14 DAY TRIAL // VESA's half-baked DisplayPort digital interface seems to become more an more popular with LCD display and graphics cards manufacturers. However, ASRock has just announced their new A780FullDisplayPort motherboard offering, world's first DisplayPort device of its kind.
The company's allegations are only half true: while it is touted to be the "world's first DisplayPort motherboard", the connector is not built into the board. Instead, access to the DisplayPort connector is granted via a free DisplayPort card that ships with the motherboard. The card plugs into one of the two PCI slots, which leaves the user with only one available extension slot.
The motherboard comes with built-in graphics powered by a Radeon HD 3200 graphics core, with full HD 1080p Blu-ray/HD-DVD playback. The video output offering is extremely generous, and the rear panel offers access to the D-Sub, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectors, that allows the motherboard to be connected to any existing LCD display.
The integrated RV610 graphics core also offers support for Microsoft's DirectX 10 technology, Pixel Shader 4.0 and ATI Hybrid CrossFireX technology. It allows users to share maximum 512 MB of system memory to be used for graphics, for smooth gaming experiences.
The motherboard comes with AMD's 780G and SB700 chipset combo and works with any AM2 and AM2+ processors. Other important features to be found in ASRock's A780FullDisplayPort motherboard are 6 SATA2 ports, RAID and PCI-Express Gigabit LAN, IEEE1394 (FireWire) and 6 ready-to-use USB 2.0 ports.
The DisplayPort interface is a state-of-the-art digital interconnect that allows increased data transfer rates between a display and the computer, while being fully compatible with the HDCP 1.3 digital rights management standard.
The new motherboard provides users with an out-of-the-box DisplayPort interconnect, which means that you will need a DisplayPort-ready monitor to enjoy high-definition content. At the moment, Dell and Samsung are the only LCD display manufacturers that provide DisplayPort interfaces built into their products.