Ever since the release of AMD A Series APU motherboard vendors has been churning out boards to cater users need and providing plethora of offerings to suite the taste of every set of audience out there. Asus one of the leading motherboard manufacturer has a released several Fm1 socket based motherboard. Today we will lay our hands on the premium offering by Asus tagged as F1 A75 V-Pro.
Asus F1 A75 V-Pro is a top notch board offered by Asus to the Indian customers. Glittering with all the utilities and expansion options the F1 A75 V-Pro board brings a lot to the table. Asus has ensured that the board performs solid and allows users to exploit the most out of the newly released A-Series APU; the board has series overclocking headroom and home grown features to gratify enthusiast users looking for mid-high end rig base on the A-Series APU.
About the Company – Asus on the leading manufacturer of electronics and computers with its headquarters situated in Taiwan. Touted for innovative and varied products, Asus is one of the well-known brand in motherboard manufacturing.
[page]
Package and Bundled Accessories - Asus shipped the motherboard box in a very naïve packing with no outer Styrofoam or bubble wrap packing. Opening the box there was lack of adequate protection. Other than the antistatic bag, the insides were empty and lack further protection of the board from shock and physical damage. Our previous encounter with Asrock A75 board left us mesmerized with the prevention and covering material that comes with it.
If you are familiar with Asus boards then the box design will be reminiscent to you. The board comes with decent black box with some logo printed, listing the peers of the boards in a bold way. Flipping the board upside down you will notice a slew of information printed.
The board even though is a premium offering from Asus doesn’t deliver on the packing and accessories front. Expect from the bare minimum there was nothing fancy in the package, only the requisite backplate, manual, sata cables (2 Nos), and a unique pin extender.
During the course of the review and initial installation the bundled accessories were on the average side, on the one hand the pin extender pave the way for easy installation by seamlessly allowing you to install the fornt connectors and plug in the board while on the other site the backplate though look firm and coated on the back with foam didn’t fit. I tried hard and worked a lot but failed to install the backplate and ended up bending the site fin of the plate.
[page]
In board features, specifications and utilities
In the box
Software and Utilities
One area where Asus really shine is the sheer chip level and software integration that it offers. Offering slew of home grown ASIC and fine tuning software allows relentless integration and control over various aspect of the system. Some of the peers and well touted technology boasted by asus are –
To make use of TPU there is a inbuilt switch in the board that toggles the activity state of the ASIC. Once activated the TPU will use the Fast Preset to overclock the system. The led down is that the initial profile will only overclock the system by 3blck measuring in puny system overclock.There is another overclocking profile under Extreme tag. However you can only switch it using the Asus AI Suite II software, once activated the system will be overclocked by measly ~9-10%.
For manual tning of the system there is a manual mode, which like any other tuning software provide access to various parameters for overclocking.
Other than these nifty features Asus offers other handful monitoring and tuning softwares in the AI Suite II. Some of them are - Fan Xpert, Sensor Recorder, Digi+ VRM and Asus Probe.
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The Board - Initial impression and the looks of the board is striking. Unlike other enthusiast class A75 boards, this one feature a full heat pipe design that connects the VRM and Southbridge heat sink, a feature i.e. reminiscent of premium boards. The full heat pipe design adds to the beauty and makes the board stand out from the crowd. The ubiquitous blue-black combination in this board is very pleasing thanks to the new heat sink design from Asus. Looks apart the board offers tremendous headroom for expandability.
Brimmed with top class components and bleeding edge technology, Asus aims to grab the newly created niche market based on the Fm1 socket. Boasting of high quality components the board comes loaded with 6+2 which seems more generous when pitted against 8+2 phase design from ASRock.
A75 Platform: - The A75 chipset from AMD is the top of the line offering for A series APU. The APU from AMD though houses most of the components i.e. CPU, GPU and the northbrige. It still needs a co-processor to manage the I/O needs of the system; this is where A75 FCH (Fusion Control Hub) chips in by providing the requisites for the platform to work. There are 2 chipsets currently available for the mainstream APU (A Series) i.e. A75 and A55 FCH. The board we are testing today features high end A75 chipset loaded with USB3.0 and Sata 3.0 goodness. .
