AMD 785G Chipset Motherboard Comparison

With the launch of AMD’s 790GX chipset, things have started looking positive for boards with IGPs. The 7 series launched by AMD is a different breed of motherboards capable of playing High Definition video even with an entry-level dual-core processor. This was possible because the 790GX chipset itself is mothering the Radeon HD3300. The 790GX chipset is quite capable of handling games at medium settings with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned off. The 790GX was and is still considered to be “THE” board that raised the standards of IGPs. However, boards based on the 790G were aimed at enthusiasts and came with a steep price tag. But the 790G chipset made way for more affordable chipsets such as the 780G, 760G and 740G - the 780G by far being the best and the most valuable chipset from AMD/ATI.

AMD/ATI is back with a successor to the 780G chipset - the 785G. It shares almost the same features as its younger sibling; the 780G. The only major difference is that the 785G is home to the Radeon HD4200 GPU. Plus, if you take note there are a couple of new added features to the 785G that aren’t present in the 780G. To start with, the current IGP fully supports DirectX 10.1 whereas the 780G is limited to the DirectX 10.0 platform. But let’s not forget that these IGPs don’t quite have what it takes to run DirectX 10 games, so the support for DX 10.1 simply adds value to the overall board. To raise the standards of casual gaming these boards come with Hybrid CrossFire support, that provides the extra edge over standard IGPs.

A more notable aspect that the red barons have included into the 785G chipset is the support for HDMI 1.3 whereas the 780G was restricted to version 1.2. The 785G has also seen an upgrade from UVD to UVD 2. This change was implemented to address the dual stream playback requirement of picture in picture featured on Blu-ray discs. Second generation UVD 2 offloads the CPU from decoding two video streams thereby ensuring smooth playback of Blu-ray discs. Like the previous 7-series chipsets, the 785G also includes Sideport memory, that is a small amount of memory added to the motherboard to improve overall performance since accessing data from a dedicated source is faster than accessing from the standard shared memory. This is an option and is left to motherboard manufacturers.