Asus M4A785TD-M EVO

Asus M4A785TD-M EVO review

Slapping a new brand name to give an old chip a leg up is a popular ruse in the PC industry. Do not, therefore, assume that the Asus M4A785TD-M EVO and its AMD 785G northbridge is necessarily old hat. For the most part, it's identical to the supposedly newer 880G found in Gigabyte's competing 880GMA-UD2H. The graphics cores in both, for instance, are effectively the same Radeon HD 4200 DirectX 10.1-class architecture. You get carbon-copy AMD Avivo HD video features and 40 shader cores with this slightly older Asus board. Likewise, AMD Hybrid Graphics is supported by both. However, where the two diverge and the Asus M4A785TD-M EVO arguably falls behind involves the companion chips that provide additional functionality. While the Gigabyte board gets the latest SB850 southbridge chip and NEC's USB 3.0 controller, Asus makes do with the older SB710 southbridge. USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps are not part of the package. In raw performance terms, the gap between the Asus M4A785TD-M EVO and supposedly newer and fancier boards, such as Gigabyte's 880GMAUD2H is measured in microns. Whether it's video encoding, professional 3D rendering or playing games courtesy of an add-in graphics cards, there's near as dammit no difference.