Even though the board features a complete heat-pipe solution there is a lot of room available to work on. The area around the CPU / Ram and VRM is well separated and has ample of room for components to breathe. One the cooling side the board offers a total of 4 fan headers which in turn is quite low when compared to 8 in the ASRock board. The CPU area is clean and has a 8 pin power connector near the VRM region, backed up by ferrite chokes and solid caps the board ensures solid power supply to the cpu even under load.
On the right hand side is the ram slot, reminiscent of other high end mobo you will find 4 DIMM slot, featuring the dual channel combination. Allow you to plug in whopping 64 GB till 2250 Mhz(OC) rams. However the blue DIMMS slot won’t run the ram at the native 1866 MHz (Llano supported), down clocking to 1333 MHz, so if you want to pair up the system with high end ram use the black slots instead. Nearby you will find the MemOk!, switch coupled with Asus DIP (Dual Intelligent Processor). TPU for automatic overclocks and EPU for power saving. Other than that you will find the regular assortment of connectors and switches.
Moving down you will find 6 Sata 3.0 6GBps ports courtesy of FCH A75, all the white sata port operates at 6Gbps and supporting RAID 0,1,10 and JBOD. There’s an additional Blue Sata port, fueled by ASMedia controller. One thing to note, the additional Sata port doesn’t offer any disk combinations such as RAID or JBOD. In the center of the board there is a USB 3.0 (also provided by AMD FCH) onboard switch that be used by users if they have any USB 3.0 upfront.
On the PCI lanes side you will be greeted with ample expandability options. The board features 3 PCI slots, 2 PCIe x1 and 2 PCIe x16 slots. But here is the catch; the PCIe x16 slot in the black colour will only run at x4 mode providing lesser bandwidth. Asus has intentionally capped the bandwidth of this slot not to be confused with A75 FCH limitation. The only reason is to release another high end alternative called F1 A75 v-Pro Evo edition which sports x8-x8 configuration in CF or x16 when used in single card configuration. The sound is delivered by the ubiquitous Realteak chip ALC892 supporting audio upto 8 channels.
Like other A75 boards the I/O panle is fairly crowded with plethora of ports and storage options. From L-R, a single PS2 port for mouse and keyboard, 2 USB 3.0 ports, optical SPDIF, HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, DVI for video. E-SATA port, 2 USB3.0 port (from ASMedia controller), single Ethernet jack, additional usb 2.0 ports and audio hubs.
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System setup and testing methodologies
We will be testing the motherboard thoroughly in every benchmark that churns out the most from the hardware available. To test the hardware we have used the following setup:
Processors:
Motherboard:
Graphics Card
Memory:
2x2048Mb 1866MHz Cas9 Kingston HyperX
Power Supply:
Corsair VX450
Monitor:
Samsung S2233SW
Operating System:
Windows 7 64bit
Software Benchmark:
[page]
Benchmarks
Unigine Sanctuary Benchmark
Unigine is a cross platform graphics engine provider that release handful of benchmarks and games for end users. Based on its engine, Unigine has released many benchmarking software to stress test the graphics engine of the system. We will be testing the Llano with the Sanctuary test suite of Unigine.
3dMark Vantage
3dMark Vantage is a popular 3d and CPU testing program. The software suite comes with arrays of inbuilt test suite chocking the hardware system and getting the best out of them. 3dMark Vantage is developed by FutureMark and is one of the industry benchmark for hardware testing suite.
During the whole test, the ASRock motherboard fell behind the Asus A75 board.
CPU Benchmarks
Dhrystone and Wheatstone CPU
Dhrystone is a multithreaded software benchmark and of the test available from SiSoft Sandra test suites. Being a multithreaded benchmark, it is optimize to test the multi core aspect of the CPU and rely heavily on speed. Wheatstone test is another processor specific arithmetic calculation from Sisoft Sandra. Its primarily aimed for measuring the floating point performance of the CPU.
