ASRock M3A780GXH/128M
Linux Support:
Our test system built around the ASRock M3A780GXH/128M consisted of an AMD Phenom II X3 710 CPU, 2GB of OCZ DDR3-1600MHz memory, a Seagate 250GB ST3250310AS SATA hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. When attempting to boot the Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD installer, we were dropped back to BusyBox. Ubuntu 9.04 had not liked this motherboard / system configuration. Adjusting the BIOS settings and taking other steps to try to circumvent this problem on Ubuntu 9.04 were to no avail. However, once upgrading to a development snapshot of Ubuntu 9.10 with the Linux 2.6.30 kernel, Ubuntu had booted without fault and the system was running fine. All of the onboard components had worked except for LM_Sensors being unable to detect any of the system power/thermal/fan sensors. ASRock's Instant Boot technology also only works with Microsoft Windows operating systems for accelerating the boot process.
When overclocking the AMD Phenom II X3 710 processor, we had no problems pushing this 2.60GHz processor past 3.50GHz processor. There still was room for pushing this tri-core AMD processor further had we used an after-market cooling solution. We have benchmarked the ASRock M3A780GXH/128M system quite extensively already and those motherboard test results from Ubuntu Linux can be found in our AMD Phenom II X3 review -- along with the overclocked results. There are results from the Phoronix Test Suite covering a variety of sub-systems in that article.
Conclusion:
The ASRock M3A780GXH/128M motherboard may boast support for AMD's latest and greatest AM3 desktop processors along with great overclocking support, Firewire, 3-Way CrossFireX, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, and other features, but it will not cost you a great deal of money. In fact, the M3A780GXH/128M is retailing for just short of $90 USD. This is not the best AM3 motherboard one can find on the market, but considering its feature set of this 780G + SB710 product, it is quite the bargain.
For additional pricing information and reviews on ASRock motherboards, visit TestFreaks.com.
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