Digital-Daily : Motherboard Reviews : msi_dka790gx_and_ecs_a780gm_a_ultra

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MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra

Author: Date: 28.12.2008

The number of motherboards based on AMD 790GX is increasingly going up. In particular, today we are testing the MSI DKA790GX which stands out for the presence of two PCI Express x16 slots. Besides, manufacturers are producing new motherboards on the AMD 780G chipset and are more actively using the new south bridge SB750. One of the examples is the model ECS A780GM-A Ultra which is also taking part in today's review.

It should be mentioned that despite similar specifications, manufacturers are diverting motherboards based on 790GX and 780G among different market sectors. The former are aimed at mid-end and higher-end systems, whereas the latter are aimed at entry systems and systems below the mid-end. At the same time, the difference in retail price may be as much as twofold. Within this material, we'll also try to find out how justified the price difference is.

Specifications

Retail boxes

Package bundle

The package bundle for the MSI board includes a great number of items most of which are disks and paper. In particular, the user gets quite a well-written manual, a brief system assembly guide, instructions for the HDD Backup utility, as well as three CDs.

Two disks contain drivers and proprietary utilities for XP and Vista. The third CD is called MSI Extras and contains third-party software for the UEFI shell. This shell is some sort of an analog to the ASUS Express Gate Lite environment, but currently MSI DKA790GX does not support it. For details of the UEFI technology, read this page.

The package bundle of the ECS board is sufficient for a product that costs below 2000 rubles.

By the way, it is just because of the retail price the ECS board gets a higher mark for the package bundle (MSI DKA790GX costs twice as much).

Layout, expansion options

Both the motherboards are made in the ATX form factor and have an approximately the same feature-set. The only radical difference is in the number of PEG slots.

To cool the "north bridge", the motherboards use only aluminum radiators without fans. And on the MSI board, the radiators of the north and south bridges are linked with a heat pipe, and the radiator of the NB itself is of quite intricate shape.

On the ECS board, there are no pipes, but the power components of the PWM are closed with quite a massive radiator.

The motherboards have four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules each, with the overall supported memory capacity being 8 GB.

The MSI board offers two PCI Express x16 (v2.0) slots, whereas the ECS boards - only one.

Besides the PCI-E х16 slots, the MSI board uses two more PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots. The ECS board offers a different configuration: two PCI Express x1, and three PCI slots. Both the motherboards use the SB750 "south bridge" with a radiator. In the end, the boards support six SerialATA II ports and one ParallelATA link each.

It should be mentioned that on the MSI board one port is brought over to the rear panel, with the five remaining SATA ports installed near the "south bridge". On the ECS board, six ports are positioned also there, and on the rear panel there is the seventh SATA port which is implemented using the additional JMB 361 controller.

Then, the south bridge SB750 supports 12 USB 2.0 ports (plus a couple of USB 1.1 ports). On both the boards, all the 12 ports have been implemented and based on the same scheme: six - on the rear panel and six more - with brackets. We also note here that an additional bracket for USB ports is there on only the MSI board (two ports).

As regards the audio subsystem, both the motherboards implement the 8-channel HD-system based on the ALC888 codec.

Now a few words on the network support: the board offers a high-speed RTL 8111C (Gigabit Ethernet) LAN controller.

The board's rear panel is of the following configuration:

The kit of connectors and outputs in the two boards is about the same: audio outputs (including the optical SP-DIF), six USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port, the LAN connector (RJ-45), VGA and HDMI outputs. Besides, the MSI board uses a DVI output and a universal PS/2 connector; on the ECS board - two PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard. As regards the COM and LPT ports, on the ECS board they are missing completely. The MSI board supports only one COM port but through a bracket (missing in the bundle).

Here is the components layout of the MSI board (we failed to find such a layout for the ECS board).

On both the boards, there are buttons to power-on and reset the system. Beside, on the MSI board there is also one button to clear the CMOS settings:

Now on to the BIOS settings.

Next

	Content:
	Page 1 - Specifications, package bundle Page 2 - BIOS, monitoring, overclocking tools Page 3 - Performance and conclusions Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600