MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:50 am
MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard
Recently AMD released the AMD 785 chipset - offering full support for the latest Athlon and Phenom II processors, DDR3 memory and a bucket load of features. Next to that the chipset we have tucked away on the motherboard tested today has an embedded Radeon HD 4200 IGP as it is the 785G chipset. It's actually the latest embedded update offering really good and nice Home Theater PC functionality as it's fully capable of accelerating and post-processing high-definition content.
Here we will test the with MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard, this piece of kit is stuffed and loaded with features, looks nice and remain very affordable. Let's have a peek at the chipset, and then obviously the MSI motherboard, followed by an in-depth performance review to see if the chipset can keep up with that sexy AMD 790 series.
The AMD 785G chipset
So then... what is really new about this AMD 785G chipset you ask? Well, a couple of key features have been changed compared to the older 780 series.
First off, the boards support socket AM3 and thus DDR3 memory allowing the latest Athlon II and Phenom II processors. More importantly, incorporated into the chipset is ATI's Radeon HD 4200 IGP. On the motherboard we received, this embedded GPU is clocked at 500MHz and as a Radeon HD 4000-series product, it brings with it support for DirectX 10.1; this board even comes packed with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs and as such it sounds like an optimal HTPC and office PC chipset. But the biggest change is the integration of that R4200 graphics core.
Integrated Graphics HD 4200
* DirectX 10.1 support
* 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0)
o Full hardware decode acceleration of H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2
o Hardware decode acceleration of a secondary video stream (Picture-in-Picture) (10-20% CPU usage decrease)
* Improved ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
o Enhanced DVD up-conversion to HD
o Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
* Multichannel LPCM over HDMI (no PAP, no HD audio bitstreaming)
So in the 785G chipset the GPU is upgraded from the HD3200/3300 utilized in the 780G/790GX to the HD4200. As stated, the primary difference between the cores is that the HD4200 fully supports DX10.1, Unified Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD), hardware accelerated picture in picture capabilities, dynamic contrast, HQ video scaling, hardware accelerated video transcoding, and comes with full Powerplay support.
As far as games go, compared to the last-gen chipset expect a 10% performance increase in games. But really, if you like to play games... pop in a dedicated graphics card please. Also, being a series 4000 graphics core, it will open up ATI Stream technology, which means you can encode media files over the GPU with 3rd party software like MediaShow Espresso and sure... have your embedded GPU active for things like Folding@home
o for HTPC and media aficionados... the most important thing is that the 4200 has the UVD 2 engine - which means an improved high-definition accelerator/enhancer, you'll love the Blu-ray playback capabilities of the 785G as you can now also post process HD content with features like Dynamic Contrast, noise reduction and color vibrance. We'll chat a little more about UVD 2.0 later on though.
Other than that all the standard features are there like HyperTransport 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, ATI Hybrid graphics support. The 785G board is paired with a SB710 South Bridge - and much to our surprise the chipset offers very decent overclocking potential.
The 785G chipset as such is targeted against Intel's Intel G41, and you'll notice that after reading this review... really a motherboard like this is the way to go, as the G41 has much less features and specs and performance
The MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard
So MSI shipped-in their Micro ATX Series motherboard, MSI 785GM-E65 . An 80 to 90 USD motherboard armed with the AMD 785G and SB710 chipset, the motherboard supports the latest 45nm AMD Phenom II and Athlon II processors and sure, will also support dual channel DDR3 1333MHz memory (even 1600 MHz overclocked). As we just explained, integrated in the 785G series is an ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics core. A good thing to mention is, it's fully Microsoft Windows 7 ready, is DirectX 10.1 compatible and actually leads to three output connectors; D-SUB (VGA), DVI and HDMI connectors can be found on this mATX motherboard.
* Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics
* DirectX 10.1
* Shader Model 4.1
* 55nm process
* 785G Northbridge
* SB710 Southbridge
* HyperTransport 3.0
* 40 Stream Processors
* 8 Texture Address Units
* 4 Texture Filtering Units
* 4 ROPs
* Hybrid Graphics
* AMD OverDrive 3
* 500MHz
* 16GB of DDR3 MEMORY SUPPORT
* HTPC Ready
* Easy OC Switch
* Active Phase Switching
* All Solid Capacitors
* AMD Phenom II AM3 CPUs
* AMD Live Ready
What's fun to know is that the motherboard is cooled completely passively and thus makes no noise whatsoever. Obviously the chipset supports the more high-end Socket AM3 Phenom II processors with a 140W TDP. The rest of its connectivity includes FireWire, eSATA (Raid 0,1 and 10 compatible), optical and analog digital sound outputs and one Gigabit Ethernet interface.
Part Number 785GM-E65
Manufacturer MSI
Chipset 785G
North Bridge RS880
Socket Socket AM3
Memory speed 1333/1066/800MHz
Processor Types AMD Phenom II X3, X4
Number of CPUs 1
HT Speed Up to 5200MT/second
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Channels Double
Maximum Memory 16GB
External Graphics PCI Express x16
IGP Radeon HD 4200
South Bridge SB710
Audio 8-channel
IDE 133/100/66
SCSI None
SATA 3.0 GB/s
RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10
LAN 10/100/1000 4 LAN Ports
Firewire IEEE 1394a
USB USB 2.0
BIOS Licensed Award BIOS
Form Factor mATX
Recently AMD released the AMD 785 chipset - offering full support for the latest Athlon and Phenom II processors, DDR3 memory and a bucket load of features. Next to that the chipset we have tucked away on the motherboard tested today has an embedded Radeon HD 4200 IGP as it is the 785G chipset. It's actually the latest embedded update offering really good and nice Home Theater PC functionality as it's fully capable of accelerating and post-processing high-definition content.
