Sick of all the Intel P55 boards launched yesterday? Fear not, the AMD faithful can always turn to Sapphire who has today announced a new microATX board based on the AMD 785G chipset and SB710 south bridge.
The board, dubbed the PURE 785G and given model number PI-AM3RS785G, supports AMD's Phenom II processors and up to 8GB of DDR3 at speeds of up to 1,600MHz.
The cherry in the 785G cake is an integrated graphics processor that's said to be equivalent to an ATI Radeon HD 4200-series GPU. We know it to be derived from a 3000-series discrete card, but what matters is that it brings plenty of useful features to the table - including full support for DirectX 10.1 and hardware-based video processing courtesy of UVD 2.0.
Elsewhere, users will find an on-board 128MBit DDR3 sideport memory, six SATA ports with RAID functionality, an IDE connector, Gigabit Ethernet, six-channel HD audio and support for up to eight USB devices. Video connectivity comes in the form of DVI, VGA and HDMI outputs.
Should the ATI IGP fail to live up to expectations, there's a single PCIe x16 expansion slot allowing for the use of a discrete graphics card.
Looks a promising solution for a small HTPC build, and early retailer listings have priced the board at around £64. Want to know how the 785G chipset compares? Take a look at our in-depth review.