Both the boards were comparable and on equal scale in this test.
Aida64 CPU Benchmarks
Aida64 or previously known as Everest is a software suite that not only provide benchmarking solution but delivers users with top of the line system detail and CPUID.
In these benchmarks we have used three of the popular benchmarks provided by Aida i.e. CPU Queen, CPU PhotoWorxx and CPU Hash. All of them being CPU intensive test will show Llano abilities in CPU intensive task.
Aida64 AES Encryption
AMD processors have been known for performing better in encryption based software application and Llano is no different.
Aida64 Memory Benchmarks
With enhanced memory controller and lower manufacturing process Llano shouldn’t have much problem dealing with memory intense task.
ASRock turns the table in AIDA Benchmarks by scoring better performance over Asus. However the asus board responded well in the memory benchmarks.
Blender Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open source rendering and compositing software for 3d modeling. Blender is a multithreaded benchmark and is very efficient at utilizing CPU resources.
Cinebench R10 Benchmarks
Cinebench is another rendering test suite from Maxon software for stress testing CPU and GPU compute capabilities of the processors installed.
Cinebench 11.5 Benchmarks
Cinebench 11.5 is the new avatar of R10 benchmark from Maxon software. It provide more tighter integration and more intense rendering test ensuring to stress test the CPU in render compute capabilities.
In Blender both of the boards were equally good however ASRock managed to sneak ahead in Cinebench R10 whereas it lagged in Cinebench 11.5.
Super Pi
Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million.
Both of the board were almost equal in this test.
Wprime
wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions.
Asus managed to sneak ahead by few seconds.
Gaming Benchmarks
TESV-Skyrim
Based on the popular Elder Scroll series, Skyrim is the fifth sequel to the highly acclaimed Oblivion. Not one of the most interesting and additive game/benchmark but still it is able to stress the graphics core and manages to load the cpu cycles.
Dirt3
Colin McRae Dirt3 is one of the most popular and graphics intense game from the Colin McRae series. Topped with brilliant engine and jaw dropping visuals Dirt2 is a decent game to test your graphics performance.
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by the Swedish firm EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS systems. It is a part of the Battlefield series and was released worldwide in March 2010
In gaming performance was not much of a difference between the two board. One thing to note is the substantial increase in the performance of Dual Graphics over standalone 6670 Radeon card.
[page]
BIOS and Overclocking
Asus boards as of now features the newly crafted UEFI BIOS for enhanced security and additional benefits over contemporary BIOS. Asus has topped the boards with a glossy looking BIOS with full mouse integration. Allowing users to feel at home but still tweak as much as they used to do in the traditional system.
Look wise Asus bios beats the Asrock hands down, its more glossier, more polished and more subtle. However there is some missing tid bits here and there. Even though I was using the latest BIOS revision, there was no sign for independent GPU clocking. I know some motherboard offers gimmiky clocking features but thats not what I am referring to. AMD board specially the A75 FCH allows users to manually adjust the multiplier for gpu clocks which was misisng.
Overall working with BIOS was a pleasant experience and the added polish is +1 from our side.
Overclocking Llano however is a different story altogether. We used the multiplier locked APU which restricts the overclocking and to our surprise and despite the heatsink design Asus board wasn't able to hit the mark we achieved with ASRock board.
The maximum stable clock that we reached was 3.51ghz while the IGP clocked at 762Mhz. Still decent enough compared to 3.61Ghz on Asrock with ~800+IGP.
One thing to note that, desite the company claims of 2250+ OC RAm, we weren't able to hit 2200+ irrespective of the dividers we use on the ram.
