Which of these motherboards would you choose?

Scan have the Asus M4A785D-M PRO and Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H on their Today Only promotion for the exact same price. The cheeky sods have made it impossible for me to pick between the two :surrender:

I'll be buying an Athlon X3 425 and already have 4GB's of Corsair TwinX XMS2 DDR2-800 memory.

This system will be used for playing Global Agenda (OT: our Agency, "MAP", is recruiting if anyone is interested BTW :) ) until I upgrade to whole new PC later in the year at which point the motherboard will be recycled as another front end to my media server.

Wouldn't mind having a crack at unlocking to an Athlon II X4 too. Is one board better then the other at this?

Which motherboard would you pick? Any guidance opinions welcome. I've been going around in circles trying to make a choice for over an hour now :help:

Just to complicate things further. The MSI-785GTM-E45 Looks promising too :surprised:

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Originally Posted by Firejack

Scan have the Asus M4A785D-M PRO and Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H on their Today Only promotion for the exact same price. The cheeky sods have made it impossible for me to pick between the two :surrender:

I'll be buying an Athlon X3 425 and already have 4GB's of Corsair TwinX XMS2 DDR2-800 memory.

This system will be used for playing Global Agenda (OT: our Agency, "MAP", is recruiting if anyone is interested BTW :) ) until I upgrade to whole new PC later in the year at which point the motherboard will be recycled as another front end to my media server.

Wouldn't mind having a crack at unlocking to an Athlon II X4 too. Is one board better then the other at this?

Which motherboard would you pick? Any guidance opinions welcome. I've been going around in circles trying to make a choice for over an hour now :help:

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The Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H has Firewire whereas the Asus M4A785D-M PRO has all solid capacitor construction. I would go for the Asus as solid capacitors cannot leak and tend to be more stable at higher temperatures.

Also make sure you get a decent PSU and do skimp on it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Firejack

Just to complicate things further. The MSI-785GTM-E45 Looks promising too :surprised:

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I would still go for the Asus motherboard.

Tough choise, they are both very simular
From the layout 3 of the sata ports on the gigabyte board will potentially be blocked with a long double width graphics card, if you plan to use such a card.
The gigabyte board has firewire which the asus lacks, but again only useful if you intend to use it.

Both have the 710southbridge and ACC in the BIOS so should be able to unlock the extra core.


EDIT: Missed the all solid caps on the Asus.

The MSI if it's cheaper but if they are all the same cost, the Asus

Thanks for the replies.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

.....Also make sure you get a decent PSU....

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Going for the Corsair CX 400watt :)


The all solid caps seemed to be the deciding factor in me choosing the Asus board until I saw the Asus board uses the VIA VT1708S sound chip whereas the Gigabyte board has the Realtek ALC889A. Always liked the ability of the Realtek soundchips to split sound. So you can have your headset plugged in the front ports outputting the sounds from VoIP while the rear outputs played your music or whatever.

Not worried about Firewire. And my HD4850 is single slot so SATA port access shouldn't be a problem.

Reading the MSI manual has ruled that out for me. To many compromises made for the sake of a few £££'s

Yep the Realtek chip is the one you want :)

Ooooo annoying! While searching Google I found a link to the version of Gigabyte board with the Solid caps hidden away on Scans site: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/Gigab...-Micro-ATX-VGA Its cheaper but there is no stock or ETA :undecided