Six A75-Based Motherboards For AMD’s A8 And A6 APUs

[Crashman]

Advanced on-board graphics put AMD’s Llano-based APU far ahead of Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, at least when it comes to 3D apps. But you’ll still need a new motherboard to support the Socket FM1 platform. Today we test six affordable contenders.

Six A75-Based Motherboards For AMD’s A8 And A6 APUs : Read more

 

[dogman_1234]

Thank You for the Review. I am glad to see you guys taking this and pushing it to the limits. Can't wait until SB-E and Bulldozer reviews.

Qne question, what does the APU,( either the A6 or the A8), have on F@H applications?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]Thank You for the Review. I am glad to see you guys taking this and pushing it to the limits. Can't wait until SB-E and Bulldozer reviews.Qne question, what does the APU,( either the A6 or the A8), have on F@H applications?[/citation]Since I haven't joined F@H, I can only recommend going to a F@H forum to find someone who's tried it.

I know F@H is a great cause, might cure cancer etc, but wouldn't it be more geeky to search for radio signals of little green men?

 

[_Pez_]

what about blue-ray playback? and power consumption when playing it. I'm planing a HTPC. And those small form factor are really appealing. especially Gigabyte’s A75M-UD2H, I will get that one.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]_Pez_[/nom]what about blue-ray playback? and power consumption when playing it. I'm planing a HTPC. And those small form factor are really appealing. especially Gigabyte’s A75M-UD2H, I will get that one.[/citation]SFF properly translates to DTX and Mini ITX. These are Micro ATX...

I checked the CPU reviews and didn't see anything there either. You know it's going to be low utilization for these processors, which means it will be closer to the idle power than to the full-load power...

 

[buzznut]

I remember when the Gigabyte board first was launched, I though it looked pretty sweet then even posted a poll on it. I'd have to agree, it seems like the board to have for A8. Looks good too, although I a find Gigabyte's non-blue/white scheme offerings more attractive. Just ordered my 990FX UD5, can't wait!

 

[buzznut]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]SFF properly translates to DTX and Mini ITX. These are Micro ATX...I checked the CPU reviews and didn't see anything there either. You know it's going to be low utilization for these processors, which means it will be closer to the idle power than to the full-load power...[/citation]

I think micro atx fits into plenty of SFF cases. Maybe we need to redefine..

I'd like to see a showdown of mini itx boards though, I think Anand did something like that recently. That's probably where the A8 CPU's need to go head to head with atom anyway, most reviews I've seen show the CPU's aren't all that cut out for desktop. Maybe the next batch that comes out in Q4/Q1 2012 will be better for desktop.

 

[tacoslave]

[citation][nom]buzznut[/nom]I think micro atx fits into plenty of SFF cases. Maybe we need to redefine..I'd like to see a showdown of mini itx boards though, I think Anand did something like that recently. That's probably where the A8 CPU's need to go head to head with atom anyway, most reviews I've seen show the CPU's aren't all that cut out for desktop. Maybe the next batch that comes out in Q4/Q1 2012 will be better for desktop.[/citation]
lol wut? Dude you got this QUAD CORE based on the phenom II architecture mixed up with the e-350 or the c-50 those are the ones that are going up against Atom.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]buzznut[/nom]I think micro atx fits into plenty of SFF cases. Maybe we need to redefine.[/citation]That would make you part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

1.) SFF originally stood for Shuttle Form Factor and was proprietary, using 2-slots.
2.) It was copied by companies like First International Computer and AOpen
3.) AMD established a standard for "open architecture" systems of similar design, called DTX.
4.) ITX is smaller than DTX and fits DTX cases.

Notice this has nothing to do with Micro ATX. People who claim that anything shaped like a cube is SFF need only be shown a full ATX cube before they start making excuses. People who point to horizontal cases and say SFF need only look at ancient AT desktops before they're forced to come up with excuses.

2-slots. That's what makes Shuttle copies different from everything else. Cubes can be any "size", HTPC's can be any "size", if SFF is a size standard it can only be used to apply to two-slot cases.

