jmke

No one looking to build a PC capable of light or casual gaming will be disappointed either. While we would still like to see better performance out of all integrated graphics chipsets, the 785G is competitive with the rest of the market. It will play games like Sims 3 or even Left 4 Dead at reduced quality settings, and it can do so better than its closest Intel IGP competitor. The only chipset that comes close in gaming performance is the NVIDIA GF9300/9400 series, but those boards are priced anywhere from $25 to $40 more.

Therefore, the comparison to Intel is an inevitable one. The direct price competitor to the 785G is Intel's G41, a horribly crippled, and price reduced version of the G45 chipset. You lose PCIe 2.0 and any sort of H.264/VC1 video decoding abilities, all in exchange for a lower price. It just gets worse from a feature viewpoint when combining the ICH7 Southbridge with it. From this perspective, there's just no real reason to pick the G41 platform over a 785G configuration. Intel is resting on its ability to sell crappy chipsets with really good CPUs, and AMD is relying on a great chipset to sell a, well, pretty good CPU as well.

The AMD 785 is simply superior in our opinion and it receives our full endorsement.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615

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