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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IanCutress - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
1) Interestingly enough it is not a reviewers job to debug. I do correlate my results to the manufacturers, but I test on the latest publicly available BIOS at the time of testing. If I sat around waiting for 'the next BIOS' then each review would take 3x as long and I couldn't feed my family. Sorry to disappoint. (Also, not all reviewers are masculine as per your pronoun usage.)2) The USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps are both native on Intel and AMD unless specified otherwise. I believe it is an appropriate comparison. People deciding to upgrade will want a comparison between what is available now in the market, not what was on the market. There is scope for editorials to look at how certain dynamics have changed over the years, but also tests change. My old data for 9xx chipsets is not relevant here.
3) Again, tests change over time in order to correlate with newer hardware and test the capabilities. If you have the spare time to dig out the hardware and run the newer tests, that's up to you. The other 14 motherboards I have in needed to be tested get priority here otherwise they become irrelevant. I would love to have infinite hardware and infinite time to do the comparisons, but that is not a logistical possibility.
4) Each chipset is tested against a single CPU. P67/Z68 was i5-2500K, X79 was i7-3960X, FM1 was A6-3650, FM2 was A10-5800K.
5) My apologies, next time I'll forgo the initial release review because it's the only board in my hand before release and wait a few months until I have six reviewed then post them at once when they become a little irrelevant.
6) Have you? Have you got time to do stability testing? What about testing it at high altitude, or in the Sahara?
If you believe there are things missing from the review, helpfully suggest additions for future consideration. My email is through my name on the review.
brookheather - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
Typo - "there is few reasons to jump on board to Trinity".Mugur - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
Well, she was hot back in the first Matrix days... :-)silverblue - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
"With that being said, it is clear that video conversion is an INT process and all four of the A10-5800K INT units are being used"Are they, though? If so, it's a bit disappointing. Are all four threads maxed out in Task Manager? It'd be interesting to see a 4C/4T Intel processor thrown in there (2500K seems a perfect candidate) as well.
From looking at this, it should mean that an identically clocked Piledriver (83xx) CPU wouldn't be too far behind the 3770K in this one test. It does also mean, unfortunately, that even with linear performance scaling, even the top Piledriver CPU won't dethrone Thuban in the 3DPM MP test.
Soulnibbler - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
What does is this line in the performance section supposed to mean?QUOTE:
From a practical standpoint, the lack of floating point units in the CPU gives cause for concern as not everyone codes in hex or integer style (my own personal software all uses FP – INT would be confusing to code for me for negligible gain on most architectures).
/QUOTE:
I'm assuming you are referring to the bulldozer/steamroller architecture with a shared FPU unit per pair of integer units. On first reading it implies (and this implication is uncontested by the bizarre contents of of the following parentheses) that there is no floating point unit on the chip. That is patently wrong as there is a rather nice FPU shared between every two integer cores.
The other interpretation is that you think it needs MORE than half an FPU per core. That is an arguable point, but then the strange text in the parentheses paints you as someone who needs much more study towards what actually happens in a program. So much of your normal computing occurs in integer space. There isn't really any sort of program I can easily think of where you don't use integer operations (even memory mapping is integer) many times in order to prepare to do a single FP operation. The counter examples are all pretty much graphics examples where we want to work on vectors. The Trinity FPU has a nice vector processor too. If you break down and look at the machine code that any of your programs use you will find that an overwhelming (much greater than 66%) of that code is integer code.
Crying OH NOES 1/2 A FPU, is not good reporting. YES the AMD chips lag the Intel chips, YES the design parameters are different. The unfounded supposition that performance difference are due to that specific portion of the architectural choice is frankly bad journalism. If you want to make claims like that you have to point to a set of benchmarks that demonstrate clearly that the 1/2 FPUs are to blame. I doubt this is the case as most analysis that I've seen points to larger memory subsystem problems as a much bigger factor.
