Did some looking around... nothing compares 785G to 790G directly. Found this frustrating as I'm about to go buy a 790GX board and now AMD come tell me they got a 785GX thingy. How the heck do these manufacturers manage to do this to me every time I want an upgrade?
The 785G supports UVD2 with full H.264/VC-1 bitstream decode/transcoding. It runs @ 500MHz. It also allows some post-processing in hardware such as sharpening, etc. It has a decent hardware upscaler for blowing up the HD content from 1920x1080 to 2560x1600 for monitors that can do that (like for example the 30" HP LP3065 going for some R15K
). It also adds 6 channel audio throughput on the HDMI plug if you want to run a external decoder.
The 790G supports UVD+ apparently which also does H.264/VC-1, but things seem to indicate the 785G does it better. The 790G runs @ 700MHz. Not sure about post-processing in hardware, but both IGP have the same amount of shaders which will do the work.
Note, they indicate H.264 decode, not x.264. So all those x.264 MKV files people download are still going to be decoded by the main CPU and not the GPU. Here's the fix for those interested:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/accelerate-x264-1080p-movies-over-the-gpu-guide/
For hardware H.264 playback one will need PowerDVD or WinDVD.
The 785G needs the SB710 southbridge. The 790G needs the SB750. From what I can tell, you lose RAID5 support going with the SB710. I want to add a port multiplier to my setup so not sure if that will be affected.
Most confused whether I should aim for the 785 or 790. I think 790 it is then. It would be nice if people here could tell me on a daily basis that the 785 does not exist... just until I've purchased the 790.