Here we will test the with MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard, this piece of kit is stuffed and loaded with features, looks nice and remain very affordable. Let's have a peek at the chipset, and then obviously the MSI motherboard, followed by an in-depth performance review to see if the chipset can keep up with that sexy AMD 790 series.
The AMD 785G chipset
So then... what is really new about this AMD 785G chipset you ask? Well, a couple of key features have been changed compared to the older 780 series.
First off, the boards support socket AM3 and thus DDR3 memory allowing the latest Athlon II and Phenom II processors. More importantly, incorporated into the chipset is ATI's Radeon HD 4200 IGP. On the motherboard we received, this embedded GPU is clocked at 500MHz and as a Radeon HD 4000-series product, it brings with it support for DirectX 10.1; this board even comes packed with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs and as such it sounds like an optimal HTPC and office PC chipset. But the biggest change is the integration of that R4200 graphics core.
Integrated Graphics HD 4200
* DirectX 10.1 support
* 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0)
o Full hardware decode acceleration of H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2
o Hardware decode acceleration of a secondary video stream (Picture-in-Picture) (10-20% CPU usage decrease)
* Improved ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
o Enhanced DVD up-conversion to HD
o Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
* Multichannel LPCM over HDMI (no PAP, no HD audio bitstreaming)
So in the 785G chipset the GPU is upgraded from the HD3200/3300 utilized in the 780G/790GX to the HD4200. As stated, the primary difference between the cores is that the HD4200 fully supports DX10.1, Unified Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD), hardware accelerated picture in picture capabilities, dynamic contrast, HQ video scaling, hardware accelerated video transcoding, and comes with full Powerplay support.
As far as games go, compared to the last-gen chipset expect a 10% performance increase in games. But really, if you like to play games... pop in a dedicated graphics card please. Also, being a series 4000 graphics core, it will open up ATI Stream technology, which means you can encode media files over the GPU with 3rd party software like MediaShow Espresso and sure... have your embedded GPU active for things like Folding@home
o for HTPC and media aficionados... the most important thing is that the 4200 has the UVD 2 engine - which means an improved high-definition accelerator/enhancer, you'll love the Blu-ray playback capabilities of the 785G as you can now also post process HD content with features like Dynamic Contrast, noise reduction and color vibrance. We'll chat a little more about UVD 2.0 later on though.
Other than that all the standard features are there like HyperTransport 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, ATI Hybrid graphics support. The 785G board is paired with a SB710 South Bridge - and much to our surprise the chipset offers very decent overclocking potential.
The 785G chipset as such is targeted against Intel's Intel G41, and you'll notice that after reading this review... really a motherboard like this is the way to go, as the G41 has much less features and specs and performance
The MSI 785GM-E65 motherboard
So MSI shipped-in their Micro ATX Series motherboard, MSI 785GM-E65 . An 80 to 90 USD motherboard armed with the AMD 785G and SB710 chipset, the motherboard supports the latest 45nm AMD Phenom II and Athlon II processors and sure, will also support dual channel DDR3 1333MHz memory (even 1600 MHz overclocked). As we just explained, integrated in the 785G series is an ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics core. A good thing to mention is, it's fully Microsoft Windows 7 ready, is DirectX 10.1 compatible and actually leads to three output connectors; D-SUB (VGA), DVI and HDMI connectors can be found on this mATX motherboard.
* Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics
* DirectX 10.1
* Shader Model 4.1
* 55nm process
* 785G Northbridge
* SB710 Southbridge
* HyperTransport 3.0
* 40 Stream Processors
* 8 Texture Address Units
* 4 Texture Filtering Units
* 4 ROPs
* Hybrid Graphics
* AMD OverDrive 3
* 500MHz
* 16GB of DDR3 MEMORY SUPPORT
* HTPC Ready
* Easy OC Switch
* Active Phase Switching
* All Solid Capacitors
* AMD Phenom II AM3 CPUs
* AMD Live Ready
What's fun to know is that the motherboard is cooled completely passively and thus makes no noise whatsoever. Obviously the chipset supports the more high-end Socket AM3 Phenom II processors with a 140W TDP. The rest of its connectivity includes FireWire, eSATA (Raid 0,1 and 10 compatible), optical and analog digital sound outputs and one Gigabit Ethernet interface.
Part Number 785GM-E65
Manufacturer MSI
Chipset 785G
North Bridge RS880
Socket Socket AM3
Memory speed 1333/1066/800MHz
Processor Types AMD Phenom II X3, X4
Number of CPUs 1
HT Speed Up to 5200MT/second
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Channels Double
Maximum Memory 16GB
External Graphics PCI Express x16
IGP Radeon HD 4200
South Bridge SB710
Audio 8-channel
IDE 133/100/66
SCSI None
SATA 3.0 GB/s
RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10
LAN 10/100/1000 4 LAN Ports
Firewire IEEE 1394a
USB USB 2.0
BIOS Licensed Award BIOS
Form Factor mATX