Hello! Just got an email from Biostar stating new BIOS release for their AM2+ motherboards :P
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=356203

Is hybrid crossfire still Vista only?

It would be nice if that feature supported at least mid range graphics cards. The power saving feature alone would be nice and mild bump in framerates nicer. Perhaps the onboard could be used for physics.

Nice review, generally nice chipset. AHCI issues suck and IMO are much more important than adding RAID 5. Everyone will benefit from AHCI but it must be an infinitesimally small number of folks running RAID 5 in machines based on these boards. It'd be nice to see AMD get a solid gig-e implemented in the chipset too.

I'm a big supporter of IGP even on high end boards. Eventually, a brand new high end board becomes and old and dusty spare, good for a hand me down to auntie or good for file serving from the closet. That's when the IGP really pays dividends.

In then end, AMD can come up with winning chipsets and winning GPUs but it desperately needs a more compelling CPU. There has been a rumor or two that Deneb might actually come withing swinging distance of the Core 2 quads and I just hope those rumors are true. If I knew that was the case then I'd not hesitate to grab an AMD 7xx based mobo, but since that's not known, I'm sitting tight till Deneb launches. My future may yet be blue.

This chipset would be awesome in a Mini-ITX platform. (Socket AM2+, PCI-Express x16, 2 RAM slots, etc.)

Any chance of a before and after ACC for a stable undervolt at stock frequency?

#22 Thanks for that bit of detail, Geoff.

Thanks for the response Geoff. I love the personalization of this site. Sorry to take up so much of ya'lls time.
I have an idea that you're welcome to ignore. Instead of having to retest each of the boards, you could just run the benchmarks in the current head-to-head scheme but then have a chart similar to the one on the first page where you include other boards outside of the tested one's showing the differences in features. I think that that would be very helpful.

EDIT: meant to be a reply to #44

I don't understand why you didn't compare this board to the 780g. What the hell is going on over there in your brain?

Is there a way to disable hotplugging for specific drives in XP? I hate having to check that I'm not about to safely remove harddisks when I want to remove a USB drive.

Well, to me the only news here is really ACC, and it is a good thing since they really need to close in the gap against Core 2 processors as much as possible. Shame they didn't fix the AHCI problem and USB performance, it's taking them longer than what I think is reasonable. If it were me, I would not prioritize RAID over that.

I'm not sure that the IGP really adds much value to this. If you are really after that IGP for its strengths, you get basically the same stuff from the much cheaper 780G. It's still a very wimpy HD3450 core that's super strapped for bandwidth. It's a HD HTPC dream GPU and you realize this is all it really is once you've personally discovered how nearly useless its 3D capabilities are outside of Aero and games from 2002 or so.

Thanks for finally benchmarking the integrated graphics on the 750a (along with this 790GX). Please consider going back and updating the 750a article with these results.

Given that one of the things setting the 790GX apart from the 780G is the availability of (discrete) CrossFire, it'd have been nice to see a comparison of its CrossFire abilities with the 790FX. I know you think they'll be very similar, but seeing actual benchmarks would've been nice, especially since motherboards based around the 790GX are expected to be significantly cheaper than 790FX motherboards.

Is it just me or is this review interspersed with the Eee PC atom review??

WRONG ARTICLE (EeeB202) ATTACHED TO 790GX ARTICLE HEADER... PLEASE FIX.....

Your conclusion states:

"The 790GX may have the best integrated graphics component on the market, but it's also only available on $150 motherboards"

AND

"$150 is going to be too expensive for most folks"

BUT

I just checked Newegg and I see boards ranging from $100 to $150.

The whole tone of the conclusion seems like it can be easily changed with this info.

Thanks for the review, Geoff.

You mention both SB700/750 as having the same issues with AHCI as SB600, "all but forcing users to run the south bridge in plain old IDE mode" -- are you referring to the Vista install woes users have with AHCI on SB600 or rather that the performance/stability on SB700/750 with AHCI mode enabled isn't there? From what I'd read previously it seemed as though SB700 had resolved the Vista install problems at least.

In fact, I've recently upgraded my own system with Gigabyte's GA-MA78G-DS3H (780G + SB700) and Vista SP1 64-bit and had no problems enabling AHCI mode and installing the SATA drivers to use my two SATA300 drives. As far as I'm aware they're running with NCQ enabled, although I haven't run any HDTach tests to guage throughput.

Also, as you suggest, has a HybridPower-type capability (at least for discrete ATI GPUs) been ruled out completely by AMD on the GX or is it likely something that may only be implemented later in the Catalyst drivers, as again I recall noises about this functionality being made available with the 790GX? Cheers.

Thanks for the review Geoff...

I was hoping to see some improvement on the SATA/USB front, especially when using NCQ. I'm hoping it may be solved with better drivers, but it could still be a chipset problem.

The one thing that seemed to be lacking, and maybe unfair, was the fact that you tested both systems using an Nvidia Video card....

Wouldn't it have been better to use a 4850/4870 on the AMD system?
Or for that matter, test the Nvidia chipset using an ATI card...

I'm not sure it would have changed the outcome, but it would have given more system parity.

Good review, thanks.

Great review. That board definitely looks impressive (save for the still-broken southbridge).

Honestly, this board looks like something that work work well for a SFF or a laptop. Having the tighter CPU hooks and perchance more power-sipping underclocking, in addition to pretty good graphics performance, would work well for situations where you don't need a discrete card.

Nice review Geoff, thanks.
How was the x264/AVC decode performance?

Good review. I agree that integrated graphics in performance motherboards seems a bit weird (although in a laptop they would be welcome, and would shame Intel's offerings).

The sideport memory seems a little odd because whilst it isn't eating up main system memory and presumably stores the framebuffer so the entire CPU can go to sleep during idle, it only has a 16-bit interface which cripples bandwidth. Maybe if it supported GDDR5 ...

I think that ACC beats out SATA issues overall for the average purchaser. Maybe on a MATX system ACC underclocking + improved integrated graphics would make sense...

very interesting, on all fronts save the continued weak Serial perf...... oh well next time although in all honesty I wouldn't notice the difference.

AMD now needs 45watt phenoms en mass and I'll switchover from Intel so long as the pricing is tight.

third..

:oD

ahhh. refreshing. Thank you TR!!!!!

It kinda still feels like the 780g except with an overclocked integrated graphics. Sure the ACC seems better... but i reaaaally want them to fix the Sata writing speed and USB performance.

This is something I'd get for my Phenom.
First, too.