Not All That Glitters Is Asus: M4A78T-E Socket AM3 Mainboard Review. Page 11

[04/07/2009 05:36 PM | Mainboards]
by Doors4ever

We are going to use AMD Phenom II X4 810 processor to study the peculiarities and features of the AMD 790GX based mainboard with an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics core. Read our new review for details.

Pages: [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ]

Conclusion

At first, numerous issues that we faced throughout the en tire test session wouldn’t let us adequately experience the benefits of the Asus M4A78T-E mainboard. Luckily, it turned out that the mainboard has nothing to do with most of these issues, and is overall a very good product. Asus M4A78T-E boasts very convenient design and sufficient functionality. It will be a good basis for a power-efficient and very quiet system if used with an integrated graphics card, or high-performance system if used with a powerful discrete one. There are only two issues that prevent the board from reaching the top of its ability:

Incorrect operation of the “CPU overvoltage” function, which sends dangerously high voltage to the CPU;
The so-called “FSB Hole” between 258MHz and 270MHz, when the board cannot work properly.

If Asus engineers manage to eliminate these issues in their upcoming BIOS versions, we will have an excellent, almost universal mainboard. If not, then Asus M4A78T-E will just remain a good board, working stably in nominal mode, but capable of modest CPU overclocking.