ASUS F2A85-V Pro Review: A Look at FM2 with A85X
by Ian Cutress on October 10, 2012 11:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Trinity
- FM2
- A85X
As part of the ever evolving motherboard benchmark suite, it has been suggested that we add in a few new benchmarks. In this case, we have added Portal 2 using the same timedemo from our GPU and Notebook reviews, and Batman: Arkham Asylum using the in game benchmark.
Portal 2
A stalwart of the Source engine, Portal 2 is the big hit of 2011 following on from the original award-winning Portal. In our testing suite, Portal 2 performance should be indicative of CS:GO performance to a certain extent. Here we test Portal 2 at 2560x1440 with maximum graphical setting using the same timedemo used in our GPU and notebook reviews.
Portal 2 seems to enjoy the GPU power, and CPU power does not matter as much. Scaling beyond 2 AMD GPUs on Trinity seems non-existant.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
As seen in the past, Dirt3 on AMD loves CPU MHz, GPU horsepower, everything. In the case of Trinity, the lack of grunt by the CPU does give it a lower result than the rest of our testing. Three-way GPU is crippled by that 4x PCIe 2.0 port at the bottom of the board.
In contrast, using an NVIDIA GPU means that the GPU becomes the limiting factor rather than the CPU.
Metro2033
Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from 4 runs.
With Metro2033 we see similar results to Dirt3 - on AMD scaling is not that great and the GPU needs some CPU power to keep being fed. On AMD the results are better, making the GPU the limiting factor.
Batman Arkham Asylum
Made in 2009, Batman:AA uses the Unreal Engine 3 to create what was called “the Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever”, awarded in the Guinness World Record books with an average score of 91.67 from reviewers. The game boasts several awards including a BAFTA. Here we use the in-game benchmark while at the highest specification settings without PhysX at 2560x1440. Results are reported to the nearest FPS, and as such we take 4 runs and take the average value of the final three, as the first result is sometimes +33% more than normal.
Our Batman results are highly odd. On one card it seems that the CPU holds the frame rate back, but in a three-way GPU setup the frame rate decreases - this may due to the 4x PCIe 2.0 port is restricting data flow needed by other GPUs.
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Mugur - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
File server - unchecked. Can't seem to find any board with 8 SATA, all are 7 + 1 eSATA... :-(Medallish - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
You make it sound A85X boards are somehow below average when it comes to number of ports, 7 ports is more than any Z77 or A75 based boards, if you have a fileserver that needs all 8 ports, then I'd suggest you buy a dedicated Sata controller for better performance anyway.Medallish - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
Also, Gigabyte boards with A85X doesn't have E-sata and therefore has all 8 Sata ports available.Mugur - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Gigabyte has 2 A85x boards. UP4 has 7 + 1. Only D3H has 8 and I haven't seen it in stock in my country... But this means there is hope.I have now an Asus with 850SB with 6 SATA 3 + PCIe card with 2 more. Unfortunately I haven't seen any mATX with 8 SATA so far.
hechacker1 - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
But it's so easy to get a cheap sata card without RAID support and just use software raid (freenas comes to mind).Why deal with buggy controllers anyway. Modern software raid is easily configurable and very fault tolerant, and you can even do things like SSD caching at the front end.
I do intend to build a NAS / server, and it's either Trinity or an i3.
Mugur - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I will try with Windows Server 2012 and Storage Spaces myself. I need Windows for my server at home. Hopefully it can make a logical drive with parity from different types of physical drives... or I got it all wrong. :-)cjs150 - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
HTPC - uncheckedTDP is way too high. That means significant active cooling, that means noise.
Do not mind having one slow fan in an HTPC but not more.
AMd need to have a sub 45W part on an FM2 board for it to be good for an HTPC. Do that at reasonable cost and AMD would clean up as nearest equivalent for intel is the i7-3770T which is expensive
Medallish - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
HTPC - RecheckedTDP is acceptable on both A10, 5700 and 5800 65W and even 100W can be cooled passively with the right HTPC case(Streacom FC5-OD). You can also buy a Jetway Mini ITX FS1r2 board that will work with A10-4600(35W TDP). If Mobile sockets is too exotic for you, it should take no time to adjust the A10 of any kind really, ,to run a 3GHz and get the tdp below 45W, but eally since when was 65W too much for one slow fan?
The Streacom case is btw. confirmed, I'm using it to cool down my current A8-3870k, works perfectly.
cjs150 - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
Streamcom FC5 specs are for a maximum of 65W TDP so 100W is outside of their envelope. 65W TDP will work fine, just as long as the room is not too warm. So I guess your A8-3870 is either under-clocked or currently in the fridge!!For an HTPC, it needs to play HD material smoothly, rip HD content quickly and I assume play some games at reasonable speed but nothing too taxing.
i7-3770T is way over-powered (and expensive) for that - and not as cool as it should be because intel use poor thermal paste on the IHS. AMD should therefore clean up this market. I prefer to have a CPU that is under the case thermal envelope to allow for margin for error.
So if it works for you (and I really like the Streamcom case) great, but for me AMD need to get a 22 nm part out with a much lower thermal envelope
butdoesitwork - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
1. Normally when a reviewer sees something anomalous he contacts the manufacturer prior to posting the review. Has there been any follow up with ASUS on the DPC latency spikes? Is a BIOS fix actually forthcoming? It's really hard to just leave it at "this would be slightly worrying for audio work"!2. The USB and SATA charts are nearly pointless. You're comparing a new AMD chipset against umpteen Intel motherboards. That's reasonable, but how does this new A85X chipset fare against older AMD 9xx chipsets? Is this new chipset an improvement? And if it isn't better, do they have an explanation why? And wouldn't that be another thing to ask ASUS about?
3. Speaking of older chipsets, why does the Sabretooth only make a cameo?
The X264 graphs are just silly! I thought we wanted a comparison between Thuban and Llano here, not just umpteen Core i7s! You did say "For AMD, this means we can compare the new Piledriver modules to Llano with its Stars cores, Phenom II and Thuban, and Zambezi with Bulldozer."
4. With all these gobbledygook-named motherboards floating around, it sure would be nice if the "gaming benchmarks" graphs also denoted which (admittedly also gobbledygook-named) CPU was paired with each one. Like the "computation benchmarks" did. It would simplify validating statements like "Portal 2 seems to enjoy the GPU power, and CPU power does not matter as much.".
5. On Dirt 3 "In the case of Trinity, the lack of grunt by the CPU does give it a lower result than the rest of our testing."
Be that as it may, where does it stand compared with the Core i3? Thuban? Llano?
Trinity isn't even meant to (and certainly can't) compete with Core i7, so why are these graphs so dominated by them? I wouldn't expect radical fluctuations between the Intel chipset boards. Are you looking for motherboard-influenced performance quirks? If so, shouldn't you also be comparing multiple A85X motherboards?
6. Above ALL else, this is a new chipset. Accordingly, have you done any stability and reliability testing? Speed is nice, but what good is it if the new fangled SATA3 and USB3 ports exhibit device compatibility issues or data corruption? (Have you done a "diff" of your files in Linux? Or noted any bus reset errors in Linux logfiles? You know...the kinds of things Windows never tells you?)