ASUS F1A75-M Pro Motherboard Review

Manufacturer: ASUSTek
Product Name: F1A75-M Pro Motherboard
Price as Tested: $120 at Newegg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ASUS.

With the launch of every new motherboard platform, we expect to see a number of different designs from the major motherboard manufacturers. ASU, of course, was ready for the AMD Lynx platform launch with their own set of A55 and A75 socket FM1 motherboards. Here at Benchmark Reviews we used the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard to test the new platform and the all new AMD desktop APU, the A8-3850. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is exploring the motherboard itself, bringing you all the details of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro socket FM1 motherboard.

The socket FM1 represents a new direction for AMD. Their generational line of motherboards and CPUs will continue with the 990FX platform and bulldozer CPUs that will extend from current 6-core offerings up to 8-core CPUs. But the shining achievement of AMD's last five years of work since they acquired ATI is the Accelerated Processing Unit paired with the A55 and A75 platforms known as Lynx, Llano for desktops. The APU, much like Intel's Sandy Bridge, combines the power of the CPU, GPU, and Northbridge all onto a single die. With the power of the ATI Radeon graphics at its command, however, AMD has the ability to bring a much higher level of graphics to the mix. The AMD A8-3850 APU that we reviewed earlier comes paired with the Radeon HD 6650D GPU which provides a lot more video power than the competing Intel HD Graphics and even supports DirectX 11.

That's all great news, but the A8-3850 APU is useless without a good motherboard to put it in. All the normal partners were there for the launch of the A55 and A75 chipsets. We got our hands on the F1A75-M Pro from ASUS, who traditionally puts a lot of extra features and designs into their motherboards. ASUS has included a lot of the designs from their recent motherboard implementations into the F1A75-M Pro motherboard, including their Dual Intelligent Processors II and their uEFI that has replaced the BIOS. One of the best parts of the new uEFI is the ability to capture screenshots. We have some pictures of the new uEFI for you here. Other features of the F1A75-M Pro include the digitally controlled DIGI+ VRM and plenty of SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 ports.

When Intel launched the Sandy Bridge, they began with two platforms. The H67-Express platform included a few less features and provided the use of the on-die graphics. The P67-Express platform gave limited ability to overclock and catered more towards gamers or enthusiasts. With the launch of the Fusion platforms for desktop, AMD has done something similar, yet completely different at the same time. The two platforms released by AMD are the A55 and the A75. The difference between the Fusion launch and the Sandy Bridge launch is that AMD's two platforms are almost exactly the same. There are a few difference, which we will explore later in this article, but it does seem a little odd to me that the two are so similar.

So, without further ado, let's delve into a more comprehensive look at the new platform and ASUS' F1A75-M Pro socket FM1 Fusion motherboard.

ASUS F1A75-M PRO Detailed Features

First off, let's take a look at the new socket on the F1A75-M Pro. All of the new A55 and A75 motherboards will sport the FM1 socket. The FM1 is a 905-pin socket, a little smaller than previous generation processors and also smaller than the bulldozer processors will be. Because of the different socket size, the older AM3 processors obviously won't fit the FM1 motherboards. They will fit in the 990FX chipset, however. Still, the FM1 socket uses the same size heatsinks as the AM2, AM2+, AM3, and AM3+ sockets. That's outstanding, especially for aftermarket heatsink manufacturers who won't have to change a thing to accommodate the new socket.

Speaking of the APU socket, the power to it is provided by an 8-pin power input, giving you roughly twice the power of the standard 4-pin. The currently released APUs don't draw a whole lot of power, so the 8-pin power input seems a little overkill. That being said, the 990FX motherboard I reviewed had the 8-pin CPU power connector and ASUS said it was specifically included to allow for the heightened power requirements of the upcoming 8-core processors. It makes me wonder if this is foretelling on the F1A75-M Pro for plans of future APUs.

