Asus M4A785TD-V Evo Review

[Daveburt714]

*Disclaimer* I'm NOT a professional reviewer, but I thought I would share my experiences since this is a fairly new product/chipset.

I bought this for my Home Theater box to replace a GBT DS5 that never worked right. I'm not going to post a bunch of pics of the board itself, New Egg has some really nice shots if your interested. I will post a few though.. And I'll reserve a few spots for Bios Shots and final thoughts.

From what I've read the biggest advantages of the 785G over the 790GX is support for DX10.1 and an update UVD. I was actually hoping for Hybrid graphics support of 4k series video cards, but from what I've read the highest card that can be used for Hybrid is still the 3450 (which I happen to have ) I'll do some testing with that too...

Overall build quality of the board seems to be excellent, it has an 8+2 PWM section with cool looking heatsinks on both the VRM's and the NB. The board is also one of the 1st (AFAIK) Asus boards built with the 2oz copper trace strategy started by GBT that is supposed to help signal strength and keep the board running cool.

PACKAGE CONTENTS:



I also bought a couple other goodies for my HTPC rebuild, a Samsung 1TB EcoGreen F2EG and a Scythe SHURIKEN Rev.B low profile cooler, decent cooling and it's supposed to be very quite. I also liked the fact that the fan blows down onto the board, which should help keep important board components cool...

SCYTHE INSTALLED:




One undocumented(?) thing I noticed was a jumper "OV_CPU", which I can only assume allows the board to give the Vcore more juice than bios would normally allow. It's not really all that important to me since OC'ing isn't what I bought this board for, but you just know I'll have to play with it while it's still on the bench....

OV_CPU JUMPER (sorry for the fuzzy pic):



Well.... My data has been moved to the new 1TB drive and my OS has been imaged to the old data drive (WD 500), so I'm off to play...

[Daveburt714]

For those interested "UNLEASHING" mode DOES work, at least for my 720....




EZ Flash 2 has been updated also, and now allows you to pull your CMOS image from any drive (not just a USB), pretty sweet...


CnQ also works when unlocked/overclocked (at least mild OC's), and it allows you to set the VID for the low power state.


For a 1st release bios this feels very solid (I'm actually surprised!).... I've been burned before buying new tech, thankfully not this time.
So far I really like this board! Here are some more Bios shots:










Oh.... There is one thing missing and thats the option to save multiple CMOS profiles....
Hopefully They will add this in a future release.

[The Coolest]

Do you have the hardware to test whether this board can really do multichannel LPCM or not?

[Daveburt714]

Coolest: Sorry man, I hate to sound ignorant (even though I am as far as LPCM is conserned)... My HT system is settup to use a DVI to HDMI cable for video, and an Optical audio connection to my reciever for sound which usually works quite well and results in DTS 5.1 audio..

I may or may not have the right gear to test for you, if you can give me a little more info as to what you need I'll look into it for you later...

Right now, I'm having some trouble getting the OS image from the DS5 to boot on the new board....

I really don't want to have to do a fresh install, even though it was Vista I had all my software and apps the way I wanted them. I was hoping it would be as easy as loading new drivers and then sweeping the old stuff....
Still working on it, but it's not looking good so far...

[FlanK3r]

nice board, il waiting for next reserved

[Tom128]

I am a big fan of the heatsink design and those black SATA cables would be nice to have in my CM690 that's painted black. It would get close to looking like I had no cabled anywhere lol.

[Daveburt714]

Ok Folks.... I've had the whole weekend to play with this new board.

Overall impression is that it's well constructed, but like most new hardware/chipsets the firmware/bios still needs some work. I've gotten burned a number of times buying new gear and I can usually tell the difference between POS hardware, and a nice board that just needs a tweak on the firmware. I put this board in that catagory, excellent hardware, but the bios still needs some work. It's an economy board, but I still have hope that Asus will put a little effort into the bios... I really beleive it has alot of potential!

Here are the things I've found out about the board over the weekend:
Keep in mind these are 1st Gen Bios, hopefully they'll be fixed in future updates!

