A while back we reported about how Foxconn’s new A7DA series, based on AMD’s new chipset 790GX, and now a whole bunch of 790GX motherboards have been unveiled. During the last few days we’ve gathered information about some of the boards you can find in stores and to Phenom series they seem like a very interesting alternative, especially if you’re building an affordable HTPC or something similar since the 790GX chipset was more or less tailored for this. The integrated graphics circuit brings support for both HDCP and hardware-accelerated playback of 1080p media.
AMD 790GX is an overall well-endowed chipset and and the motherboards we’ve encountered so far are rather similar, they all make use of the integrated features of the chipset and add some own optimizations, in-house features and special software.
All boards offer graphics powered by the Radeon HD 3300 circuit and can be linked to a discrete graphics card through Hybrid CrossFire. Most boards also supports CrossFireX with two PCIe x16 slots. With VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs on all boards there are also plenty of connectivity for the user to play with. Below are the boards we’ve seen so far, along with some comments.
ASUS M3A78-T
3 x PCIe x16 slots
128MB DDR2 side port memory
ASUS Express Gate
SPDIF digital audio output
eSATA connector
2 x PCIe x16 slots
Dual BIOS
Dolby Home Theater support
128MB DDR3 side port memory
MSI DKA790GX Platinum
2 x PCIe x16 slots
SPDIF digital audio output
Clear CMOS/Power/Reset buttons
128MB DDR3 side port memory
Jetway HA07
2 x PCIe x16 slots
128MB DDR3 side port memory
debug port
Biostar TA790GX A2+
2 x PCIe x16 slots
64MB DDR2 side port memory
T-series OC Utility
Foxconn A7DA-S
2 x PCIe x16 slots
128MB DDR3 side port memory
100% solid capacitor design
More information on AMD 790GX will be presented later on as we hope to publish a review of several boards soon. Stay tuned.
