Review: AMD 690G motherboard showdown - ASUS v Sapphire

Final thoughts, HEXUS awards, HEXUS where2buy, HEXUS.right2reply, further reading

Both the ASUS M2A-VM HDMI and Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD are competent motherboards based around a well thought out and innovative chipset.

The AMD 690G's excellent feature set - and the low price of motherboards that use it - make it ideally suited for building low-cost systems. In theory, it should also be close to ideal for home theatre PCs.

However, the implementation of the ASUS and Sapphire boards are somewhat disappointing for HTPC use. Both are up to the task, but would have to be paired with carefully chosen components to ensure minimal frustration

Neither suffers from any obvious design flaws at the PCB-level but each falls foul of some annoying issues that could so easily have been avoided.

Using half-height PCBs and brackets for the included riser-cards and additional outputs would have added minimal cost and allowed both to fit into small, consumer-electronics-style cases without compromising on connectivity.

In a perfect world, we'd also have seen DVI-I and HDMI integrated into the back-plane of each motherboard, doing away completely with the need for the DVIO card.

For sure, each is a good motherboard that offers a strong blend of performance and features for its price-point. However, they lack the attention to detail that would let them cross the threshold from being good products to becoming great ones.

HEXUS.certification

Both boards completed our tests successfully and offer a range of media-centric features, so each is deserving of the HEXUS.labs Media certification.

ASUS M2A-VM HDMI
Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD

HEXUS Where2Buy

The ASUS M2A-VM HDMI is available from Scan at £42.65 inc VAT (with free delivery to HEXUS.community members - check out the details).
The Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD is available from Ebuyer at £46.43 inc VAT.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If representatives from ASUS or Sapphire choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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