I'll go with the positives first...

1) The OV-CPU jumper I mentioned earlier allows you to crank the Vcore all the way up to 1.9v!! In the normal position max Vcore = 1.7v (which is still plenty in IMO).

2) UNLEASHED Mode DOES work... I never really pushed it hard, because thats not what I bought this board for, but it did successfully unlock my known good 720 to and X4 and ran it up to 3Ghz stable.

3) 8+2 Power section with decent heatsink... Even at 1.4 Vcore it never really got hot, neither did the NB heatsink.

4) The VIA Audio chip. I was actually a little concerned about this. Most of the better HT boards use the Realek 889 series chipset... What can I say, my worries were totally unfounded! The VIA chip and drivers work better than any of the Realtek stuff I've ever used! Finally my center channel doesn't sound muted when the audio is DTS 3/2.1 and I don't have to run my reciever volume @ 50+ to hear what people are saying. The software is better by a factor of 10 also!

5) The CnQ and system fan controls work really well for a quiet system and the fact that you can control Min Vcore when the system shifts to the Low Power state is a nice feature and helps quite a bit with stability.


Now for the Bad aspects...

1) If your going to run this board under a 64bit OS and use the IGP, DON'T TRY to do it with 2Gb of system memory and expect to get good HDVideo results! Even though the board has 128Mb of sideport Mem I had a hard time getting it to run with sideport only, and when set to Sideport+UDM it left me with less than 1Gb of system ram (Not good!)...

I did finally get it to run glitch free Blu-Ray w/UDM but I had to go into MSCONFIG and shutdown unnescesary things at startup. (Make sure you set "Frame Buffer Location" to "Under 4G" if you only have 2Mg of system ram)..

2) Don't EVEN try to run Hybrid graphics using a 3450 (best possible). This relates to the above problem.. I mistakenly thought that adding the 3450 w/512Mb would solve some of the memory problems, It Didn't!!! In fact it opened a whole new set of problems that resulted in multiple resets, power switch resets, and eventually taking the box apart and removing the 3450.... PITA!

3) There is no option to set the NB/IMC Multi. Not that big a deal for me, because I bought the board for a HT box, but if you plan to use it as an OC'er it's definetly a handicap...

4) Back to the Heatsink situation... The PWM and NB heatsinks are really cool looking, and seem to do their job quite well... The SB Heatsink on the other hand seems to be pretty inefficeint, I'm sure they made it small and low set to keep it from interfereing with Video Cards, but it gets pretty HOT, using an IR Probe it hit temps above 52c.... I'm not sure if this is really a problem or not, but it did cause me some consern.


FINAL THOUGHTS:

If your looking for an economical HTPC board w/unlocking potential for PhenomII's this board would be a good choice.
I actually like it!

If your looking for a cheap OC'ing board, you may want to wait a little while and let the Bios/Drivers mature a little. I could be wrong, but I think this board has ALOT of potential! If you want a good cheap OC'er right now I don't think you could beat the GBT 790XT-UD4P though.

[Dopamin3]

4) Back to the Heatsink situation... The PWM and NB heatsinks are really cool looking, and seem to do their job quite well... The SB Heatsink on the other hand seems to be pretty inefficeint, I'm sure they made it small and low set to keep it from interfereing with Video Cards, but it gets pretty HOT, using an IR Probe it hit temps above 52c.... I'm not sure if this is really a problem or not, but it did cause me some consern.

That seems very normal. Both my 790FX-GD70 and LP DK 790FXB-M3H5 had high SB temps. They were around 50c like you stated, so nothing to really worry about

[Daveburt714]

That seems very normal. Both my 790FX-GD70 and LP DK 790FXB-M3H5 had high SB temps. They were around 50c like you stated, so nothing to really worry about

Thanks for the input man, I've never really paid much attention before, just seemed a little warm for an IO chip... I feel better now.

[MacClipper]

Thanks for sharing.

From what I've read the biggest advantages of the 785G over the 790GX is support for DX10.1 and an update UVD.

For add on video, 790 is 8x8 Crossfire capable but 785 is crippled at only 16x4, iirc.

