AMD 785G Motherboard Roundup Review - PAGE 16

Overclocking

Both Gigabyte motherboards performed the same when it came to overclocking, and in fact they did as well as the MA790FXT-UD5P. They all maxed the processor at 3914MHz, with the only difference being the voltage needed. For the MA785GMT-UD2H, I had to set the voltage to 1.50V. For the others, I set it to 1.475V in the BIOS, and then used AMD Overdrive to increase it another 0.0125V since Gigabyte BIOSes only have 0.025V increments. The UD2H has only a 4+1 phase power design so that might be why it required the extra voltage.

• Baseclock of 206MHz
• CPU core voltage of 1.4875V / 1.50V
• CPU multiplier of x19, for a clock of 3914MHz
• CPU-NB voltage increase of +0.1V
• CPU-NB multiplier of x12, for a clock of 2472MHz
• HT multiplier of x12, for a clock of 2472MHz

Next was the MSI 785GM-E65. Sincerely, I did not know what to expect from this board also equipped of a 4+1 phase power design. I would qualify its overclock as being medium to good. It was quite a few MHz short of the Gigabyte and ASUS boards, but still it achieved a very reasonable frequency. I did not really like though the unpreciseness of the reference clock. It was pretty much always half a MHz higher than what is set in the BIOS. However, it achieved a good integrated memory controller frequency.

• Baseclock of 203MHz, resulting in 203.5MHz
• CPU core voltage of 1.49V set in BIOS
• CPU multiplier of x19, for a clock of 3867MHz
• CPU-NB voltage increase of +0.2V
• CPU-NB multiplier of x13, for a clock of 2646MHz
• HT multiplier of x12, for a clock of 2442MHz

With the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO, I reached the highest stable frequency I ever did on the Phenom II X4 965. If we recall the article about it, I was able to go up to 3914MHz on the core. Anything higher than that would cause a blue screen during the OCCT stress testing test. Well, on the ASUS board, I was able to go 5.5MHz higher, for a final speed of 3919.5MHz. However, when I overclocked and overvolted the integrated memory controller afterwards, the processor run hotter. You probably know that Phenom IIs are affected very much by temperatures. Thus, its cores were not stable anymore. For this reason, I limited my IMC overclock so that I could keep my extra 5.5MHz. I must however share something else with you. At first, when I overclocked the CPU-NB, there seemed to be no change applied. So I let ASUS be aware of my issue, and very quickly, I was provided with an updated BIOS that fixed my issue. A few days later, that version 0405 made its way on ASUS' website, so anyone having this issue can fix it, although I was the first to report it. Moreover, by the time Neoseeker published this article, I see another version, the 0410, has been published and is supposed to increase performance when overclocking. That means one could possibly reach even better frequencies than I did.

Here is a summary of the settings changed:

• Baseclock of 201MHz
• Loadline Calibration set at 0%
• CPU core voltage of 1.4825V set in BIOS
• CPU multiplier of x19.5, for a clock of 3919.5MHz
• CPU-NB voltage increase of +0.0375V
• CPU-NB multiplier of x12, for a clock of 2412MHz
• HT multiplier of x12, for a clock of 2412MHz

Furthermore, ASUS provides a utility called GPU NOS which allows altering the frequency and voltage of the IGP, for a substancial performance boost. If we recall the article on the 785G IGP video performance, the M4A785TD-V EVO reached a whole 1Ghz easily.

Lastly, for the ECS A785GM-M, I had a few issues. First of all, at the beginning, I could not even get the RAM to run at 1600MHz. When that frequency was set, the board would just post and boot into Windows, running it at a lowly 800MHz. I was then provided a new BIOS which fixed this issue, so I would be able to run the benchmarks at stock, since 1600MHz DDR3 is part of our testing platform. The main overclocking issue was not resolved though. As soon as I would enable manual control over the frequencies, the board would not post, no matter the settings I put. The numerical LED display on the board would just hang on error code "d0". I was not provided with a solution yet, except overclocking via AMD Overdrive, which anyway would not even let me increase the HT reference clock, voltages and memory controller multiplier. That is why there are no overclocked scores of the A785GM-M, but as soon as I am provided with a solution, I will update this article.

Update 2009/10/04: As requested by a reader, I tested which board would be better for pure HT link reference clock overclocking. Whereas the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO could not go over 240MHz, the Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H easily hit 260MHz. Therefore, if one plans on overclocking a low-end Athlon II, I would suggest a Gigabyte board. There are some models on the market with a sideport memory, which the ones tested here did not have. They will provide similar IGP performance to the ASUS or MSI boards.

Update 2010/02/02: The BIOS posted on ECS' website one week ago resolved the overclocking issue mentioned in this article. AMD processors can now be overclocked without any limitation.

Power Consumption

The lowest power usage at idle was won by the MSI board, although it did in the average at load. It's the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO which was the best at load, and by far. Oddly enough it was also the loser at idle. The MA785GMT-UD2H I think has a good equilibrium, but it really depends what one intends to do with it. For example, in a folding rig, I would wholeheartedly go with the ASUS one since the computer would be loaded practically 100% of the time. Moreover, it has two PCI-E x16 slots so it can run the GPU clients on two graphics cards, and a maximum of five GPUs, considering the IGP.

Conclusion

All of the tested motherboards have their pros and cons. First of all, if one plans to run on the integrated graphics processor, I highly suggest the MSI 785GM-E65 or the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO since they have a 128MB sideport memory which substantially boosts their performance. The ASUS is ATX-sized, whereas the MSI, which did provide the best IGP performance, will fit in small mATX cases used for HTPC builds.

Next, if one is upgrading his already existing computer, the Gigabyte MA785G-UD3H might be the right choice. Since it has DDR2 slots, it will allow the user to keep his DDR2 memory sticks, while having the latest IGP on the market, and using either the new Phenom IIs/Athlon IIs or the older ones. The other motherboards all require DDR3 memory sticks and the latest processors from AMD. However there are many other 785G boards on the market using DDR2 so it really comes down to what features and price one is searching for.

However this DDR2 also has its cons. As seen in the benchmarks, the MA785G-UD3H had a hard time beating the other motherboards. In fact, it did not win any benchmark. The top dogs were the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO and the Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H, followed not far behind by the MSI 785GM-E65.

The ECS A785GM-M is great for having an extra SATA controller. The JMicron chip allows it to have two eSATA connectors at the back while still having six internal SATA ports. This can be useful if one needs many SATA ports as well as eSATAs, for example in a home server. The SB710 supports RAID 0, 1 and 10. And who knows, maybe it will be able to overclock higher than the M4A785TD-V EVO once I am provided with a solution to the issue I have!

Overall, it is great to see all the different flavors available on the market built around the 785G chipset. It really comes down to what the user wants. Is power consumption important for you? What about performance? Size? Cost? Everyone can find what he needs. There are many great boards in the bunch, but in the ones I have tested here, the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO is my very favorite. There is also its mATX counterpart available for those in need of a smaller board.

Update 2010/02/02: The BIOS posted on ECS' website one week ago resolved the overclocking issue mentioned in this article. AMD processors can now be overclocked without any limitation.