The power to the F1A75-M Pro is controlled by ASUS' digital 4+2 phase Power Design and their DIGI+ VRM. The DIGI+ VRM uses another ASUS innovation, the DIP2 (Dual-Intelligent Processors). The two processors are a TPU (TurboV Processing Unit) and an EPU (Energy Processing Unit) and focus on performance and power management. The TPU takes some stress off the CPU to increase performance and the EPU decreases power drain from system components. The DIP2 can be controlled using the ASUS AI Suite II that comes with the F1A75-M Pro motherboard or through the uEFI. The TPU and the EPU are equipped with switches on the F1A75-M Pro motherboard which are located near the MemOK! Switch.

The DIGI+ VRM consists of a programmable micro-processor that can match multiple PWM signals without power loss. This is an excellent feature for extra power management (something concerning just about everyone these days) because it makes the F1A75-M Pro motherboard more energy efficient by reducing dissipation through the use of digital power regulation. In addition, being digitally controlled, it doesn't cause excess heat to be created by the components. Within the uEFI, the DIGI+ VRM on the F1A75-M Pro allows you to control the power management to choose an auto Spread Spectrum mode that varies the VRM frequency dynamically, reduces interference, and increases system stability.

You can also choose Fixed Frequency Mode that lets you pull more juice into overclocking by increasing the frequency in 10k Hz increments up towards 500k Hz. This is really outstanding in terms of overclocking, overvolting, and even under-volting. Rather than setting your voltage to 1.50V and getting only 1.45V of power, the digital controller offers the exact amount of power you designate. ASUS even includes a program called ASUS Probe II within the AI Suite II that increases your options as to setting power limits.

ASUS relies on a lot of third-party controllers, and a few of their own, to get the job done. For the 8-Channel Audio on the F1A75-M Pro, ASUS utilized the Realtek ALC892 Audio Controller. For the Gigabit Lan (GbE) they also went with Realtek and the RTL8111E. Hardware monitoring functionality is provided by the iTE IT8728F.

AMD A-Series A75 Fusion Chipset

Before we begin our look at the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard, let's look at the A75 Fusion Controller Hub that powers the F1A75-M Pro.

The A75 FCH is one of a pair that was launched with the Fusion for desktop release. The A55 FCH is the other. Both platforms support the new socket FM1 APUs and have almost all of the same features. With the Sandy Bridge release, we found ourselves with two very distinct platforms, one supporting the on-die graphics, the other allowing for limited overclocking. With the Fusion launch, the A55 FCH just seems like an antiquated and outdated version of the A75 FCH. I have to be honest, I'm not really sure what the purpose of the A55 FCH is, except that it is used in a lot of notebooks. The A75 motherboards can be found from near $100, so they are at a good price point, and the few differences between the two ensure longevity and expandability.

The reason I call it antiquated is because of the features differentiating the A75 FCH and the A55 FCH. There are really only three. The first, and most shocking, difference is the lack of native SATA 6Gb/s functionality on the A55 FCH. The reason this is shocking is that SATA 6Gb/s has been a standard since the 890 Chipset and has even been an add-in due to third-party controllers since before that. I'm not really sure why AMD would leave it off of any of their newer chipsets. Granted, the need for SATA 6Gb/s ports is still low, as is the availability of devices that take advantage of the higher transfer rates. But things don't stay the way they are for long in the computer hardware industry and limiting yourself to SATA 3Gb/s is a good way to ensure yourself slower speeds in the near future. Undoubtedly, many of the motherboard manufacturers will include SATA 6Gb/s capabilities through the use of a third-party controller. Or maybe they won't. That would cost them more money, and with the price of the A75 motherboards already pretty low, why bother?

The second difference is in the USB ports. Both the A55 and the A75 FCH offer two USB 1.1 ports, very outdated but still useful. They also offer a wide array of USB 2.0 ports. The A75 chipset offers up to ten USB 2.0 ports while the A55 offers up to fourteen. Those four extra that are included with the A55 FCH is made up by the four native SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports that are available on the A75 chipset. The A55 offers no native USB 3.0 compatibility. This isn't quite as shocking, considering none of the Sandy Bridge motherboards offer native USB 3.0 capabilities. All that means, really, is that a third-party controller has to be used. But again, with the price of the A75 motherboards, what is the point?