Some competitors have been trying for years to expand the definition of SFF. They are, of course, wrong.

Nobody's perfect, one of Tom's old team members once said that barebones always refers to SFF systems (even though full sized barebones existed long before SFF). But at least Tom's tries to fix those types of errors rather than force them into the vernacular.

I'm just asking people to be specific. If you mean cube, say cube. If you mean desktop, say desktop. If you mean mini-tower, slim tower, or slim desktop, just say it. Then apply a form factor "Mini ITX slim tower" or "Micro ATX desktop". And if you're saying "SFF" rather than media center, well it's obvious that SFF can do other things so just be specific and say media center.

If you're not specific, you might find yourself in a discussion about what the meaning of "is" is.

 

[noob2222]

I have the gigabyte board and undervolted by .2 running stock speeds. Its used for my HTPC setup so for me making it silent and less power draw were the key points. I have an oversized fanless heatsink and never have issues. When I do run a game on it for fun, the case fan will kick up, but watching movies it stays silent.

Would love to see some benches on the gigabyte with those max overclock numbers as the GPU would benefit greatly from the memory oc.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]noob2222[/nom]I have the gigabyte board and undervolted by .2 running stock speeds. Its used for my HTPC setup so for me making it silent and less power draw were the key points. I have an oversized fanless heatsink and never have issues. When I do run a game on it for fun, the case fan will kick up, but watching movies it stays silent.Would love to see some benches on the gigabyte with those max overclock numbers as the GPU would benefit greatly from the memory oc.[/citation]Good News! Tom's Hardware is working on a memory article using one of these boards, and has included games in the test!

 

[ozonepilot]

I bought the Asus board reviewed here. Had nothing but problems with that and the AMD A8-3850 APU, and a Silverstone [Seasonic] Strider Plus 500W PSU. I had this built as an HTPC. I was using XBMC on my Win 7 64 but OS, and had it configured after a day of playing around with it, as XBMC would't let the 45GB+ .m2ts file play through, but only 3 minutes of play and then exit the movie. It didn't crash, but let me make a normal exit from the program itself. After some thought, I put in a {working] GPU from my desktop PC, an ATI HD 4870 GPU. This was worse....it played about 6 minutes of film and then the HTPC just shut down completly. a 500W PSU is more than enough to handle my GPU. I thought about updating the BIOS to 0802 [July 27th], and had the file on a flash drive. The Asus EZ flash BIOS utility read/copied over the file, and rebooted. Thee was no Asus splash screen and no POST, only went to a blue screen with no OS. Tried it a couple of times, same thing. Pulled one of the mobo jumpers, pulled the battery, disconnected the AC cord from the wall for a minute. Plugged everything back in, with the same results.. After spending $800+ [CDN] for all the components and the build, I'm not very happy with my POS purchase, and I RMA'd the whole works to the vendor to sort out. Sorry I didn't go with the Intel solution instead. Won't be using XBMC as well if/when I get my HTPC back, sinc it couldn't handle HD files. No problem with the file in my media player mind you, that and 4.5TB of other media I've never had a problem with.

 

[ozonepilot]

[citation][nom]ozonepilot[/nom]I bought the Asus board reviewed here. Had nothing but problems with that and the AMD A8-3850 APU, and a Silverstone [Seasonic] Strider Plus 500W PSU. I had this built as an HTPC. I was using XBMC on my Win 7 64 bit OS, and had it configured properly after a couple of hours of playing around with it, as XBMC wouldn't let the 45GB+ .m2ts file play through, but only 3 minutes of play and then exit the movie. It didn't crash, but let me make a normal exit from the program itself. After some thought, I put in a {working] GPU from my desktop PC, an ATI HD 4870 GPU. This was worse....it played about 6 minutes of film and then the HTPC just shut down completly. a 500W PSU is more than enough to handle my GPU. I thought about updating the BIOS to 0802 [July 27th], and had the file on a flash drive. The Asus EZ flash BIOS utility read/copied over the file, and rebooted. There was no Asus splash screen and no POST, only went to a blue screen with no OS. Tried it a couple of times, same thing. Pulled one of the mobo jumpers, pulled the battery, disconnected the AC cord from the wall for a minute. Plugged everything back in, with the same results.. After spending $800+ [CDN] for all the components and the build, I'm not very happy with my POS purchase, and I RMA'd the whole works to the vendor to sort out. Sorry I didn't go with the Intel solution instead. Won't be using XBMC as well if/when I get my HTPC back, since it couldn't handle HD/SD files. No problem with the files in my media player mind you, that and 4.5TB of other media I've never had a problem with.[/citation]

