AMD 785G Motherboard Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

BIOS Settings

Motherboards are not just about their features and performance. The internal tweaks and workings of its BIOS either make it usable or frustrating. Of course, if you're not interested in changing any settings and content with the default, you can skip this section.

Predictably, the big names here, ASUS and Gigabyte provide the better BIOS, with more options and presented in a logical, intuitive manner. With these mainstream chipsets, the options are fewer than if this was geared towards enthusiasts, thus we found fewer voltage adjustments for example.

ECS meanwhile needs more work on its BIOS. We couldn't locate any way to change the CPU multiplier, which made overclocking harder. The overall feel of the BIOS could also be more comprehensive and user friendly.

All three boards at least have the means to overclock the graphics core of the Radeon HD 4200, with some very high and unrealistic frequencies too. The best we managed was on the Gigabyte, which doubled the clock speed to 1000MHz from the default 500MHz. One of our own internal testing found that pushing the GPU clock from 500MHz to 800MHz resulted in a 23% increase in 3DMark06 performance, so one can extrapolate the performance from there. It's nothing to scoff at. Below, we have collated some of the important BIOS settings.

BIOS Settings

O/C Settings	ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO	ECS A785GM-M	Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H
CPU Frequency	200 - 550MHz	190 - 400MHz	200 - 600MHz
CPU Ratio	x8 - x15 (0.5xsteps)	N.A	x5 - x15
PCIe Frequency	100 - 150MHz	N.A	100 - 200MHz
GPU Core Clock	150 - 1500MHz Max OC achieved in HWZ: 700MHz	150 - 2000MHz Max OC achieved in HWZ: 800MHz	200 - 2000MHz Max OC achieved in HWZ: 1000MHz
MemoryRatio/Multiplier	400, 533, 667,800MHz	400, 533, 667,800MHz	x2, x2.66, x3.33,x4, x5.33
Voltage Adjustments	CPU Voltage: 1.025 - 1.700 (0.00625V steps) Memory Voltage: 1.5 - 2.231V (0.015V steps) Chipset Voltage: 1.1 - 1.61V (0.015V steps)	CPU Voltage: +15mV - +165mV (15mV steps) Memory Voltage: +10mV - +150mV (10mV steps) NB Voltage: +5mV - +75mV (5mV steps) SB Voltage: 1.2, 1.25, 1.3, 1.35V	CPU Voltage: -0.600 - +0.600V (0.025V steps) Memory Voltage: +0.100, +0.200, +0.300 NB Voltage: +0.1, +0.2, +0.3 SB Voltage: +0.1, +0.2, +0.3

Test Setup

Our previous AMD 785G graphics performance update had compared the 785G against our older collected results. The discrepancy in driver versions probably made the 785G look better than it should be. Hence, now that we have the time and the motherboards, we have retested everything on an updated platform. This includes a newer AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor (3.0GHz), a faster Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA hard drive and the most important, updated drivers.

Besides the three 785G motherboards (which turned out to be running different memory frequencies due to their memory compatibility support), we have thrown in an AMD 780G board (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) and a GeForce 8300 board (Zotac 8300) as reference. The full configuration details are as follows:

AMD Athlon II X2 250 (3.0GHz)
2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 5-5-5-16 (Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H and Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H and Zotac 8300)
2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @ 1066, 7-7-7-20 (ECS A785GM-M)
2 x 1GB Patriot DDR3-1866 @ 1333, 7-7-7-20 (ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO)
Integrated GPU Memory size set to 256MB
NVIDIA nForce driver 15.26 and ForceWare 190.38 for Zotac 8300
Catalyst 9.8 drivers for AMD 780G reference
AMD SB Driver version 8.631 and Catalyst driver 8.631 for all AMD 785G motherboards
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)
LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter & HD DVD-ROM
CyberLink Power DVD Ultra version 8.0.2021.50



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