Overclocked system benchmarks -
3dMark Vantage
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]3dMark Vantage is a popular 3d and CPU testing program. The software suite comes with arrays of inbuilt test suite chocking the hardware system and getting the best out of them. 3dMark Vantage is developed by FutureMark and is one of the industry benchmark for hardware testing suite.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
CPU Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Dhrystone and Wheatstone CPU[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Dhrystone is a multithreaded software benchmark and of the test available from SiSoft Sandra test suites. Being a multithreaded benchmark, it is optimize to test the multi core aspect of the CPU and rely heavily on speed. Wheatstone test is another processor specific arithmetic calculation from Sisoft Sandra. Its primarily aimed for measuring the floating point performance of the CPU.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Aida64 CPU Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Aida64 or previously known as Everest is a software suite that not only provide benchmarking solution but delivers users with top of the line system detail and CPUID.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]In these benchmarks we have used three of the popular benchmarks provided by Aida i.e. CPU Queen, CPU PhotoWorxx and CPU Hash. All of them being CPU intensive test will show Llano abilities in CPU intensive task.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Aida64 AES Encryption
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]AMD processors have been known for performing better in encryption based software application and Llano is no different.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Aida64 Memory Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]With enhanced memory controller and lower manufacturing process Llano shouldn’t have much problem dealing with memory intense task.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Blender Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Blender is a free and open source rendering and compositing software for 3d modeling. Blender is a multithreaded benchmark and is very efficient at utilizing CPU resources.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Cinebench 11.5 Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Cinebench 11.5 is the new avatar of R10 benchmark from Maxon software. It provide more tighter integration and more intense rendering test ensuring to stress test the CPU in render compute capabilities.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Super Pi[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
[/font]
Wprime
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions.[/font]
[page]
Conclusion
Brimmed with exquisite features , industry leading design and solid components, Asus made sure to deliver a solid board for FM1 enthusiast users. Implementing leading edge features such as Digi+VRM, DIP, and host of other useful features makes this board a pleasant choice. However the lack of GPU tuning features and a sluggish AI Suite will be the downside of the board.
The distinctive looks and solid brand portfolio ensures the stability and performance of F1 A75-VPro, however the limited clocking headroom and DRAM (read speed) support will cut the points. But few features that really bothered me is the inclusion of second PCIe slot at x4 speed, even though from company perspective its bit clear that they want more sound offering at the table but from a user point of view it doesn't seems right to pay additional for normal bandwidth at second slot. Capping speed at the second slot doesn't seems right and clearly make the second PCIe slot useless.
Other than its major short comings, the area where Asus needs to work is packaging and bundled accessories. A board of such callibre deserves more pamper. Overall the board and the package is decent if you want a Fm1 platform right now. Considering the risk with Fm2 (trinity) incompatibility with Fm1 socket might hit hard on these boards sale figure. Priced at INR ~8700, the board retails for ~1.5k premium over the ASRock board that we tested and doesn't offer any substantial improvement or quality over the same. Thus recommending the board at this price point will not be fair, had asus priced the board competitive enough with the ASRock offering, it had won over Editors Choice award.
With that said, I will still recommend Asus over ASRock if you are a Linux user, working with Asus and Linux worked flawless while the ASRock board always failed to boot into the system with out of syn messages. Asus has put an overall good board for Fm1 users, so if you are in the market for a overall decent board keep this in your list.
Pros -
Cons -
A Special thanks to Asus India for sending the sample for review.
Click here to view the article
Asus F1 A75 V-Pro is a top notch board offered by Asus to the Indian customers. Glittering with all the utilities and expansion options the F1 A75 V-Pro board brings a lot to the table. Asus has ensured that the board performs solid and allows users to exploit the most out of the newly released A-Series APU; the board has series overclocking headroom and home grown features to gratify enthusiast users looking for mid-high end rig base on the A-Series APU.
About the Company – Asus on the leading manufacturer of electronics and computers with its headquarters situated in Taiwan. Touted for innovative and varied products, Asus is one of the well-known brand in motherboard manufacturing.