 

[monkeysweat]

i can hardly wait till they come with a real stripped down motherboard, just some USB connectors, HDMI & optical output, basically enough to connect motherboard, an external hard drive, a TV and a Stereo, no other "frills" connectors and just 1 PCI ex 16 slot and 1 1xPCI ex slot and quite a few of SATA ports (6-10) - would allow this platform to do what it is intended to be, a great HTPC & media server - with the capability to do a little gaming and office work. And the future possibility of adding a little more storage with the 1x slot and a little more gaming power with the x16

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]I know F@H is a great cause, might cure cancer etc, but wouldn't it be more geeky to search for radio signals of little green men?[/citation]
I used to run SETI@home for a while, but then thought that using up resources on earth to look for little green men, after which me may or may not find them (most likely will not), rather than address issues closer to home (disease research, weather prediction, etc) is kind of a waste, no matter how geeky the LHC and SETI projecs are.

On the topic:
They're selling the A8-3850 for around Rs.10,000 ($220)in India, when the Core i3-2100 sells for around Rs.5500. What's the point? I'd rather get a Core i3 + Radeon 5770 in almost the same price....

 

[cknobman]

It sure would have been nice to see how the game benchmarks would have been affected by the MASSIVE overclock you were able to apply to the Gigabyte board.

 

[torque79]

ozonepilot, I am wondering if the first problem (failing to play large .m2ts files after a few minutes) could have been video player/codec related. I found for example I had some hidef .m2ts files that kept having stuttery video when played in vlc media player, and they were not nearly as large as yours. I updated VLC to the newest version, and it was fine.

Now if only I could figure out how to force VLC to default to HD audio output to SPDIF instead of having to select it every time I play an .m2ts file.

 

[-Fran-]

I'm an A8 + Asus F1A owner, for HTPC duty. I have 4 modules used (8Gb total) and 1GB for graphics (fixed, not dynamic if I recall correctly) with un-ganged mode and running at 1650Mhz. I put the PhII 965's cooler on the A8, cause AMD was really cutting costs when providing the stock cooler; that thing isn't remotely trust worthy, lol.

Anyway, great article Tom's. You could add more "stream" games in there as well (WoW, CS Source, LoL, etc). Also a good Video playback review would make the chip show it's colors.

Cheers!

 

[TeraMedia]

Rather than spending so much time on charts where these boards are (nearly) the same, how about spending more time on where they differ? For example:
- analog audio SNRs and distortion levels
- data rate performance for included features such as extra USB 3.0 ports
- bandwidth and latency for ethernet connections
- gaming performance when overclocked

As far as the target resolution goes, I would assume that most HTPC builders would connect one of these up to a 1080p LCD or plasma display via HDMI, and would therefore try to match that native resolution during game play. So the question then becomes, "Both OOTB and optimally configured and O/Ced, what are the maximum settings that a gamer might hope to achieve in a given game, at 1080p?"

 

[stingstang]

Don't hate on the A75M. You see that box it's in? IT HAS 3D WRITING! 10/10

 

[nezzymighty]

I don't know if the ATI RAID XPERT is built into the A75 chipset, and responsible for the available RAID configurations or if it is the motherboard manufacturers' decision to incorporate that availability independently... At any rate, I was hoping to create an A6-3650 Windows Home Server and not have to purchase any additional add-on card for the RAID 5 capability... The intent for me would have been to have the lowest cost solution, utilizing AMD's new architecture... Why did you take that capability out AMD or MOBO makers? I'm wondering what kind of cost savings there are having eliminating that feature either at the CPU or motherboard level...

