Gigabyte's GA-MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard is a great way to
get a wide range of features in a very small, affordable package, as well as a
being an excellent debut for the AMD 785G chipset and fantastic IGP-driven High
Definition content decoding.
The biggest
addition to the AMD 785G chipset is the Radeon HD 4200 IGP. This
graphics processor is DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 compatible, and supports
all the cool new graphics features in Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. It
improves hardware acceleration of certain desktop applications through ATI
Stream, decreases CPU load when playing back HD content and offers better
compatibility for Unified Video Decoder 2.0.
The real strength of the Radeon HD 4200 comes from
better support for hardware-accelerated video decoding and improvements to ATI
Stream, which lets the IGP do desktop processing for certain graphically
intensive applications, like Adobe Acrobat reader. ATI Stream's advantages are
quite compelling, but it's a shame that support is limited to only a handful of
programs at this time.
PCSTATS found that the 3D gaming performance of the
Radeon HD 4200 IGP hasn't improved noticeably compared to that of the Radeon HD
3200 IGP. Playing today's games simply isn't possible on an IGP, DirectX 8 games
from a few years back... possibly. Under testing we found that the Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H's lack of Sideport memory
hurt it in the gaming benchmarks a little, keeping it a few ticks behind other
AMD 785G chipset motherboards from MSI and Asus. In all cases though, if you are
interested in 3D gaming, pick up a mainstream PCI Express x16 videocard for
around $100.
Where the IGP does succeed is when the PC is used
primarily for office applications and standard 2D desktop programs. The AMD 785G
does the job without any problems in this respect, and has the added benefit of
offering superb HD content decoding to offload those processes from the CPU -
thus lowering CPU load during 1080 HD playback to nearly single digits.
As a feature
filled motherboard, Gigabyte's GA-MA785GMT-UD2H offers up everything any home or
small office user is likely to require. It support for AMD's latest socket AM3
processors, it can handle up to 16GB of DDR3 memory
at speeds of DDR3 800/1066/1333 and has five SATA 3Gb/s connections. Data
redundancy is assured with RAID 1, or system speeds can be improved by
configuring RAID 0 - the GA-MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard supports the full range of
RAID options from 0/1/0+1 to JBOD modes.
Gigabyte's GA-MA785GMT-UD2H offers up the all critical
HDMI video port, and DVI and VGA for standard PC monitors. Those options mean
you can plug this motherboard directly to an HDTV, CRT or LCD monitor without
much trouble. The GA-MA785GMT-UD2H also has S/PDIF output and 8-channel stereo
output if you're looking for additional audio outputs.
The bottom line is this; Gigabyte's GA-MA785GMT-UD2H is
an effective mainboard for anyone looking to build a low cost, energy efficient
home theatre PC. At $80 CDN, ($75 USD, 45 GBP), it's a little slower than
the similar MSI 785GM-E65, but it's also less expensive. More importantly, the
GA-MA785GMT-UD2H has an HDMI output with HDCP, the AMD 785G offers up great
hardware HD decoding, the platform is small,
affordable, and friendly to a wonderful assortment of similarly placed AMD
processors.
UPDATE - Catch a PCSTATS DIY Home Theatre PC build guide with this very motherboard
in the near future!
Find out about this and many other reviews by joining
the Weekly PCstats.com Newsletter today! Catch all of PCSTATS
latest reviews right here.
Related Articles
Here are a few other articles that you might enjoy as
well...
- ASUS M4A78T-E AMD 790GX Socket AM3 Motherboard Review
- ASUS Striker II NSE nVidia nForce 790i SLI Motherboard
Review
- ASUS M3A78-T AMD 790GX Socket AM2+ Motherboard
Review
- ASUS P5E3 Premium/Wifi-AP.N Intel X48 Express Motherboard
Review
- Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 Intel X48 Express Motherboard
Review
- Asus P5Q-EM Intel G45 Express Motherboard Review
RSS Newsletter