[page]
Package and Bundled Accessories - Asus shipped the motherboard box in a very naïve packing with no outer Styrofoam or bubble wrap packing. Opening the box there was lack of adequate protection. Other than the antistatic bag, the insides were empty and lack further protection of the board from shock and physical damage. Our previous encounter with Asrock A75 board left us mesmerized with the prevention and covering material that comes with it.
If you are familiar with Asus boards then the box design will be reminiscent to you. The board comes with decent black box with some logo printed, listing the peers of the boards in a bold way. Flipping the board upside down you will notice a slew of information printed.
The board even though is a premium offering from Asus doesn’t deliver on the packing and accessories front. Expect from the bare minimum there was nothing fancy in the package, only the requisite backplate, manual, sata cables (2 Nos), and a unique pin extender.
During the course of the review and initial installation the bundled accessories were on the average side, on the one hand the pin extender pave the way for easy installation by seamlessly allowing you to install the fornt connectors and plug in the board while on the other site the backplate though look firm and coated on the back with foam didn’t fit. I tried hard and worked a lot but failed to install the backplate and ended up bending the site fin of the plate.
[page]
In board features, specifications and utilities
In the box
- Driver CD
- User Guide
- IO Shield
- Q-Connector for Front Panel
- 2 x Locking SATA 6 Gbps cables, right angled.
Software and Utilities
One area where Asus really shine is the sheer chip level and software integration that it offers. Offering slew of home grown ASIC and fine tuning software allows relentless integration and control over various aspect of the system. Some of the peers and well touted technology boasted by asus are –
- TPU (TurboV Processing Unit) - It’s a simple ASIC in the board that allows users to push the system to a higher level. Offering overclocking on the fly, the best part its platform agonist means it will work any platform be it AMD or Intel. Being an ASIC it doesn’t load the processor for performing its function and allows boosting the system performance even before the CPU is ready. Other than just booting performance it has the ability to tweak voltage around various system components such as ram, igp etc.
To make use of TPU there is a inbuilt switch in the board that toggles the activity state of the ASIC. Once activated the TPU will use the Fast Preset to overclock the system. The led down is that the initial profile will only overclock the system by 3blck measuring in puny system overclock.There is another overclocking profile under Extreme tag. However you can only switch it using the Asus AI Suite II software, once activated the system will be overclocked by measly ~9-10%.
For manual tning of the system there is a manual mode, which like any other tuning software provide access to various parameters for overclocking.
- EPU (Energy Processing Unit) – Another ASIC that offers tremendous profile and brings a lot of power saving to the table. Just like TPU, EPU has a dedicated switch to toggle it. There are 2 modes instilled in the EPU – Power Saving, Maximum Performance. The maximum performance will let the CPU cores toggle and throttle speeds and voltages when required, it mostly Asus implementation of AMD CoolnQuite. The power saving once activated won’t let CPU to throttle much, saving power by restricting the envelope. Good for long time system use.
Other than these nifty features Asus offers other handful monitoring and tuning softwares in the AI Suite II. Some of them are - Fan Xpert, Sensor Recorder, Digi+ VRM and Asus Probe.
[page]
The Board - Initial impression and the looks of the board is striking. Unlike other enthusiast class A75 boards, this one feature a full heat pipe design that connects the VRM and Southbridge heat sink, a feature i.e. reminiscent of premium boards. The full heat pipe design adds to the beauty and makes the board stand out from the crowd. The ubiquitous blue-black combination in this board is very pleasing thanks to the new heat sink design from Asus. Looks apart the board offers tremendous headroom for expandability.
Brimmed with top class components and bleeding edge technology, Asus aims to grab the newly created niche market based on the Fm1 socket. Boasting of high quality components the board comes loaded with 6+2 which seems more generous when pitted against 8+2 phase design from ASRock.
A75 Platform: - The A75 chipset from AMD is the top of the line offering for A series APU. The APU from AMD though houses most of the components i.e. CPU, GPU and the northbrige. It still needs a co-processor to manage the I/O needs of the system; this is where A75 FCH (Fusion Control Hub) chips in by providing the requisites for the platform to work. There are 2 chipsets currently available for the mainstream APU (A Series) i.e. A75 and A55 FCH. The board we are testing today features high end A75 chipset loaded with USB3.0 and Sata 3.0 goodness. .