The final difference between the A55 and A75 chipsets is also related to the SATA ports. The SATA ports on the A75 FCH can utilize FIS Based Switching, while those on the A55 FCH cannot. This difference is the least concerning because it probably won't affect most users. FIS switching basically splits the bandwidth of a single SATA port so that you can utilize more than drive on a single port. Remember the IDE/PATA days where we hooked up multiple devices on a single port? This is similar. Hooking up two devices onto a single SATA 6Gb/s port would effectively split its bandwidth, giving you, essentially, two SATA 3Gb/s ports. That's not exactly true, because FIS based switching chooses how to allocate the available bandwidth. It's more like an external USB hub that you power off a single USB port from your computer.

I suppose what they technically means is that you could have up to a total of 12 SATA 3Gb/s lanes on the A75 FCH. I am a little unclear on exactly how many times the FIS Based Switching could potentially split the available bandwidth from a single SATA 6Gb/s port, but the potential for a lot of devices is there. I'm not sure how many users interested in the A75 chipset would need more than 6 SATA devices in the first place, but it does speak to the possibility of a very large home server of sorts.

Everything else about the chipsets is identical. The APU itself controls, of course, the GPU and the Memory Controller in addition to the CPU. The DDR3 RAM supported by the socket FM1 APUs includes speeds up to 1866MHz not overclocked. This is certainly more compatibility than the Sandy Bridge CPUs, which only support up to 1333MHz DDR3 RAM. The APU also houses support for a single PCIe x16 lane and four PCIe x1 lanes. Naturally, the APU controls the capabilities of the GPU, which include the legacy VGA in addition to HDMI and DVI. The APU is linked to the FCH through a Unified Media Interface with a bandwidth of 2GB/s.

The FCH (both the A55 and the A75) offers a few more additives, similar to what you find in a Southbridge, were this a legacy motherboard. The FCH controls another four PCIe x1 lanes, the 16 total USB ports (in their varying capacities), the SATA ports, the Audio controller, and the PCI port. A couple of interesting add-ins include an SD controller, an IR controller, and a controller for the APU Fan.

ASUS Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (uEFI)

As with most of their recent motherboards, ASUS has integrated their uEFI instead of a BIOS. I am a big fan of this and I hope most other manufacturers will make the move if they haven't already.

When you enter the ASUS uEFI (by pressing DEL at the boot screen), you are greeted with the EZ Mode screen. Here you get a snapshot of your system. The date and time are present up at the top along with some system information like the model of your motherboard, the uEFI version and build date, the CPU model and speed, and the amount and speed of your system memory. You also have the option to change the language, but I prefer English. Some core measurements are given a little lower on the screen. These include CPU and Motherboard temps, CPU and rail voltages, and fan speeds. Just below that you get the option of tweaking your system performance slightly by just choosing one of the three options. The first option is for better energy savings, the middle option is normal, and the last option is for better performance. The performance settings increase the base clock to 103 from 100, giving you a very slight overclock. The last thing you can do on the EZ Mode screen is change the boot order of your attached devices. To get more options, click on the Exit/Advanced Mode icon and enter advanced mode.

The Main screen in Advanced Mode basically just shows the same information that was located at the top of the screen in EZ Mode. The option to change the language is there, as is the option to add a system and administrative password to your computer.

The next screen is the AI Tweaker screen. Here you can manually adjust almost all of your system settings. You can also allow the uEFI to overclock automatically for you. The APU frequency is the base clock, and this is the setting you will use to do any overclocking of the system. While you can adjust the APU multiplier here too, this won't actually do anything to your system, because the multiplier is locked. One thing I found useful here is the memory frequency button. It allows you to choose between the different speeds that your RAM supports, and automatically overclocks the settings you chose based on the APU frequency. After choosing the RAM speed, you can go in and tweak the DRAM Timings to fit your needs. You can also adjust voltages on this screen, though I recommend letting the uEFI do that automatically, even when overclocking.

