In Figure 1 you can have a good look at ECS A785GM-M. It is a socket AM3 motherboard, meaning that it supports only socket AM3 processors and DDR3 memories.

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Figure 1: ECS A785GM-M motherboard.

The reviewed motherboard has only one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and one standard PCI slots. At least this allows you to install a “real” video card on it whenever you get tired of its on-board video performance. When installing a video card you may want to install a model that is compatible with Hybrid Graphics technology, this way instead of simply disabling the on-board video you can but it to work in parallel with the video card under CrossFire mode in order to increase performance (read our SLI vs. CrossFire tutorial for a complete list of compatible cards).

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Figure 2: Motherboard slots.

This motherboard has four DDR3 memory sockets. Usually low-end motherboards have only two memory sockets, so having four of them on this board is a blessing, as it will help you adding more memory in the future without needing to replace your current memory modules. Since this motherboard has only DDR3 sockets you cannot install DDR2 memories. For enabling dual-channel feature you must install the modules on sockets with the same color, if you are installing two modules.

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Figure 3: Memory sockets.