After going through lots of these forums, it seems that the 785GM-E65 is still the low-power winner for AM3 motherboards. I would like to get a low-power, low-noise setup with an AMD 605e processor, but I need dual-link DVI. MSI 785GM-E65 photo shows a Dual-Link DVI connector, but the data sheet and manual don't mention "Dual Link".

Does anyone know if the 785GM-E65 supports Dual-Link DVI (2560x1600)?

If the 785GM-E65 won't work, does anyone have ideas about newer motherboards that support Dual-Link? Every one I look at appears to use significantly more power. Are there any AM3 candidate motherboards that have similar/better low power usage than the 785GM-E65, AND that support Dual-Link DVI?

Answers and thoughts appreciated!

I was thinking of building an AM3 system for everything other than gaming for now.
The MSI 785G-E53 is the mobo i'm looking at. 785GM-E65's ATX brother. I like the full ATX size because later i might want to put a big video card for some gaming and i need the 2 PCI slots.

785GM-E65 seems to be a green board, has 2 speedfan controllable headers, i'm thinking 785G-E53 would be similar, right?

Would this motherboard with HD 4200 use less or more power than another board with no onboard VGA but with a dedicated 5450 card?

there's a new ahci driver that finally works, I slipstreamed it with nlite to a new clean winxp installation (so no floppy was needed) and it works even with esata hotplugging!

It is a SB8xx driver. Does it work with SB710?
I asked because it didn't install on my MB (SB710, another manufacturer)

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downl ... od_no=1864

I'm wondering what is the sideport good for... When I set the IGP to use sideport mem only, is is unable to decode 1080p. When I switch to UMA+SidePort, everything works fine.

Basicly, sideport memory is there to speed things up a bit, as it is connected to the 4200 IGP and as such, the IGP doesn't need to send the information it wants to store all the way through the northbridge, and from there to the memory controller and from there to the RAM (and back again).
This is a (poor) picture of the things:
Sideport <--> 4200 IGP
RAM <--> Memory Controller (IMC, in the CPU in AMD) <--> Northbridge <--> 4200 IGP
The thing is, 128Mb isn't much these days. And when those 128Mb of sideport memory are all used up, the IGP has no other choice but to store the information in the RAM (and doing all that travelling I described above). Still, its a necessity.
When you use only the sideport memory, no RAM memory is used, but the 128Mb of sideport memory aren't enough for the needs, and that's why you see things slowing down.
Overall it's a good thing to have both Sideport+UMA enabled, as you will see somewhat improved performance over just UMA.

ah thanks for the explanation, I didn't consider that

any idea what are the default numeric voltage settings on the msi board and what exactly do they mean? I'm using an Athlon II X4 630

CPU VDD Voltage
CPU-NB VDD Voltage
CPU Voltage
CPU-NB Voltage
DRAM Voltage
NB Voltage
HT Link Voltage
SB Voltage

the 4pin cpu fan header works fine with 4pin fans via speed fan, even the 3pin system fan header can be controlled using linear dc mode, but I'm unable to slow down a 3pin fan on the 4pin cpu fan header.