So far, this is the third AMD 785G board we reviewed at OCWORKBENCH. All 4 boards comes in slightly different configuration as in the size, DDR2 or DDR3 type combination. The BIOSTAR TA785GE 128M adopts a mATX with DDR2 design.

Features wise, this board has what most AMD 785G board provides.  The integrated ATI Radeon HD 4200 (DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 support) with iGPU running at a default 500MHz and sideport memory at 533 MHz (DDR3-1333) on this mainboard provides a fast solution for users who needs a powerful enough machine to watch HD movies and play games. Output can be via the on board D SUB or DVI-D. Unlike most designs which uses an integrated HDMI port, the Biostar didn't provide the on board HDMI connector. The board has the standard 6 SATAII ports supported by the SB 710. There is also GbE support. 1394 and eSATA seems to be missing from this board probably due to cost reasons.

In terms of performance, the board is on par with the ASRock and Gigabyte DDR2 version of the AMD 785G boards. Some benchmarks were higher while some are lower. The performance of the DDR3 boards were definitely better in terms of memory bandwidth and overclockability because they use GDDR3 as Sideport memory too.

In terms of overclocking, the BIOS has lots of options for you to play with. You can tune the board using the 3 options of V tech engine to select the tested overclocks and boot up instantly Alternatively, you can also overclock the board using the TSeries Overclocking tool bundled in the package software. In our case, we were able to oveclock the Phenom II X3 710 to 3.547GHz with the voltage levels shown in the screen shot below. CPU CLK was at 265MHz with multiplier of 13x. You can also save the profile for future reference or use for various oc settings. As for GPU CLK, our best is at 980MHz with our 3 core processor. Enabling the hidden 4th core is possible but you will have to lower the HT to 1.6GHz from it's default 2GHz.

Discuss

Pros

• Tseries OC Tuner
• Side port memory
• Power on/off, Clear CMOS push buttons

Cons

• No Power eSATA
• No 1394
• No HDMI port

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.