Even though the board features a complete heat-pipe solution there is a lot of room available to work on. The area around the CPU / Ram and VRM is well separated and has ample of room for components to breathe. One the cooling side the board offers a total of 4 fan headers which in turn is quite low when compared to 8 in the ASRock board. The CPU area is clean and has a 8 pin power connector near the VRM region, backed up by ferrite chokes and solid caps the board ensures solid power supply to the cpu even under load.
On the right hand side is the ram slot, reminiscent of other high end mobo you will find 4 DIMM slot, featuring the dual channel combination. Allow you to plug in whopping 64 GB till 2250 Mhz(OC) rams. However the blue DIMMS slot won’t run the ram at the native 1866 MHz (Llano supported), down clocking to 1333 MHz, so if you want to pair up the system with high end ram use the black slots instead. Nearby you will find the MemOk!, switch coupled with Asus DIP (Dual Intelligent Processor). TPU for automatic overclocks and EPU for power saving. Other than that you will find the regular assortment of connectors and switches.
Moving down you will find 6 Sata 3.0 6GBps ports courtesy of FCH A75, all the white sata port operates at 6Gbps and supporting RAID 0,1,10 and JBOD. There’s an additional Blue Sata port, fueled by ASMedia controller. One thing to note, the additional Sata port doesn’t offer any disk combinations such as RAID or JBOD. In the center of the board there is a USB 3.0 (also provided by AMD FCH) onboard switch that be used by users if they have any USB 3.0 upfront.
On the PCI lanes side you will be greeted with ample expandability options. The board features 3 PCI slots, 2 PCIe x1 and 2 PCIe x16 slots. But here is the catch; the PCIe x16 slot in the black colour will only run at x4 mode providing lesser bandwidth. Asus has intentionally capped the bandwidth of this slot not to be confused with A75 FCH limitation. The only reason is to release another high end alternative called F1 A75 v-Pro Evo edition which sports x8-x8 configuration in CF or x16 when used in single card configuration. The sound is delivered by the ubiquitous Realteak chip ALC892 supporting audio upto 8 channels.
Like other A75 boards the I/O panle is fairly crowded with plethora of ports and storage options. From L-R, a single PS2 port for mouse and keyboard, 2 USB 3.0 ports, optical SPDIF, HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, DVI for video. E-SATA port, 2 USB3.0 port (from ASMedia controller), single Ethernet jack, additional usb 2.0 ports and audio hubs.
[page]
System setup and testing methodologies
We will be testing the motherboard thoroughly in every benchmark that churns out the most from the hardware available. To test the hardware we have used the following setup:
Processors:
- AMD A8 3850
Motherboard:
- Asus F1A75-V PRO
- ASRock A75 Extreme 6
Graphics Card
- ATI 6550D (Llano IGP)
- Asus 6670 for Dual Graphics
Memory:
2x2048Mb 1866MHz Cas9 Kingston HyperX
Power Supply:
Corsair VX450
Monitor:
Samsung S2233SW
Operating System:
Windows 7 64bit
Software Benchmark:
- Aida64
- 3dMark Vantage
- Blender
- SiSoft Sandra
- Cinebench R10
- Cinebench 11.5
- SuperPi
- WPrime
- Unigine Sanctuary
- Dirt3
- The Elder Scroll V - Skyrim
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
[page]
Benchmarks
Unigine Sanctuary Benchmark
Unigine is a cross platform graphics engine provider that release handful of benchmarks and games for end users. Based on its engine, Unigine has released many benchmarking software to stress test the graphics engine of the system. We will be testing the Llano with the Sanctuary test suite of Unigine.
3dMark Vantage
3dMark Vantage is a popular 3d and CPU testing program. The software suite comes with arrays of inbuilt test suite chocking the hardware system and getting the best out of them. 3dMark Vantage is developed by FutureMark and is one of the industry benchmark for hardware testing suite.
