Call of Duty 4 v1.7.568, DX9 - 1,024x768 low-detail

Power-consumption tests
Overclocking tests

 

Testing notes

The faster AMD 790GX is represented by a well-specified Gigabyte board that's rather expensive at £113. It should win the IGP benchmarks by dint of its faster core that operates at 700MHz. Both the £70 785G and 790GX support SidePort memory.

Intel's very own DG45ID is currently priced at £80 and provides a good example of the chipset. We've tried to be even-handed with the CPUs and used dual-core models that etail for around £80 each - the kind that would probably be specified with motherboards such as these.

The ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO is the only board to interface with DDR3 memory, operating at 1,333MHz, and the current price premium over 4GBs of high-quality DDR2 is not much more than £10 or so.

2D benchmark performance will be determined largely by the ability of the processor, storage performance will fall on the southbridge, and gaming is the domain of the IGP, unless bottlenecked by other system components.

Issues

The GPU NOS feature looks promising but wouldn't work on the sample board; the frequencies remained the same, irrespective of whether the board was put under 3D load. We had to manually increase the frequencies for the overclocking tests.