The Advanced screen gives you access to configure the settings of a lot of your peripherals. You can configure the CPU, including C6 states and PowerNow functionality, as well as your SATA ports, USB ports, and your integrated devices, like the GPU. The SATA ports can be set here to AHCI and you get set your primary video device to something other than the APU if you so desire. Within the onboard devices configuration, you can activate the Asmedia USB 3.0 Battery Charging Support, which gives the enhanced battery charging function ASUS touts.

The Monitor screen goes a little bit further than the EZ Mode screen when showing the system vitals. This screen gives a comprehensive look at the CPU and Motherboard temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages just like the EZ Mode screen, but it also allows you to enable the Q-Fan controls if your CPU or Chassis fan has that fourth pin. With that, you can use the uEFI or AI Suite to control the fan speed and, in so doing, control the noise level.

The next screen is the Boot screen. Here you have the age old option to turn on NumLock when your computer starts up and other options such as what you see when the system is booting up. You can also switch the uEFI here to start up in Advanced Mode automatically. You have three boot options to choose from, so pick your boot priorities wisely.

The final screen on the uEFI is the Tool screen. This screen allows you to flash the uEFI (this already came in handy, as we received a uEFI update halfway through testing) and set your personal O.C. profiles. You can use those profiles later to auto-load an overclock that you have previously tested and found worthy for your game or program. ASUS SPD information can also be found on this screen.

Overall, I have found the uEFI to be far superior the the BIOS. Just the mouse support and screen capture capability would have been enough, but ASUS goes further and integrates a lot of customizability here that is made easy by using the click of a mouse button rather than typing in all the amounts by hand. I think this is the definitely the way of the future for desktop PCs and I am sure any manufacturers that haven't will be jumping on board shortly.

ASUS F1A75-M PRO Specifications

Testing and Results

Before I begin any benchmarking or overclocking, I thoroughly stress the CPU and memory by running Prime95 on all available cores, normally for 12 hours. In this review I stressed them for 6 hours. If no errors are found, I move on to a gaming stress test. To do this, I use Prime95 again to stress the processor, while running an instance of FurMark's stability test on top of this. If the computer survives this test for 2 hours without lockup or corruption, I consider it to be stable and ready for overclocking. After achieving what I feel is stable overclock, I run to these tests again for certainty. The goal of this stress testing is to ensure the clock speeds and settings are stable before performing any benchmarks. I adopted this method from another writer here at Benchmark Reviews and it seems to do a great job of flushing out what only seem to be stable overclocks.

Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proves extremely important in many gaming benchmarks, as the first run serves to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.

Since the A8-3850 competes in price with the i3-2100, we will be looking specifically at the comparison between the two. I have also included other processors for comparison. The Phenom-II X4-840 should be of particular note because it is very close in specifications to the A8-3850.

AMD FM1 A-Series Platform

• Motherboard: ASUS F1A75-M PRO
• Processor: 2.9GHz AMD A-Series A8-3850 APU ($135 MSRP)
• CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen II
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: APU Radeon HD 6650D; ASUS GT430 (Forceware 275.50)

Intel H67 Test Platforms

• Motherboard: Intel DH67BL with BIOS 1596
• Processor: 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) Intel Core i5-2500K ($225)
• CPU Cooler: Scythe Yasya
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3 (1333MHz@7-7-7-21)
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: MSI NVIDIA GTS450 Cyclone (Forceware 260.99)

Intel P67 Test Platform

• Motherboard: ASUSSabertooth P67 B3
• Processor: 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) Intel Core i5-2500K
• CPU Cooler: Scythe Yasya
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: MSI Radeon HD 6870 Twin Frozr III (Catalyst Control Center 11.5)

Intel X58 Test Platform

• Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro LGA1366 Intel X58 ATX
• Processor: 2.66GHz Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield/Nehalem BX80601920 ($280)
• CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen II
• System Memory: Kingston 6GB (3 x 2GB) KVR1333D3K3/6GR DDR3 1333MHz (PC3 10666) (CL7-7-7-20)
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: MSI NVIDIA GTS450 Cyclone (Forceware 260.99)