During the whole test, the ASRock motherboard fell behind the Asus A75 board.
CPU Benchmarks
Dhrystone and Wheatstone CPU
Dhrystone is a multithreaded software benchmark and of the test available from SiSoft Sandra test suites. Being a multithreaded benchmark, it is optimize to test the multi core aspect of the CPU and rely heavily on speed. Wheatstone test is another processor specific arithmetic calculation from Sisoft Sandra. Its primarily aimed for measuring the floating point performance of the CPU.
Both the boards were comparable and on equal scale in this test.
Aida64 CPU Benchmarks
Aida64 or previously known as Everest is a software suite that not only provide benchmarking solution but delivers users with top of the line system detail and CPUID.
In these benchmarks we have used three of the popular benchmarks provided by Aida i.e. CPU Queen, CPU PhotoWorxx and CPU Hash. All of them being CPU intensive test will show Llano abilities in CPU intensive task.
Aida64 AES Encryption
AMD processors have been known for performing better in encryption based software application and Llano is no different.
Aida64 Memory Benchmarks
With enhanced memory controller and lower manufacturing process Llano shouldn’t have much problem dealing with memory intense task.
ASRock turns the table in AIDA Benchmarks by scoring better performance over Asus. However the asus board responded well in the memory benchmarks.
Blender Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open source rendering and compositing software for 3d modeling. Blender is a multithreaded benchmark and is very efficient at utilizing CPU resources.
Cinebench R10 Benchmarks
Cinebench is another rendering test suite from Maxon software for stress testing CPU and GPU compute capabilities of the processors installed.
Cinebench 11.5 Benchmarks
Cinebench 11.5 is the new avatar of R10 benchmark from Maxon software. It provide more tighter integration and more intense rendering test ensuring to stress test the CPU in render compute capabilities.
In Blender both of the boards were equally good however ASRock managed to sneak ahead in Cinebench R10 whereas it lagged in Cinebench 11.5.
Super Pi
Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million.
Both of the board were almost equal in this test.
Wprime
wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions.
Asus managed to sneak ahead by few seconds.
Gaming Benchmarks
TESV-Skyrim
Based on the popular Elder Scroll series, Skyrim is the fifth sequel to the highly acclaimed Oblivion. Not one of the most interesting and additive game/benchmark but still it is able to stress the graphics core and manages to load the cpu cycles.
Dirt3
Colin McRae Dirt3 is one of the most popular and graphics intense game from the Colin McRae series. Topped with brilliant engine and jaw dropping visuals Dirt2 is a decent game to test your graphics performance.
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by the Swedish firm EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS systems. It is a part of the Battlefield series and was released worldwide in March 2010
In gaming performance was not much of a difference between the two board. One thing to note is the substantial increase in the performance of Dual Graphics over standalone 6670 Radeon card.
[page]
BIOS and Overclocking
Asus boards as of now features the newly crafted UEFI BIOS for enhanced security and additional benefits over contemporary BIOS. Asus has topped the boards with a glossy looking BIOS with full mouse integration. Allowing users to feel at home but still tweak as much as they used to do in the traditional system.
Look wise Asus bios beats the Asrock hands down, its more glossier, more polished and more subtle. However there is some missing tid bits here and there. Even though I was using the latest BIOS revision, there was no sign for independent GPU clocking. I know some motherboard offers gimmiky clocking features but thats not what I am referring to. AMD board specially the A75 FCH allows users to manually adjust the multiplier for gpu clocks which was misisng.
Overall working with BIOS was a pleasant experience and the added polish is +1 from our side.
Overclocking Llano however is a different story altogether. We used the multiplier locked APU which restricts the overclocking and to our surprise and despite the heatsink design Asus board wasn't able to hit the mark we achieved with ASRock board.
The maximum stable clock that we reached was 3.51ghz while the IGP clocked at 762Mhz. Still decent enough compared to 3.61Ghz on Asrock with ~800+IGP.