Does S3 sleep/resume work well on this mobo?

[Daveburt714]

Thanks for sharing.
Does S3 sleep/resume work well on this mobo?

First, let me answer your main question...
S3 Sleep/Resume works quite well! Since I'm using this as an HT box, I use a (900Mhz/radio) Gyration Keyboard/Mouse, but it does wake sometimes during the day when I don't really ask it too...
I live in an apartemnt building, so who knows, it could be my neighbors phone... It always wakes when I use my gear though, and it never seems to wake on it's own late night (I work 2nd shift)...


I'm not really concered about the 16x4 video, but you're right, this board won't do 8x8...
I've never ran Crossfire anyway... Always seemed like a waste of money to me.. :}
Next month there will be and X2 or a new breed that will smoke last seasons Xfire anyway, and probably cost less (hehe)...

That being said, I did run it in Hybrid mode with a 3450/512meg. I used 3DMark 05 just to save time and here are the results:

IGP Only: 3D05 failed to run (not sure why?)
3450 Only: Scored 4007
Hybrid: Scored 5598

From these results I decided to leave the Hybrid mode turned on when I did the final assembly for my HTPC box.
That turned out to be a serious mess and I wound up removing the 3450...

50% of the time when I would boot the box, I would get the Win7 splash screen and then when it would go to the user password... I'd just get a black screen with a moveable mouse but never a full boot to Win7... I'm still having some amount of trouble with this, but it's MUCH more managable running on the IGP only!

Here is my system Settup:
Asus M4A785TD-V Evo
AMD X3 720 (for now, Not Unlocked or OC'd)
2x1 Gb OCZ 1066 DDR3 7-7-7 @ 1.5v
3 Drives, 2HD and 1 Blu-Ray
Haupagge 1600 PVR
Displayed on a Samsung 52" 1080p (60hz) LCD Tv (DVI to HDMI)
Audio is an Optical out to a 5.1 DTS capable Sony reciever.

When everything works right, it is an Awesome movie experience!!

I just wish I could figure out where the problem lies...
Is it hardware, Win7, not enough Memory/Video power or just all the DRM crap that the MPAA seems to be pushing on us all..

If it sounds like I'm on some kind of Pulpit, I'm sorry... I really like this board.
Just trying to share my experiences in the hope that it may help others.

L8r....... Dave

[Zeus]

Nice write up Dave!

Having no adjustable multi for NB and HT link in bios is a real bummer!

I like the black sata cables though, Asus should put these with all boards, looks so much better than the ugly red ones!

[ganastasiou]

Im trying to oc my cpu(x3 720) with this mobo,i have adata 2x2GB ddr3 1333Mhz ram.

As it has already been said,the first version of bios hasnot the choice of cpu-nb multiplier.So only with fsb raise we can achieve higher Cpu-NB freq?

Load line calibration is needed to overclock?

[Lightman]

Thanks for sharing Dave

[Daveburt714]

Im trying to oc my cpu(x3 720) with this mobo,i have adata 2x2GB ddr3 1333Mhz ram.

As it has already been said,the first version of bios hasnot the choice of cpu-nb multiplier.So only with fsb raise we can achieve higher Cpu-NB freq?

Load line calibration is needed to overclock?

Hi ganastasiou,

The only way to OC the NB/IMC seems to be by using the HTRef clock or FSB (not really a good reference for PhII but I know what ya mean)....

I was wondering about the "Load Line" thing too, guess I'll have to play with it...

Have you tried to unlock your 720 yet? I'd get things stable first, but if you know your chip has a good 4th core (Mine does) it should be OK.

There are 2 new Bioses on the FTP site for this board. I think I'll skip "0218" since they released "0219" so quickly, but I thought I would let ya know...

Heres the Link:
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...4A785TD-V_EVO/

Pretty sure I've figured out what was causing my video problems, everytime I would open AOD things went fine until I rebooted and then I would get the Black screen @ password....
Not sure what was going on, but for now, I removed AOD from the system.
If you run into that problem shut the machine down with the power switch (not much choice) and when it reboots load in "Safe Mode" then restart as soon as you get into Windows. That always fixes it for me...