AMD 890GX Test Platform

• Motherboard:Biostar TA890GXB-HD (890GX/SB850)
• Processor: 3.6GHz AMD Phenom-II X4-975BE HDZ980FBK4DGM (MSRP $195)
• Processor: 3.6GHz AMD Phenom-II X4-975BE HDZ980FBK4DGM (MSRP $175 - Adjusted for 980BE release)
• Processor: 3.2GHZ AMD Phenom-II X4-840 HDX840WFK42GM (MSRP $105)
• Processor: 3.3GHz AMD Phenom-II X2-560BE HDZ560WFK2DGM ($110)
• Processor: 3.1GHz AMD Athlon-II X4-645 ADX645WFGMBOX ($110)
• Processor: 3.1GHz AMD Athlon-II X3-445 ADX445WFK32GM (~$79)
• Processor: 3.2GHz AMD Athlon-II X2-260 ADX260OCK23GM ($70)
• CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen II
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3 (1333MHz@7-7-7-21)
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: MSI NVIDIA GTS450 Cyclone (Forceware 260.99)

AMD 990FX Test Platform

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair V Formula (990FX/SB950)
• Processor: 3.7GHz AMD Phenom-II X4-980BE HDZ980FBK4DGM
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3
• Primary Drive: Filemate Solid GO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Graphics Adapter: MSI Radeon HD 6870 Twin Frozr III (Catalyst Control Center 11.5)

Benchmark Applications

• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
• AIDA64 Extreme Edition v1.1
• PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0b1019
• Futuremark PCMark Vantage v1.0.2.0 64-Bit
  • TV and Movies
  • Gaming
  • Music
• SiSoftware Sandra 2010.1.16.92 CPU Test
• Maxon CINEBENCH R11.5 64-Bit
• Street Fighter IV benchmark
• x264Bench HD 3.0
• Handbrake 0.94 video transcoding

AIDA64 Extreme Edition v1.1 Benchmarks

In November, 2010, FinalWire acquired and discontinued Lavalys EVEREST, updated it, and released it as AIDA64. AIDA64 is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes AIDA64 a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

All of the benchmarks used in our test bed rely on basic x86 instructions and consume very low system memory while also being aware of HyperThreading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. While the AIDA64 CPU tests really only compare the processor performance more than it measures platforms, it still offers a glimpse into what kind of power each platform possesses.

Like the Queen benchmark, the Photoworxx tests for penalties against pipeline architecture. The synthetic Photoworxx benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than two processing threads are used. The AIDA64 Photoworxx benchmark performs the following tasks on a very large RGB image:

• Fill
• Flip
• Rotate90R (rotate 90 degrees CW)
• Rotate90L (rotate 90 degrees CCW)
• Random (fill the image with random colored pixels)
• RGB2BW (color to black & white conversion)
• Difference
• Crop

The Zip Library test measures combined CPU and memory subsystem performance through the public ZLib compression library. ZLib is designed as a free lossless data compression library for use on virtually any computer hardware and operating system. The ZLib data format is itself portable across platforms and has a footprint independent of input data that can be reduced at some cost in compression.

The AES integer benchmark measures CPU performance using AES data encryption. It utilizes Vincent Rijmen, Antoon Bosselaers and Paulo Barreto's public domain C code in ECB mode and consumes 48 MB of memory.

While I normally like to put both of the Everest integer performance tests on one graph, the Core i5-6500K made that impossible this time. With the new Sandy Bridge processors, Intel made some major changes to the way their CPUs handle AES compression. This new processing is a boon to webmasters everywhere, as well as anyone who deals with encrypted files on a regular basis. With that in mind, the Core i5 processor completely destroys the competition in the AES test.

Next we will take a look at the Passmark Performance Test results.

Passmark Performance Test

PassMark Performance Test is a PC hardware benchmark utility that allows a user to quickly assess the performance of their computer and compare it to a number of standard 'baseline' computer systems. The Passmark Performance Test CPU tests all benchmark the mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE, and 3DNow! instructions of modern processors.

In our tests there were several areas of concentration for each benchmark, which are combined into one compound score. This score is referred to as the CPU Mark, and is a composite of the following tests: Integer Math, Floating Point Math, Find Prime Numbers, SSE/3DNow!, Compression, Encryption, Image Rotation, and String Sorting. For this review, we've also decided to run the memory benchmark, which results in a composite score based on the following tests: small block allocation, cached read, uncached read, write performance, and large block allocation.

