Gigabyte is one of the most well-known motherboard manufacturers out there. It comes as no surprise, then, that they represent their products well. The MA770T-UD3P arrived in an attractive, information-laden box with plenty of shelf appeal. Gigabyte also maintains an excellent website with additional information, photos, drivers, and support resources.

Once outside the box, the MA770T-UD3P is equally as appealing. The color choices work well and, although they're not necessarily about looks, the solid capacitors do contribute to an overall sense of quality and workmanship. Really, the only thing lacking in appearance is the heatsink. The anodized aluminum looks nice, but the heatsink is small and doesn't really instill the kind of confidence a more robust cooling solution would.

The graphics core in the 785G is upgraded from the HD3200/3300 utilized in the 780G/790GX to the HD4200. The primary difference between the cores is that the HD4200 fully supports DX10.1, Unified Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD), hardware accelerated picture in picture capabilities, dynamic contrast, HQ video scaling, hardware accelerated video transcoding, and full Powerplay support. The graphics core still runs at 500MHz (in current form) and at least in our particular sample, we were able to reach 1057MHz without too much trouble.

Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched its AMD 760G chipset-based 760GTM-P33 motherboard, with integrated ATI Radeon HD 3000 GPU.

If you are looking for a board that is packed with features and that works straight out of the box, but at the same time, still leaves you enough money to feed your children. Then you should definitely be looking at this board. It includes integrated graphics, audio and gigabit LAN, and has full support for DDR2 and DDR3 modules, making the changeover to AM3 simple. It also has a great combination chipset, giving the most modest overclockers fantastic results every time.

Gigabyte dropped off their GA-MA785GPMT-UD2H motherboard today that is based on the AMD 785G/SB710 chipsets. This is a chipset that we have had our sights set on for long time now as it addresses the lack of multi-channel LPCM audio out lacking in the 690G/780G/790GX chipsets along with other video playback enhancements. The additional bonus with this chipset is improved integrated graphics performance and full support for the AM3 processors. In fact, we just found the perfect home for our new AMD Phenom II X3 705e processor.