Now that I've figured out the few quirks I was having, this board works perfectly for my Home Theater box even though I only have 2Gb of ram (more ram is my next purchase though!).

Because of the problems I had with 1080P, Hybrid Grapics and Memory I pulled the box out of my rack and now have it sitting on a table (easy access) but still connected to my TV.
For some strange reason I just can't resist OC'ing it now that there is a new Bios and I know how to make it do what I want..... I must be a Junky....

BTW: Thanks for the props guys! I was starting to thing I was just rambling on for no good reason...

[ganastasiou]

Till now Load line calibration is at 0%,cause with calibration enabled i want more vcore.

No 4th core for me,I wasnt very lucky 0906 BPMW.

[ganastasiou]

with the latest bios they added a choice about cpu/nb "multiplier" they have named it frequency.:P

Let's try to oc daveburt now...

[ganastasiou]

I dont see that this "new" choice is working.If u try it daveburt,let me know if it works for u.

[Daveburt714]

with the latest bios they added a choice about cpu/nb "multiplier" they have named it frequency.:P

Let's try to oc daveburt now...

Yep... Kinda nice having an IMC Multi...

I've been playing with it a little myself bro, 0219 is a decent improvement over 0211.... I'm still having a few problems, especially with Vcore. I guess 100% Line Load was the wrong direction.....

I did get unlocked 3200 with 2200 NB though...

I'm pretty much done for the night, I will defiently try doing the other way wiht Line load next tie though!... Thank for the info man...

[ganastasiou]

Does the new choice for CPU/NB freq work for u?

Cause i change the multiplier and nothing happens.

[MacClipper]

.... There is one thing missing and thats the option to save multiple CMOS profiles....
Hopefully They will add this in a future release.

Is this added in the new BIOS?

BIOS also seem to be lacking in CPU Downcore option too, I have a 550BE x2@x3 stable.

[ganastasiou]

Yeah this one lacks too about profiles.But u can save them in turbo V.

The option about IMC multiplier(CPU/NB frequency is named in bios) was added to 0219 bios version.

But even if i change it nothing happens to NB.

[Daveburt714]

Does the new choice for CPU/NB freq work for u?

Cause i change the multiplier and nothing happens.

Nothing happens when I change the multi either....
I actually had the HTRef clock @ 220 the other night and didn't notice, sorry...

I've been playing with OC'ing this board and it seems the bios still needs some work from an overclockers point of view...
I actually had it so wacked out I wasn't sure I'd be able to get it back stable for my purpouses again.

I did though... I may play with OC'ing it again down the road but I'll wait for some better firmware to be released. Right now I just want it to work right!

For now the best bios for me is 0218. The only thing I did was bump my 720's multi to 15x (3Ghz), set the "Load Line" to ~28% and bumped the chipset voltage up to 1.225. Messing with anything else was causing me problems.

It's a brand new board and it seems very well designed, pretty sure there will be some better bios coming down the road...

[MacClipper]

Daveburt714, I forgot to ask this very impt qn -is this mobo Prime95 Blend stable once the cores are unlocked? Thx.

[Daveburt714]

Daveburt714, I forgot to ask this very impt qn -is this mobo Prime95 Blend stable once the cores are unlocked? Thx.

Honestly Mac, I haven't been able to get it prime blend stable...
I can run IBT (LinX) all day long though (Even when unlocked).

I'm running a wierd settup, DVI to HDMI @ 1920x1080(TV), 64bit OS and only 2Gb of ram...
Not really sure where my problems are coming from, h*ll it could be the cheesy Xion 500w PSU!

I think this board has alot of potential, and it's definetly built like a tank, but it sure seems like the Bios aren't quite ready for OC prime time yet...

Are you looking to get a cheap board w/good OC potential right now?

If so (FWIW), I'd reccommend you go with one of the GBT UD4P boards...
The settup in my sig is ROCK SOLID @ 3.95Ghz/2.57Ghz IMC and will prime blend for hours...