ECS A790GXM-A Black Series Motherboard Review

Conclusions

You should not see ECS A790GXM-A as a low-end motherboard with on-board video for AMD-based systems, because it isn’t – and that is why it will reach the market costing more than motherboards with on-board video based on other chipsets.

This is a mid-range motherboard full of desirable features not present on traditional motherboard with integrated graphics: bigger size (meaning more slots), presence of two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (allowing you to install up to two add-on video cards under CrossFire configuration), dedicated video memory (providing a higher performance for its integrated video), four memory sockets, optical SPDIF output, HDMI output (with audio support), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, RAID 5 support and a decent audio codec for the Average Joe.

You should see this motherboard as a mid-range board that happens to have a decent on-board video, which can be used while you are still deciding which video card you want to buy, in an emergency if your video card is defective or if you want to boost the performance of your Hybrid CrossFire-compatible video card.

Even though in some games AMD 790GX achieved the same performance level of a 64-bit Radeon HD 3450, it is still really tough to play decently with an on-board video solution, as you will still get low frame rates even with all image quality enhancements disabled and running at a low resolution for today’s standards (1024×768).

This motherboard, in our opinion, is too expensive if the only feature you are interested is the fastest on-board video and you won’t use the extra features brought by it. It brings a 3D performance increase between 20% and 30% over AMD 780G but it doesn’t cost only 30% more than an AMD 780G-based motherboard!

The presence of an HDMI connector is a blessing for some people and a curse to other. If you are building a home theater PC (HTPC) the HDMI connector with audio support and the optical SPDIF out are a must and this motherboard will probably fulfill your needs. However, if you don’t plan to connect your PC to an HDTV set you will miss a DVI connector – which isn’t present on this motherboard – since most LCD monitors come with DVI connection, which provides better quality over VGA.

Another feature we must talk about is overclocking, especially because AMD is pushing AMD 790GX as an overclocking-friendly platform. Even though ECS A790GXM-A allows you to massively overclock the chipset graphics engine, provides several voltage adjustments and features full memory timings configuration, it lacks better clock adjustments: the CPU base clock can be adjusted only in 5 MHz increments (and not at 1 MHz increments as usual) and you can’t adjust the PCI Express or the HyperTransport clocks, which is imperative for a better overclocking.

In summary, ECS A790GXM-A can be a good pick if you are building a mid-range PC and plan to decide which video card you will pick later or will buy a video card compatible with Hybrid CrossFire. The presence of the on-board video – even though it is the fastest around – shouldn’t be the only weight in your decision.