Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H Graphics??

J

jls944

Member
Can the Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H handle HD quality video or should I get a graphics card? Here is the setup I was thinking of going with:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 255 Socket AM3 part
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H board
Memory: OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3
HDD: Western Digital AV-GP WD15EVDS
Chassis: Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX
Blu-Ray: LG black 8X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250

If a graphic card it needed I was going to buy: SAPPHIRE 100293L Radeon HD 5570

As I want to keep the build as cheap as possible, I don't want to buy something if it's not necessary. Any input would be appreciated. Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the build in general.
 
I've not known any motherboard video chipset yet that was worth much of anything, especially as far as heavy lifting goes. But you do have one advantage with it....just get it and see, and if it can't handle the load, then get the radeon.
 
Heh...sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I had an informed opinion. ;) I only mentioned the Radeon because that's what he listed as his potential video card to get. I'm just assuming it's got the power to handle it. Considering the nvidia based gigabyte card I bought 4 years ago could handle HD rendering, I'm pretty sure anything today will handle it.

That being said, everyone is usually biased toward nvidia or ATI, same as Intel vs. AMD. I can go either way. For me, the main driver for card selection was if it was fanless. One less fan is that much less noise in an HTPC. Gigabyte is a good brand.
 
I've got the GA-MA785G-UD3H. I think the HDMI output is as good as my Samsung TV can handle. I put the Lite-On BD Combo, Blu-Rays play fine.
I've got two big disapointments so far.
I have a touch-screen on the VGA output and the TV on the HDMI. There seems to be NO way to output a proper formatted screen to both simultaneously.
I have not yet put together a simple way to switch modes.
 
That should more than handle HD or BD playback, and I *think* (though I may be wrong) you can even get 7.1 LPCM over the onboard HDMI.

My old 780G board with X2 4400+ could *just* handle BD playback, the slowest part being the onboard video (since it used main memory for video buffers, it slowed down such things). Going to an HDMI equipped ATI video card made it much more responsive, but it worked without it. The 785G is a small update to the 780G and should do fine. The Athlon II 255 is 3.1ghz vs the 4400's 2.3ghz, so it has plenty of clock for it too.

If you do have any problems, any of the low end HD5xxx cards will work great for this. The old HD4xxx would too but for about the same money you can get more performance and lower power / less heat out of the HD5xxx.

Do be aware that due to some driver issues with some AVRs, you may not be able to output 7.1 properly (getting instead only 2.0). If so there's work arounds with making custom monitor EDID files to load into windows. I had to do this with my ATI 4850 and Yamaha VX-663.
 
Also, using onboard for HD / BD playback you probably need to set the memory allocated to onboard video to 512MB at least, that's what I had to do on the 780G. Otherwise PowerDVD did some weird things... such as only playing video at 1/2 or some other size and other oddities. I don't know if they ever got working 64 bit versions but back when I was playing with it I could only get it all to work in 32-bit XP due to complaining about HDCP encryption (it was there in 64-bit, just that PowerDVD was only 32-bit and didn't know how to check it on 64-bit OS) Iwasn't using Vista in either flavor so may have been fine there.
 
If the motherboard dosn't have an HDMI output you won't be able to play Blu-ray disks in 1080p (It requires a HDCP video card and monitor).
 
The 5450 comes in a fan less version so if you do decide to go with a discrete card and you will not be doing any hardcore gaming then the 5450 will be the best (quiet) choice for HTPC instead of the 5570.
 
I'm going fanless to these days..not for noise reasons...i just had the fans on every single graphics card i've ever owned fail on me. I think it's too hard for them to make good performing fans in such a small package.
 
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