This is a discussion on Preview: Asus M3A78-EM within the Reviews and Previews forums, part of the TechEnclave Gateway category; I have multiple rigs at home, as most of you know. Recently I hooked up everything to a network, and ...
I have multiple rigs at home, as most of you know. Recently I hooked up everything to a network, and as it happened the machine that migrated to the center of the action was my browsing machine. I needed to upgrade that quickly, but the M2A-VM that was the heart of that machine, didn't have all the features I needed. I was looking for a feature-rich board that would have all the connectivity I'd ever need, decent graphics performance, and a benign heat and power consumption profile.
So when I heard the M3A-78 EM was in stock, I jumped to the occasion. Having had the board for a few days in the system, I'm publishing a small preview of board. This preview contains no benchmarks, so those looking for performance statisics will be disappointed. There are enough on the web with this chipset battling it out with others, so I'm basically steering clear of the benchmark game. Plus, it's a low power system most of the time, so the focus is on features, silence and power consumption.
@rocky: Installing the software now, will put up a separate review for that.
@Shailesh: The 780G supports two-channel LPCM, not 7.1
@main_trouble: The Gigabyte doesn't have support for CPUs more than 95 watts, and doesn't have a Displayport connector, if you don't need these you might want to save the money.
@Stalker: Actually the camera's on loan from a friend. It's too complex for me to handle. I'm just learning a few basics, but the thing is I never get the time to shoot in the day. Flourescent light really mothers any shots you take.
I hate the pics. The camera is very capable, but my adjustments are a mess.
I'm putting a quick note on Express Gate. You have to install it from Windows, which sort of defeats the purpose. It's not hardcoded on the mobo, but there is a short routine in the BIOS that calls it before it calls the boot routine. The actual code is stored on the hard disk. It's pretty much useless actually, it has chat, skype and a browser, but no media player and very limited customisation.
Pretty much any live distro whumps this into the dust, including a tiny little thing I use called Pen Drive Linux (that's based on Mandriva IIRC).
The great thing abut Express Gate is that no configuration is required at all, specially if your net comes over a LAN cable thorugh a router. For any Live distro you need to input some basics, but this is truly plug and play. I'm a little surprised at the dependency on Windows. I'll see if it can run off the DVD.
No extended resolution support and no media player, no terminal, nothing. No capability to add software or other devices. It's like a kiosk, actually.
Page 1 
a 400D at that 
Linear Mode
