Six AMD 780G HTPC Motherboards To Choose From

May 26, 2008 · Filed Under Articles, Motherboards

I always get asked the question about which platform is right for building a HTPC. Almost all of the time the choice come down to either AMD or Intel.

With AMD’s 780G Chipset having been out for a while now is the perfect time to think about building that HTPC or to give your system a refresh of its hardware.

What makes the AMD the perfect choice for building a dedicated HTPC is their included onboard graphics on their 780G chipset motherboards.

With a dedicated graphics solution onboard it is easier than ever to build a HTPC that you can be sure will work and no more hunting around for the right graphics card to fit inside you HTPC case.

Below I have listed some of the motherboard manufactures which currently have products on the market which are using AMD’s 780G Chipset all of the boards listed below are Micro-ATX.

ASRock A780FullDisplayPort

The ASRock A780FullDisplayPort supports all series of Phenom, X2 CPUs as with all 780G boards the ASRock has AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology.

ASRock A780FullDisplayPort supports future standards with all 4 VGA outputs options being available (D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI and Displayport). It also supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find 6 SATA II ports for RAID 0,1,10,JBOD as well as PCIe GbE, 2 x 1394 and 1 WIFI/E Header. The motherboard also comes with the Displayport add on card and a DVI-D to HDMI converter.

Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI

The Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI supports all series of Phenom, X2 CPUs as with all 780G boards the Asus has AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology.

Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI has Multi-Display Support providing HDMI, DVI, VGA and RGB outputs. It also supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find 6 x internal SATA 3 Gbps connectors with RAID 0, 1, and 10 support, 1 x UltraDMA 133/100 connector, 1 x PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet as well as 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports with support for up to 12.

Biostar TA780G M2+ HP

The Biostar TA780G M2+ HP supports Socket AM2+/AM2, Supports AMD Phenom Series/Athlon 64 X2/64/FX/Sempron Processors and as with all 780G boards the Biostar has AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology.

Biostar TA780G M2+ HP has a DVI and VGA Connetor onboard and also native resolution with UVD and supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find support for dual channel DDR2 533/667/800/1066(1066 by AM2+ CPU) MHz, 6 x SATA2 3Gb/s Connector with support for SATA RAID: 0,1,10, 4 x USB 2.0 Port and a Realtek RTL8111C - 10/100/1000 Controller.

ECS A780GM-M

ECS A780GM-M motherboard has support for the most powerful and efficient new socket AM2+ for AMD Phenom processor. It’s based on AMD 780G Chipset with SB700, and equipped with new technologies PCI-E Gen.2 and HT3.0 bus for faster I/O. It support dual-channel DDR2 memory up to DDR2 1066. A780GM-M motherboard is the fantastic model for AMD platform. AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology.

ECS A780GM-M has DVI and VGA connector onboard It also supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find 6 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices with support for RAID0, RAID1, RAID10 configuration, 4 x USB 2.0 headers with support for an additional 8 USB ports and 1 x Gigabit Ethernet Port.

Foxconn A7GM-S

Supporting the AMD Phenom processor, this socket AM2+ motherboard features the AMD 780G chipset and an advanced DirectX 10 graphics engine with AMD UVD technology. UVD supports Blue-Ray and HD-DVD content, whilst offloading power and processor-intensive video decoding from the CPU to the graphics core.

The A7GM-S also provides excellent graphics upgrade capability, with PCIe Generation 2.0 support and ATI Hybrid graphics technology - which boosts your system performance by enabling the ability for both discrete graphics and integrated graphics to render simultaneously.

Other features include Gigabit LAN and 7.1 channel HD audio with multi-streaming support. The A7GM-S is the perfect solution for home cinema PCs, or as the basis of a versatile multi-media PC.

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H

The GA-MA78GM-S2H is GIGABYTE’s next generation, high performance platform based on the new AMD 780G Chipset and support for the new AMD Phenom quad-core processors, with the latest AM2+ platform support, integrated DDR2 1066 memory controller, HyperTransport 3.0 technology links and 128-bit Floating Point Units.

In addition, GA-MA78GM-S2H features with two innovative S features- Safe, Smart technologies, further providing reliable and user friendly computing and reaching the maximum system performance easily via personalized software settings. GIGABYTE S series motherboards, the champion’s choice for AMD AM2+ platform!

With AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology. Gigabyte have a range of display support providing HDMI, DVI, VGA. It also supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find 5 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATAII0, SATAII1, SATAII2, SATAII3, SATAII4) supporting up to 5 SATA 3Gb/s devices, Up to 12 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 on the back panel, 8 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers).

MSI K9A2GM-FIH-S

The MSI K9A2GM-FIH-S supports AMD Phenom/Athlon/Sempron CPUs and as with all 780G boards the Biostar has AMDs ATI Radeon HD 3200 Onboard Graphics which has integrated DX10 graphics and is able to take advantage of ATI’s Hybrid CrossFire X technology.

MSI K9A2GM-FIH-S has a DVI, VGA and HDMI Connector, It also supports High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and can decode Blu-Ray movies easily.

Onboard you will find the MSI K9A2GM-FIH-S has 4 SATA II ports by AMD SB700 with support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by AMD SB700, 3 x USB 2.0 connector support additional 6 ports and a Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller 8111C.

Before making a choice on which board is right always go to the manufactures website and go over the features to make sure you are choosing the right one for you HTPC project.
I hope this has been of some help to those of you looking into building or refreshing your own HTPC.

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