Thread: MSI 785GM-e65

Armed with the Radeon HD 4200 GPU, the AMD 785G is a great chipset for home theater applications. Since the integrated GPU supports decoding x.264 and VC-l video formats, you don't need a discrete graphics card or a powerful CPU to play Blu-ray movies-an entry-level dual-core CPU is sufficient. The MSI 785GM-E65 features the AMD 785G chipset and is built for home theater enthusiasts and power users. There are very few micro-ATX motherboards that are packed to the gills with features, and this board is one of them_ The support for the entire line-up of socket AM3 Phenom II processors and up to 16 GB of DDR3 memory comes from the chipset But has thrown in a bunch of innovative features to make this board even more interesting. The most eye-catching component is the heatpipe-based cooling system for the northbridge and voltage regulators. Next to the northbridge is an overclocking switch lets you boost the bus speed by 10, 15 or even 20 percent so you can overclock without going into the BIOS.

We tested its performance with the entry-level Athlon II X2 250 and 2 GB RAM. HD video playback was stutter-free with very little CPU usage. The HD 4200 churns out 15 fps in Left 4 Dead at 1280 x 1024 with low settings. We were also able to overclock the CPU by 20 percent from 3.0 GHz to 3.6 GHz with great ease.