Even though we've looked at a lot of ASRock motherboards there's still one that we have yet to look at, ASRock's A780FullHD which is basically a vanilla 780G motherboard. That said the board seems to be no slouch but doesn't have any sideport memory. Let's see how it performs.

The board resembles other ASRock motherboards and other 780G micro-ATX boards. There's not much one say about the layout, it definitely works and nothing should get in the way with the only major cooling on the Southbridge and even then just a small heatsink. Even this though is more than enough for the SB700 which runs cool.

Onboard the card features two PCI slots, one PCI-Express slot, one 16X PCI-Express slot, 4 DDR2 1066 RAM slots, six SATA ports. External expansion slots include a VGA adapter, DVI adapter, USB ports, Gigabit LAN, and 5.1 audio. No E-SATA or Firewire here or Digital Audio out but pretty decent.

I/O ports on the back consist of a PS2 mouse and keyboard port, VGA-Output, DVI-Output (ASRock also includes a handy DVI-to-HDMI adapter), six USB 2.0 ports, an E-SATA port, Firewire, 1 Gigabit Ethernet jack, and analog HD audio output. Isn't it great that motherboard companies finally started putting 6 USB 2.0 ports on the back? Long overdue and now even on boards under $100.



Accesories are a little trim with a few SATA cables, IDE cable and floppy, man, I/O shield, and SATA to molex power adapter. This is one of the smaller bundles we've seen of the new ASRock board but this seems to be a minimum 780G board.

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Here are the technical specs from ASRock.

General
CPU - Support for Socket AM2+ / AM2 processors: AMD Phenom™ FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core / Athlon X2 Dual-Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron processor
- Supports CPU up to 140W
- AMD LIVE!™ Ready
- Supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
- FSB 2600 MHz (5.2 GT/s)
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports Hyper-Transport 3.0 (HT 3.0) Technology
Chipset - Northbridge: AMD 780G
- Southbridge: AMD SB700
Memory - Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667/533 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP and Windows® Vista™. For Windows® XP 64-bit and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports Jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, NB Voltage Multi-adjustment
- Supports Smart BIOS
Audio, Video and Networking
Graphics - Integrated AMD RV610 graphics
- DX10 class iGPU, Pixel Shader 4.0
- Max. shared memory 512MB
- Dual VGA Output: Support DVI-D and D-Sub ports by independent display controllers
- Supports HDCP function with DVI-D port
- Supports Full HD 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback
Audio - 5.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio (ALC662 Audio Codec)
LAN - PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Realtek RTL8111C
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
Expansion / Connectivity
Slots - 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (green @ x16 mode)
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot
- 2 x PCI slots
- Supports ATI™ Hybrid CrossFireX™
Connector - 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and JBOD), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x IR header
- 1 x COM port header
- CPU/Chassis FAN connector
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 4 pin 12V power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers (support 4 USB 2.0 ports)
Rear Panel I/O ASRock DVI I/O Plus
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x VGA/D-Sub Port
- 1 x VGA/DVI-D Port
- 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port
- HD Audio Jack: Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
Other Features / Miscellaneous
Unique Feature - ASRock OC Tuner
- Intelligent Energy Saver
- Hybrid Booster:
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)
- ASRock AM2 Boost: ASRock Patented Technology to boost memory performance up to 12.5%
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)
Accessories - Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 1 x SATA Data Cable (optional)
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable (optional)
Hardware Monitor - CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU Fan Tachometer
- Chassis Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - Micro ATX Form Factor: 9.6-in x 9.6-in, 24.4 cm x 24.4 cm
- Solid Capacitor for CPU power
OS - Microsoft® Windows® XP / XP Media Center / XP 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, WHQL

We see a fairly standard ASRock BIOS here which is quite good overall. One thing I like is that the multipliers no longer have to be keyed in and start at the defaults rather than the lowest value possible.

We're seeing fairly standard over clocks with all the 7xx chipsets from AMD and this ASRock even though MicroATX and a little cheaper overclocks quite well reaching 3.1GHz with the Phenom 9950 BE.

Here is our test system

CPU AMD Phenom X4 9950BE
Memory Corsair XMS Dominator 4GB
Hard Drive Western Digital 750GB
Heatsink Zalmaan 9700
Display Samsung 20" LCD

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 with Catalyst 8.10 drivers.

We tested the transfer rates of our Western Digital 750GB to AMD's SB750 Southbridge. We compared this board to the high-end Asus board with the SB750 chipset and 790FX Northbridge with no integrated video.


 Burst Speed Average Write Speed CPU Utilization
Asus M3A79-T Deluxe 208.6MB/s 72.7MB/s 3%
ASRock 780FullHD 205.1MB/s 70.5MB/s 3%

Not a huge difference between a very expensive motherboard and a cheaper ASRock at least in Southbridge testing.

Next we tested external USB 2.0 transfer rates with a WD Raptor hard drive.


 Burst Speed Average Read Speed
Asus M3A79-T Deluxe 31.5 MB/s 27 MB/s
ASRock 780FullHD 33.8 MB/s 30.3MB/s

Bit of a switch here in USB performance but nothing that can be accounted to variables in testing.

Next we tested game performance against Gigabyte's 780G motherboard.


 Cryis GPU Bench UT3Flyby 3DMark 2006
Gigabyte 780G 24.4 25.3 1549
ASRock 780FullHD 18.5 22.7 1048

As you can see you do lose quite a bit with the loss of Sideport memory from the board. If you're looking to do gaming you'll probably want to look at least a 780G with sideport memory if not a 790GX.

Power consumption is up next. Idle measurements were taking at 5 minutes idle into Windows Vista desktop, load was measured with Valve's map creator benchmark which stresses all four cores.


 Idle Load
Gigabyte 780G 80W 125W
ASRock 780FullHD 77W 121W

Sideport memory adds slightly to the overall power consumption of the board.




Conclusion:
If you're looking for a 780G board stripped down to basically the bare minimum then this board will serve you well. The board is still solid, stable, and overclocks quite well and features all the benefits of the 780G and SB700 chipset from AMD. But if you're looking for good gaming performance or some better external adapters such as E-SATA and Firewire then this board may not do it for you. You'll probably want to check out a better ASRock option or Asus or Gigabyte. It really is just the basics of the 780G + SB700 and for many that's enough.

Pricing:

You can find this motherboard for $83 on the market.

Score: 92%