AMD 785G Motherboard Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

The ECS A785GM-M

ECS' Black series gets another addition with the A785GM-M, which is the other AM3 board in our roundup. As proudly embossed on the large heatsink covering the CPU power components, ECS is raising its game to make the A785GM-M the choice for mainstream users.

ECS has an interesting 785G board here that could prove to be the dark horse in our comparison.

Another vendor that has removed the PS/2 ports, ECS has an almost identical configuration of ports and connectors as the ASUS.

First however, they have removed almost all traces of legacy technology on this board. Gone is the floppy drive support. There are no serial or parallel headers lying hidden on this mATX board. ECS has even gone for two PCIe x1 slots, reducing the older PCI slot to just one. We personally would have preferred more PCI slots but with so many features integrated on motherboards nowadays, these expansion slots are just 'gravy' to the typical user.

As you can see from the rear I/O panel, there are no PS/2 ports, though with six USB 2.0 ports instead, one gets the feeling those may not be sufficient for some users. What's very welcome are the extra two eSATA ports at the rear that are supported by the onboard JMicron JMB362 controller.

Unlike the ASUS and Gigabyte boards, ECS has gone with larger heatsinks, though we don't see them getting in the way of the CPU cooler.

We aren't sure if there really is a need for the large heatsink above but surely it won't hurt. Also, ECS has at least managed to shape its Northbridge heatsink that it has no chance of interfering with the PCIe x1 slot beside it. In fact, we were quite pleased with the layout on this board, as we didn't find any flaws to even nitpick. We also noticed that ECS has gone for solid capacitors completely on this board, which reflects the current trend.

The heatsink is designed such that the PCIe x1 slot just about clears it. Besides the two x1 slots, there's the standard PCIe graphics slot and the older PCI.

Everything looks entirely normal here, with four DDR3 DIMM slots above the power and IDE connectors.

Six SATA ports, not to mention the two eSATA at the rear, makes this board the best choice if storage option is the sole criterion. Plus the ports are aligned outwards just like we like them.

ECS gets the alignment of its SATA ports right. Add to that the two rear eSATA ports and this board has the most number of SATA connectors among the three. Other features that bring it on par with its competitors are FireWire support, HD audio CODEC (Realtek ALC888S) and one of ECS' newer features, eJIFFY, a Linux based, quick booting user interface that's akin to ASUS' Express Gate in concept. However unlike its expensive competitor that has this interface stored in a flash chip onboard, one has to install eJIFFY onto a hard drive partition first before it works and it provides basic browsing (using a variant of Mozilla Firefox), an IM client and a photo gallery utility.

What the A785GM-M lacks solely however compared to its rivals is SidePort memory. While it's just 128MB of extra DDR3 memory, it gives competitors the edge when it comes to graphics performance. We were quite surprised that ECS has omitted this feature when it has attempted to bridge the gap between its products and those from top tier vendors.

Next, while ECS has stated support for DDR3-1333, we could only get our Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 module to run only at 1066MHz. The same happened with the other DDR3 module we tried from Patriot. Since our memory modules are not in ECS' qualified vendor list, we highly recommend that you check this online before deciding which memory module to use.

Onboard buttons to power up and reset the system and even one to clear the CMOS, make this board very user friendly for enthusiasts. The status LED indicator could certainly help a technician during troubleshooting but with no information in the manual, we have no clue what the numbers mean.

Finally, another sign that ECS wants to be in the big league are the inclusion of these onboard control buttons. Although these basic buttons may not be as fancy as those found on some other boards, they are not present in the other AMD 785G boards today. There's even a LED status indicator, but with no guide to what the numbers represent, it's probably useful only to ECS technical helpdesk.



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