M4A785-M EVO is as the name suggest a microATX motherboard based on the RS785G chipset (to be named 880G in retail), and features support for AM2 and AM2+ processors. It comes with four DDR2 1200MHz memory slots, one PCIe x16 slot and integrated Radeon HD 4200 graphics. Note that Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics is based on the RV620 core and features DirectX 10.1 and Hybrid CrossFireX support.

AM3 is AMD’s big cash cow now and while this CPU isn’t really able to compete with the Intel Core i7 on performance, its price point really has a major plus amongst the more budget conscious users, especially in the global financial crisis. Saving as many dollars as you can really means a lot more than it did the same time last year and to this end AMD really has a leg up here.

ECS’ A790GXM-AD3 is a great motherboard that is capable of doing almost everything. It offers decent overclocking functionality and with built-in D-SUB and HDMI, it can act as the base for a bog standard machine. Since it also features PCI-E X16 slots and supports Crossfire mode, it can be used to build a high-end gaming PC. Running our performance test on this AM3 board with DDR3 memory in dual-channel, it returned very impressive performance scores. This is amazing if you consider that this budget board is able to outperform more expensive motherboards. It seems then that ECS built the A790GXM-AD3 so any user can pick it up and build a machine they want.

The Asus M4A79T Deluxe is undoubtedly a competent AMD based AM3 motherboard. It has similar features to many other top end AMD motherboards made for the Dragon Reloaded platform. The layout is ok, and can work in most system configs. It even made some performance improvements in what was originally not so great I/O performance when compared to its GIGABYTE cousin.

You can get it here for $199.

The M3A790GXH/128M in a Full Size ATX board. It has 2 PCI, 3 PCIe slots encoded in three different colours. (green @ x16 mode, blue @ x8 mode, orange @ x4 mode). There is another PCIe x1 next to the north bridge which is covered by the heatsink. Next to it is the sideport memory. A peddle card is required to switch the board's operation when in CrossFire mode. To the rear corner, we can see the audio codec from Realtek, GbE controller chipset. To the right corner of this mainboard, we can find the eSATA connecting port. 8 pin AUX power supply connector. The board is using a 5 phase power regulator circuit.