Seven AMD 785G-Based Motherboards Rounded Up

ECS A785GM-M: Features And Hardware

ECS' A785GM-M is an interesting product with a handful of unique features. A microATX offering in the enthusiast-friendly Black-series of boards, it sports full 140W CPU support in addition to 1,333 MT/s DDR3 capabilities (although we were able to push that significantly higher). ECS chose to exclude SidePort memory on this model. Perhaps it anticipates enthusiasts running discrete graphics cards.

The board's bundle is fairly standard, except that it includes four SATA cables. Other than this, there's the requisite driver CD, an eJiffy installer CD, an I/O shield, an installation reference card, and an IDE cable.

Other features include ECS eJiffy (a light Linux distribution that features a Web browser, photo access, and on-line chat with an eight second boot-up time) and M.I.B. II (ECS' BIOS tweaking utility).

Placement of components on the board is ideal, except for a few minor nitpicks. The 24-pin ATX power connector is a little high up on the PCB for bottom-mounted PSUs, and the SATA cables shoot out the side of the board to save space (this would actually help preserve SATA connectivity with a long discrete graphics card installed). But other than that, there's little to complain about.

Connectivity is good for a microATX board, with a 16x PCIe 2.0 slot, two 1x/4x PCIe slots, and a single legacy PCI slot.

ECS is the only manufacturer who got it right when it comes to on-board buttons. In addition to power and reset, there is a clear CMOS button as well. Overclocking this board is made easier with no CLR CMOS jumper to mess around with. There is also a diagnostic readout, and the platform sports an on-board speaker.

  • JohnnyLucky
    Very informative article. Nice to see there are motherboards with different features for different users/tasks.
    Reply
  • LATTEH
    Just what i needed to see thanks toms!
    Reply
  • bpdski
    Great article, I think this shows pretty conclusively that there is no benefit to upgrading to an AM3 based system. If you already have an AM2+ system, you can easily just drop in a new CPU and you system will be every bit as good as a brand new system with DDR3. You just need to make sure your motherboard supports the power requirements of whatever you want to drop in.
    Reply
  • jonpaul37
    Hooray AMD for having cheap solutions in these hard-economic times!

    Boo @ Intel! i like the product, but my wallet & Girl do not like the cost!
    Reply
  • jonpaul37Hooray AMD for having cheap solutions in these hard-economic times!Boo @ Intel! i like the product, but my wallet & Girl do not like the cost!+1
    Girl has more money for clothes!
    Reply
  • ominous prime
    Well bpdski there is no point upgrading if you're AM2, but if you're building a new PC AM3 is the way to go in terms of your computers longevity. Very informative article.
    Reply
  • sonofliberty08
    thanks alot for the info , my first choice was allways asus , but now i now what i need when im going to unlock core , and now i saw the benefits of sideport memory .
    Reply
  • duzcizgi
    We were successful in achieving a 900 MHz stable overclock with the integrated graphics chipset by setting the BIOS to increase northbridge voltage by +.210mV.
    Well, .210 mV = 210 microvolt. I don't think it would make much of a change. Maybe it is 210 mV or, .210 V. :)
    Reply
  • doron
    "Now we're seeing another benefit for the AM2+/DDR2 boards: both the Foxconn Cinema Premium and Biostar TA785GE 128M are drawing less power than their AM3/DDR3 counterparts."
    How comes? Didn't we all agree a long time ago that ddr3 supposed to be more energy efficient out of the two? (Lower voltage and stuff?)
    Reply
  • DarkMantle
    Great article, this will help a lot of people to make their AMD budget motherboard choice easier, thank you Don.
    Reply