IanCutress - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
If your supposition is true, then the A10-5800K should not experienced as much of a decrease against the competition as it did do in the results.My 3DPM results clear my position on the matter:
"In the single threaded test, a lot of conclusions can be drawn from the comparison of AMD architectures. Direct comparison of Piledriver to Bulldozer (A10-5800K to FX-8150) gives a boost in single core performance of 7%, however comparing the old Stars cores of the A8-3850 at 2.9 GHz is roughly the same as the new Piledriver core at 4.2 GHz. So even with a 1.3 GHz advantage, Piledriver is only as good as Stars and less efficient in floating point results. If we compare Piledriver to Thuban, i.e. A10-5800K to X6 1100T, the Piledriver core gets stomped on by a good 25% performance. I find this quite staggering – most of the code I ever encountered as a computational chemist was floating point based, dealing with single and double precision on a regular basis. On this result, I would steer clear of Piledriver.
The multithreaded version of 3DPM is slightly tougher to analyze. Due to the FP nature of the program, the A10-5800K is essentially a 2 core FPU processor, whereas all the other comparative AMD processors have either 4 or 6 FPUs to play with. What is perhaps worth considering is that the Bulldozer processor with 4 modules scores 326.32, whereas the Piledriver processor with only 2 modules scores 203.06, which is more than half. This would mean that the Piledriver core actually achieves 20% better performance at the same frequency, despite our ST test giving Piledriver only a 7% increase. Part of this could be put down to the architecture improvements – improved scheduling for heavily threaded loads, one of the downfalls of Bulldozer but was improved in Piledriver could be the reason here."
My basis for my comments is from a computational complexity standpoint. Sure memory mapping may be an int process, but if I only do it at the beginning and end of a matrix transformation (and thereby having a total processing time less than 0.1% of the program) then it becomes insignificant.
What AMD have done is project that applications in the future which require heavy computational throughput will be driven by INT ops. The big software vendors can do this, making video conversion and ray tracing type applications enhanced by use of INT ops. But for the non-CompSci scientist who relies more on readable code but also wants a speed increase, then going all out on the INT side may not be possible, and we get limited performance due to the scheduling and the lack of pure grunt due to the gutted APU. It's a design choice AMD have to live with, and I'm not the only one who is not entirely in favor of it.
Scootiep7 - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
Ok, I'm trying not to break down and just buy a Llano for my HTPC build, but does anybody know how much longer it'll be till I can get some nice options for a mini-ITX such as http://news.softpedia.com/news/MSI-Presents-FM2-A7... and the 5700k? What's the holdup on these!groundhogdaze - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
AMD should play to their strengths which is an affordable CPU with a relatively fast integrated GPU. That means focusing a small form factor systems such as AIO, ITX, HTPC class systems, however, I am surprised and disappointed at the relative lack of options when it comes to ITX FMx motherboards. I sold my AMD stock when I concluded they had their strategy wrong. Most folks who want to use a full sized case would also want to use a dedicated GPU, otherwise, what's the point of having a full sized case? Wrong marketing choice.Unless AMD can improve their heat/power ratings, the Intel G530 makes better sense as a NAS solution as it is dirt cheap and uses less power than its advertised 65w TDP while running circles around the Atom class processors. I hope AMD is reading the forums and best luck to them.
Mugur - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
You are right. Full ATX and Trinity makes little sense. mATX and mini ITX with 8 SATA3 and integrated graphics should be the focus. Full ATX in fact makes little sense today, anyway... :-)If you want more than a NAS from a server, the best 65W Trinity part should be nice. I have a Phenom II X2 rated 80W in my HTPC and an Athlon II X4 (95W) in my server at home. Neither of them comes even closer to their rated TDP, according to the "green" ICs and software of the motherboards (Gigabyte and Asus).
silverblue - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
AMD seems to volt their processors conservatively, so K10Stat (or other utilities) or using the BIOS to reduce the voltage may prove useful in reducing power consumption noticably without affecting performance more than a couple of percent.Toms ran an article on this as regards Trinity, and have done so with various AMD models in the past:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-trin...
Saving 14W for a tiny performance deficit is more than acceptable in my eyes.
I undervolted my Phenom II X3 710 as per the following article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/processor-powe...
(though I needed to raise voltages by 0.025v to keep it 100% stable in my case)