CPUs|Motherboards

The new AMD 740G chipset is a refresh of the popular 690G. Gigabyte's budget priced GA-MA74GM-S2 shows us what the die shrink has done by giving us the lowest idle power draw for any micro-ATX board to date.

The super-high end Asus P5E3 Premium, a socket 775 motherboard based around the Intel X48 chipset, has an incredibly long list of features, one of which is called Energy Processing Unit. Does EPU make this loaded board green?

The AMD 790G chipset is here now, and a board review is underway, but in the meanwhile, we thought it would interesting to revisit the previous generation AMD chipset. The Asus M3A78 Pro is an ATX board based on AMD's 780G chipset, widely applauded as possibly the best to date. Has it changed much since the intro in early spring?

nVidia's 8300 chipset can be seen as a response (albeit a delayed one) to AMD's groundbreaking 780G chipset. It, too, boasts higher power efficiency, an improved IGP and Hybrid Power, an answer to the 780G's ATI Hybrid Crossfire. We tried it with an X2 4850e, as well as a new low power 65W Phenom, and with a Geforce GTX 260 graphics card for HybridPower.

AMD 780G: Best Ever Integrated Mainstream Chipset? A close look at AMD's DX10 IGP chipset through the amazingly full-featured Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H micro-ATX board along with a new speed-bumped (2.5 GHz) 45W AMD A64 X2 processor, the 4850e.

Micro-ATX mainboards were once considered minimalist devices for simple office machines, but this notion is rapidly being challenged, no more so than by this new Intel G35 chipset based P5E-VM HDMI from Asus. It includes a huge array of features normally found on premium ATX boards, a BIOS with liberal frequency and voltage adjustments, and solid-state capacitors. Is it the most complete, well-rounded mATX board ever?

The DG33TL is a micro-ATX model equipped with the fairly recent G33 Express chipset in Intel's media series of motherboards. It's on our test bench as we continue to seek out new boards with good integrated graphics and features suitable for home theater PCs.

The D201GLY turned heads when it appeared in May this year. An embedded ULV Celeron 215 processor on a mini-ITX board from Intel at a rock-bottom price was definitely worthy of notice. The just-released D201GLY2 improves the board with two SATA channels and lower power draw with a Celeron 220. We examine the new board in detail and assess its significance in the mini-ITX world, in the trend towards smaller and cheaper, and in the emerging markets.

MicroATX boards usually offer excellent value, but the Asus M2A-VM HDMI offers many features normally found on premium boards: RAID, FireWire, and gigabit ethernet. Asus also provides S/PDIF audio, displays can be connected via HDCP-compliant HDMI, DVI, VGA, component, S-Video, and even composite out. The 690G chipset also supports SurroundView, which allows the Radeon X1250 graphics chip to operate in tandem with a dedicated video card to provide four displays at once.

Albatron has released the KI690-AM2 for AMD AM2 processors to bring high performance computing and Mini-ITX together. We run the wee 690 chipset board through a bank of tests to show what you can expect in a HTPC setup.

Gigabyte has a long history of producing affordable, yet feature-packed motherboards. We examine the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, an ATX motherboard designed for Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad processors. The DS3 is now on its third official revision so it's likely any major quirks or bugs have been worked out. Gigabyte has also provided a steady stream of BIOS updates to fix minor issues and improve overall performance. How suitable is it for the quiet PC enthusiast?

From time to time we run across products that appear to be made for each other. That seemed to be the case with AOpen's mini-ITX i945GTt-VFA motherboard and Silverstone's mini-ITX LC-12 case to go with it. Both feature fanless, DC-based power delivery and a tiny form factor that just begs to be put on show. Alas, it was not a match made in IT heaven. How did this match go bad?

The i975Xa-YDG is AOpen's most ambitious MoDT motherboard, designed for Intel Core Solo/Duo with ATI Crossfire dual graphics card capability and a host of performance oriented features. It also has a standard socket 478 heatsink retention bracket, which means big, quiet aftermarket performance heatsinks can be used. Is this a perfect motherboard for the green-conscious, anti-noise gamer?

VIA has always had a great idea with their extremely low power processors. Their latest EPIA motherboard has an embedded 1.2 GHz processor with a 7.5W thermal envelope. It's 100% passive, updated to run with DDR2, and comes with a slew of onboard A/V connections. Is this enough to make up for the shortcomings in performance that VIA's processors have always suffered? Our assessment, after lab tests and a lengthy in-home trial.

The last time we looked at a mainboard with support for two full bandwidth 16x PCI Express slots, the cost was high power consumption. The ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe, probably the last of the high end 939 boards now that AM2 is just about here, also features high PCIe bandwidth, but it uses ATI's single chip solution — CrossFire Xpress 3200 — instead of nVidia's nForce SLI x16 chipset. Does this board fare any better in the low power department? The small, passive heatsinks suggest that it may.