New HTPC champ mobo?

Just been pricing up the refit to my HTPC, and I came across this ASUS AMD 760G-based motherboard. Yes, that's 760G - not 740G, not 780G - 760G. A quick browse of AMD's website would suggest that this is probably an *even slower* clocked version of the 780G, with the previous generation of ATI Avivo - so hardware acceleration for standard content but not HD - and a new Southbridge - SB710.

Has anyone seen / heard anything about this chipset before, or has it slipped under the radar due to the massive attention on the 4890? And given that I don't have a BD drive and mostly use my HTPC for watching standard-def DVDs anyway, is there any reason this mobo wouldn't meet my needs?

I saw it a few weeks back but wasnt all that interested. 740G makes sense for SD stuff tbh, nice low power boards haven't seen a comparision yet and not that bothered to look lol

I'd pay the bit extra and get the 780G or 780V which I bought (sort of by mistake lol).

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

I saw it a few weeks back but wasnt all that interested. 740G makes sense for SD stuff tbh, nice low power boards haven't seen a comparision yet and not that bothered to look lol

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I didn't think the 740G (690G) supported hardware DVD acceleration - that's certainly what the AMD comparison page I linked to suggests!

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

I'd pay the bit extra and get the 780G or 780V which I bought (sort of by mistake lol).

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I certainly wouldn't bother with the 780V for an HTPC - it doesn't have hardware decoding at all! I'd prefer a 780G tbh, but my budget is going to be *very* tight and I want an AM2+ to get the benefit of HT3.0 - which means a minimum spend of £57ish on the CPU (for an Athlon 7750 BE). As long as Scan keep stock of their J&W 780G board I'd probably get that, but this looks like an attractive option at about £10 less than *most* 780Gs - especially if the GPU core overclocks like a 780G!!

You can get a 780G based motherboard fo just under £55:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160999

Also there are a number of Nvidia 8200 and 8300 based motherboards in the same price range and even one 780V based motherboard for under £50. These are all available from Ebuyer.

TBH the 760G based motherboard would have to be under £45 to be worth it especially when you can get this 780V based motherboard for £46:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150347

This is a review of an MSI 760G based motherboard:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article926-page8.html

Basically it seem to have low power consumption with 45w CPUs but is not that great with the Phenom II.

I remember seeing some AFox 780G based motherboards on Ebay a few months ago for around £30 delivered. It was obviously a budget motherboard(with very few solid capacitors at all) but looked great for the price. The only thing is that I had no AM2 processors so I didn't get one!

Thanks CAT, interesting review - I didn't realise that the 740G (and, having done some more research, 780V too) boards had Avivo - it's not listed on the AMD site. I like that the 3D performance is near that of the 780G, as I do use my HTPC for light (1280x768) gaming - for that reason I'd prefer 760G to 740G. I notice the ASUS board has 5 mosfets (do I mean mosfets or do I mean chokes?) to the MSI's 4, so it would potentially have better power regulation: it also has 4 RAM slots rather than 2 so more room for expansion (you know, for when 2GB of RAM just isn't enough for DVD playback... ;) ).

The 780G is clearly a better buy *when* it's available for ~ £55: I guess I'll have to weight up the 760G vs. 780V if I can't get a 780G at that price!

EDIT: a dissappointing lack of reference to the new southbridge in that review though - I think I'll have to do some more investigation to see whether the SB710 has any advantage over the SB700...

MORE EDIT: It seems the SB710 is the SB750 without RAID 5; so it include ACC to assist overclocking (and potentially unlock extra cores on Phenom II X3s)!

EVEN MORE EDIT: Sorry to discredit MSI even more, but the cheap 780V on ebuyer is built on the same motherboard as that test 760G, so Iwouldn't trust it's power reg circuits with much above a 45w processor either ;)