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Published: Oct 04, 2009 Author: Niko Lupala Editor: Amber Lupala Provider: Asrock Share this article:

First look

Asrock is one of our new sponsors! They are well known for their motherboards that have always been a bit cheaper than the rest, but does this mean they don't perform well? Personally I don't think so but today we are going to look at the M3a785gmx motherboard and compare it vs a well performing Asus board. I think we will be able to see what type of performance we can expect from this Asrock board.

About Asrock:

Check out their website, http://www.asrock.com/general/about.asp

Specifications:

Full specifications available on their website, http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=M3A785GMH/128M&s=

CPU: -

Support for Socket AM3 processors: AMD Phenom™ II X4 / X3 / X2 (except 920 / 940) and Athlon II X4 / X3 / X2 processors
- Supports AMD OverDrive™ with ACC feature (Advanced Clock Calibration)
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology

Chipset: -
Northbridge: AMD 785G
- Southbridge: AMD SB710

Memory: -
Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology
- 4 x DDR3 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR3 1600(OC)/1333/1066/800 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- VCCM, NB Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS

The Product:

 
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures

The box is a bit smaller than normal since this is a micro ATX board, with quite a bit of cool features like, HDMI, Radeon 4200 videocard, Instant boot etc. You can read about these functions on the back of the box.