Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H review

The GA-MA78GM-S2H is based on AMD's new 780G chipset, which claims to have the fastest onboard graphics processor around.

It's called the Radeon HD 3200 and is based on the same design as ATI's HD 3850 and 3870. It supports DirectX 10, has 256MB of dedicated memory and Gigabyte claims that it's good enough to run Crysis.

We allowed the HD 3200 to share an extra 640MB of system memory and found that Crysis would run only on low detail settings at 1,024x768, but it was just about playable at 18.2fps. In our standard Call of Duty 2 test, the HD 3200 managed only 5.3fps. Even after lowering the resolution to 1,024x768, disabling anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering and reducing textures to low quality, it managed only 12.1fps.

This means there isn't enough power to play the latest titles, but the good news is that you can install a Radeon HD 3450 (ATI's new sub-£30 graphics card) in the PCI-E 16x slot and enable the Hybrid CrossFire feature. This uses both the HD 3200 and HD 3450 graphics processors to provide better performance. Retesting Crysis at the same settings, we found that it ran at 28fps, and Call of Duty 2 increased to 7.4fps.

Although these increases don't lead to outstanding frame rates, a second advantage of installing an HD 3450 is that you can connect up to four monitors. This will be overkill for most people, but the option is there if you need it.

Another benefit of the onboard HD 3200 is its ability to decode H.264 video. This makes the Gigabyte the ideal base for a media centre PC, especially as it's a microATX motherboard, has HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs on the rear panel and has no fans at all.

We installed an Athlon 64 X2 3600+ processor (£26 from www.overclock.co.uk) and were impressed to find that Blu-ray movies played perfectly at 1,920x1,080 and used around 45 per cent of the processor's power.

It's simple to connect the Gigabyte to a surround-sound amplifier thanks to an optical S/PDIF output, and there are mini-jack outputs for analogue 7.1-channel sound. The rear connections also include four USB2 ports, eSATA, gigabit Ethernet and FireWire. Usefully, there are two PS/2 ports, which could free up two USB ports that would otherwise have to be used for a keyboard and mouse. If you need more USB2 ports, there are an extra four headers on the motherboard.

The 780G chipset supports HyperTransport 3, which means you'll get the best performance out of AMD's new Phenom processors, but Socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 and Semprons are also supported.

While the Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics processor isn't great for games, its HD video playback capabilities are superb. Add the HDMI output and silent running, plus the fact that a basic £26 processor is all that's needed for HD video playback, and the GA-MA78GM-S2H is the best-value motherboard we've seen for use in a media centre PC.

Author: Jim Martin