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Our goal was to test an AMD motherboard with high(er) overclocking capabilities with the cheapest Athlon II CPU (AMD Athlon II X2 240 + Coolermaster Hyper TX3 cooler) on the market and compare
it to a less expensive board with a more expensive processor (AMD Phenom II X3 710). In most cases the overcloced Athlon II X2 240 could (almost) keep up with the Phenom II X3 710 and in
in gaming it was even a bit faster. At the time of this test the X3 710 configuration was about 10+% more expensive.
We also did this test with a low budget graphics card, that is still on the market, but is hardly capable of keeping up with the latest games. However if we compare this card to the
onboard Radeon 4200 we must conclude that the Radeon 4200 doesn't even reach half the speed of the Radeon 3650.
If you are looking for a budget board and you still have some (older) DDR2 memory this board is certainly a good choice.
Overclocking was stable and the advanced voltage settings for the cooler make it a perfect budget overclocker.
If you want to spend some more on the processer and choose a lesser motherboard that choice is up to you.
If you have to buy new memory we would advice you to go for DDR3 memory and an AM3 motherboard like the ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO which is about 15% more expensive and has the same chipset as the M4A785D-M PRO.
Pros:
- High(er) overclocking capabilities.
- HDMI connection, optical audio out and eSata.
- Four dimm slots. (in case you have 3 or 4 small(er) dimms)
Cons:
- Hybrid CrossfireX only works with a few (older) graphics cards.
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