 

[noob2222]

[citation][nom]ozonepilot[/nom]I bought the Asus board reviewed here. Had nothing but problems with that and the AMD A8-3850 APU, and a Silverstone [Seasonic] Strider Plus 500W PSU. I had this built as an HTPC. I was using XBMC on my Win 7 64 but OS, and had it configured after a day of playing around with it, as XBMC would't let the 45GB+ .m2ts file play through, but only 3 minutes of play and then exit the movie. It didn't crash, but let me make a normal exit from the program itself. After some thought, I put in a {working] GPU from my desktop PC, an ATI HD 4870 GPU. This was worse....it played about 6 minutes of film and then the HTPC just shut down completly. a 500W PSU is more than enough to handle my GPU. I thought about updating the BIOS to 0802 [July 27th], and had the file on a flash drive. The Asus EZ flash BIOS utility read/copied over the file, and rebooted. Thee was no Asus splash screen and no POST, only went to a blue screen with no OS. Tried it a couple of times, same thing. Pulled one of the mobo jumpers, pulled the battery, disconnected the AC cord from the wall for a minute. Plugged everything back in, with the same results.. After spending $800+ [CDN] for all the components and the build, I'm not very happy with my POS purchase, and I RMA'd the whole works to the vendor to sort out. Sorry I didn't go with the Intel solution instead. Won't be using XBMC as well if/when I get my HTPC back, sinc it couldn't handle HD files. No problem with the file in my media player mind you, that and 4.5TB of other media I've never had a problem with.[/citation]
sounds like an issue with Asus board overheating or just a bad board VRM. I play All my content through WMC, just save the HD files to a .MKV and windows will hanlde it with just the codec.

I didn't like the .m2ts format because of all the extra software required to play them. The biggest issue is the lack of "uninstall" most software companies are going to. One example is cyberlink. Installs 9 programs in control panel to remove one at a time if you decide to get rid of it.

 

[halls]

Never thought I'd see an integrated graphics solution even begin to try to play Crysis, even on low settings. I hope AMD keeps working on Fusion, this platform has some nice potential in the future for budget gamers.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Teramedia[/nom]Rather than spending so much time on charts where these boards are (nearly) the same, how about spending more time on where they differ? For example:- analog audio SNRs and distortion levels- data rate performance for included features such as extra USB 3.0 ports- bandwidth and latency for ethernet connections- gaming performance when overclockedAs far as the target resolution goes, I would assume that most HTPC builders would connect one of these up to a 1080p LCD or plasma display via HDMI, and would therefore try to match that native resolution during game play. So the question then becomes, "Both OOTB and optimally configured and O/Ced, what are the maximum settings that a gamer might hope to achieve in a given game, at 1080p?"[/citation]Most people of any group would try to do something unreasonable before giving up and trying something more reasonable.

Most low-end discrete graphics cards are too weak to play most modern games at 1080p, so nobody truly expects an integrated GPU to do it. On the other hand 720p looks good on a 1080p display, so 720p becomes the new goal after people get over the fact that 1080p gaming was an unreasonable expectation.

As for desktop users, the $100 motherboard market roughly intersects with the 1600x900 display market. So 720p or 1600x900 would be reasonable 3D gaming goals depending on whether you're a desktop or HTPC user.

 

[ecrenshaw]

I agree with Teramedia above. In addition to gaming on an 1080p tele, what about how the videos look? I think these new boards can send the HDCP over the HDMI, but does it work on most AV equipment? ATI had issues with it in the past.

Also, can it handle 3D blu-ray? I think the reviewers at Tom's need to remember that there are enthusiasts out there that do other things than game with hardware. Yeah, games are a big driver, but what about more HTPC stuff...especially since that is mentioned in the article.