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ASUS M3A78-T AMD Motherboard
Conclusion
The performance of the Asus M3A78-T was a board that is worth considering for your next rig. Using the new 790GX chipset nearly eliminates the need to purchase graphic cards. If the user is not into gaming or dealing with 3D environments, there is no need to get an additional graphics cards since the onboard performs well enough. If you are interested in using an additional graphics card, then I would suggest getting the ATI Radeon 3450, a cost of $40. With the ATI 3450 your system would work in what is called Hybrid Crossfire, using both the onboard and discrete card to render the output.
One feature that this review didn't cover in depth is the Asus Express Gate, which is very handy for those times you are looking to search for something on the internet in a hurry and you don't have the time to wait for the Vista to load up to the desktop from a cold boot.
I found this feature very handy when I was about to call it a night and wanted to check web mail one last time, but the PC was powered off. With Express Gate installed, I was able to go from a powered off PC to my web mail site in under 8 seconds. The web browser is crash out on me every so often, so there are a few bugs to work out for ASUS, but this feature is very handy! Other services express gate provides are e-mail, sharing, e-music, photos and chat.
The M3A78-T provides a very nice home theatre environment as it has the HDMI cable and supports 1080p. So those of you who are looking to connect your next gaming machine to your home theatre system, this is the motherboard your looking for. Since the board comes with HDMI and also an Optical S/PDIF out port, you will be able to connect the PC directly to your home theatre without the need to rig a special cables or deal with signal quality loss due to signal conversion.
Being priced at only $149.99*, the motherboard is reasonably priced for its performance. For those of you who want to have a high performing and low cost / power usage processor I would recommend the AMD Athlon X2 4800 for only $76*. And if you are looking for higher graphical performance, the ATI 3450 is the way to go because of the Hybrid Crossfire Support, and it only costs $39.99*. So for under $300, you can have a low cost energy efficient high performance computer.
* : All prices are based off of newegg.com on August 21, 2008.