One thing to note that, desite the company claims of 2250+ OC RAm, we weren't able to hit 2200+ irrespective of the dividers we use on the ram.
Overclocked system benchmarks -
3dMark Vantage
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]3dMark Vantage is a popular 3d and CPU testing program. The software suite comes with arrays of inbuilt test suite chocking the hardware system and getting the best out of them. 3dMark Vantage is developed by FutureMark and is one of the industry benchmark for hardware testing suite.[/font]
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CPU Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Dhrystone and Wheatstone CPU[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Dhrystone is a multithreaded software benchmark and of the test available from SiSoft Sandra test suites. Being a multithreaded benchmark, it is optimize to test the multi core aspect of the CPU and rely heavily on speed. Wheatstone test is another processor specific arithmetic calculation from Sisoft Sandra. Its primarily aimed for measuring the floating point performance of the CPU.[/font]
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Aida64 CPU Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Aida64 or previously known as Everest is a software suite that not only provide benchmarking solution but delivers users with top of the line system detail and CPUID.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]In these benchmarks we have used three of the popular benchmarks provided by Aida i.e. CPU Queen, CPU PhotoWorxx and CPU Hash. All of them being CPU intensive test will show Llano abilities in CPU intensive task.[/font]
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Aida64 AES Encryption
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]AMD processors have been known for performing better in encryption based software application and Llano is no different.[/font]
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Aida64 Memory Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]With enhanced memory controller and lower manufacturing process Llano shouldn’t have much problem dealing with memory intense task.[/font]
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Blender Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Blender is a free and open source rendering and compositing software for 3d modeling. Blender is a multithreaded benchmark and is very efficient at utilizing CPU resources.[/font]
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Cinebench 11.5 Benchmarks
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Cinebench 11.5 is the new avatar of R10 benchmark from Maxon software. It provide more tighter integration and more intense rendering test ensuring to stress test the CPU in render compute capabilities.[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Super Pi[/font]
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million.[/font]
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Wprime
[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions.[/font]
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Conclusion
Brimmed with exquisite features , industry leading design and solid components, Asus made sure to deliver a solid board for FM1 enthusiast users. Implementing leading edge features such as Digi+VRM, DIP, and host of other useful features makes this board a pleasant choice. However the lack of GPU tuning features and a sluggish AI Suite will be the downside of the board.
The distinctive looks and solid brand portfolio ensures the stability and performance of F1 A75-VPro, however the limited clocking headroom and DRAM (read speed) support will cut the points. But few features that really bothered me is the inclusion of second PCIe slot at x4 speed, even though from company perspective its bit clear that they want more sound offering at the table but from a user point of view it doesn't seems right to pay additional for normal bandwidth at second slot. Capping speed at the second slot doesn't seems right and clearly make the second PCIe slot useless.
Other than its major short comings, the area where Asus needs to work is packaging and bundled accessories. A board of such callibre deserves more pamper. Overall the board and the package is decent if you want a Fm1 platform right now. Considering the risk with Fm2 (trinity) incompatibility with Fm1 socket might hit hard on these boards sale figure. Priced at INR ~8700, the board retails for ~1.5k premium over the ASRock board that we tested and doesn't offer any substantial improvement or quality over the same. Thus recommending the board at this price point will not be fair, had asus priced the board competitive enough with the ASRock offering, it had won over Editors Choice award.
With that said, I will still recommend Asus over ASRock if you are a Linux user, working with Asus and Linux worked flawless while the ASRock board always failed to boot into the system with out of syn messages. Asus has put an overall good board for Fm1 users, so if you are in the market for a overall decent board keep this in your list.
Pros -
- Design and Features
- Homegrown ASIC and softwares
- Performance
- Heatpipe and solid components
Cons -
- Limited overclocking headroom
- No GPU multiplier options in BIOS
- Sluggish AI Suite II
- Price
A Special thanks to Asus India for sending the sample for review.
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