Conclusion
12
AMD is positioning the 790GX as a jack of all trades, able to offer decent IGP performance for the occasional bout of gaming whilst also featuring improved overclocking and CrossFireX support for the enthusiast market. Both are certainly roles Gigabyte's GA-M790GP-DS4H could fill.
The problem with having a single product cover both markets is that, at £110, the price for the M790GP-DS4H is considerably higher than the value-orientated IGP chipsets, and the vast majority of buyers looking for overclocking support will pair the system with a discrete graphics card. There's little convergence, and the question remains on whether there is a market niche looking for a 'flexible' product able to fill either role.
The 790GX's IGP performance may be the highest we've seen, aided by both increased clockspeeds over its 780G predecessor and SidePort memory, but if you are looking purely for an integrated graphics board, the far cheaper 780G makes more sense. If we had £110 to spend we would get the cheaper motherboard and pocket £50, or use the savings to buy a discrete graphics card such as the ATI Radeon HD 3650 or NVIDIA 9500GT.
We feel that given its pricing the 790GX is essentially replacing the 790X as a mid-range enthusiast platform, rather than truly competing with IGP options. That is until cheaper mATX boards come along.
Had AMD introduced an equivalent to NVIDIA's HybridPower, with the IGP being used for 2D work and the more power-hungry discrete card only kicking in for gaming, it would have been much clearer why an IGP would be desirable on an enthusiast board, but as it stands the integrated graphics is a nice feature to have, but quite likely to go unused.
Despite the GA-M790GP-DS4H's price precluding us from recommending it as a purely IGP board, it does warrant praise as a mid-range enthusiast board, offering improved overclocking - at least of Black Edition CPUs - over the 790X chipset thanks to the SB750's Advanced Clock Calibration functionality.
HEXUS Awards
The Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H receives a HEXUS.media speed award, for setting the bar ever higher for IGP performance. It doesn't, however, receive an outright recommendation as an IGP platform, as a 780G board can provide the same media connectivity and feature-set with a much smaller outlay.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H is available for £110.45.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Gigabyte's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
