The Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H makes for a great upgrade mainly due to its versatile and evolved chipset, the Radeon HD4200. If you compare the 780G and 785G there aren't too many differences that can be made out other than the HD4200's support for DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. Just like their previous chipset the 785G motherboards bring together three major video outputs; HDMI, DVI and VGA. But there is one notable difference that comes with the 785G chipset and that is the support for HDMI 1.3 as opposed to HDMI1.2 that featured in the 780G. Another significant aspect is the implementation of UVD 2 which basically offloads the CPU from decoding two video streams thereby ensuring smooth playback of Blu-ray movies.

The board supports a total of six SATA ports, twelve USB ports (six rear and six via headers). There is also 1394a Firewire port, Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel audio along with an optical S/PIDF and the conjoined PS2 mouse and keyboard port.

The MA785GMT-UD2H is well designed with spaced out components which makes installation a breeze. Another "point worth noting is the color coded front panel headers that more or less would eliminate the need to refer to the motherboard manual. Just like most of their boards, the MA785GMT-UD2H includes 2 ounces of copper spread across the entire PCB to enhance the overall cooling of the motherboard. The board also includes Gigabyte's patented DualBIOS protection system that automatically recovers main BIOS data in case of a crash or failed BIOS flash. Keep in mind that the MA785GMT-UD2H does not include any Side port memory. So it basically shares the amount of onboard memory with the amount of RAM installed.

We have said this before and we will say it again - the HD4200 IGP is not built to break any performance barriers but will handle full HD playback at 1080p without the need of a discrete card.

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