Up next are the results from the PCMark Vantage Benchmark tests.

PCMark Vantage Benchmark Tests

PCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista/7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use a few select tests from the suite to demonstrate simulated real-world processor usage in this article. Our tests were conducted on 64-bit Windows 7, with results displayed in the chart below.

TV and Movies Suite

• TV and Movies 1 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
  • Two simultaneous threads
  • Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive
  • Video playback: HD DVD w/ additional lower bitrate HD content from HDD, as downloaded from net
• TV and Movies 2 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
  • Two simultaneous threads
  • Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive
  • Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 19.39 Mbps terrestrial HDTV playback
• TV and Movies 3 (SSD=100%)
  • HDD Media Center
• TV and Movies 4 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
  • Video transcoding: media server archive to portable device
  • Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 48 Mbps Blu-ray playback

Gaming Suite*

• Gaming 1 (CPU=30%, GPU=70%)
  • GPU game test
• Gaming 2 (SSD=100%)
  • HDD: game HDD
• Gaming 3 (CPU=75%, RAM=5%, SSD=20%)
  • Two simultaneous threads
  • CPU game test
  • Data decompression: level loading
• Gaming 4 (CPU=42%, RAM=1%, GPU=24%, SSD=33%)
  • Three simultaneous threads
  • GPU game test
  • CPU game test
  • HDD: game HDD

Music Suite

• Music 1 (CPU=50%, RAM=3%, GPU=13%, SSD=34%)
  • Three simultaneous threads
  • Web page rendering - w/ music shop content
  • Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless
  • HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
• Music 2 (CPU=100%)
  • Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless
• Music 3 (CPU=100%)
  • Audio transcoding: MP3 -> WMA
• Music 4 (CPU=50%, SSD=50%)
  • Two simultaneous threads
  • Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA
  • HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player

* EDITOR'S NOTE: Hopefully our readers will carefully consider how relative PCMark Vantage is as "real-world" benchmark, since many of the tests rely on unrelated hardware components. For example, per the FutureMark PCMark Vantage White Paper document, Gaming test #2 weighs the storage device for 100% of the test score. In fact, according to PCMark Vantage the video card only impacts 23% of the total gaming score, but the CPU represents 37% of the final score. As our tests in this article (and many others) has already proven, gaming performance has a lot more to do with the GPU than the CPU, and especially more than the hard drive or SSD (which is worth 38% of the final gaming performance score).

SiSoftware Sandra

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

The SANDRA DhryStone and Whetstone tests are CPU tests that run completely within the CPU + cache memory itself. These tests are perfect for seeing general efficiency per processing core. Dhrystone is basically a suite of arithmetic and string manipulating programs and is an older CPU tests. Even so, it remains a simple and accurate way to show RAW CPU processing performance. The whetstone benchmark primarily measures floating-point arithmetic performance.

Maxon Cinebench is a real-world test suite that assesses the computer's performance capabilities. Cinebench is based on Maxon's award-winning animation software, Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. Maxon software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. Cinebench Release 11.5 includes the ability to more accurately test the industry's latest hardware, including systems with up to 64 processor threads and the testing environment better reflects the expectations of today's production demands. A more streamlined interface makes testing systems and reading results incredibly straightforward.

The Cinebench R11.5 test scenario uses all of a system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene, "No Keyframes" the viral animation by AixSponza. This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The OpenGL graphics card testing procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase with which the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode is measured. During the benchmark tests the graphics card is evaluated by way of displaying an intricate scene that includes complex geometry, high-resolution textures, and a variety of effects to evaluate the performance across a variety of real-world scenarios.

Street Fighter IV Benchmark

PC-based video games can depend heavily on the CPU if the attached GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is less powerful, or the graphics settings are configured so low that they create no strain on the video card and must rely purely on system processing speed; a phenomenon known as CPU-dependence. The opposite is true when the video game has a powerful video card installed, and can handle all graphical demands without receiving assistance from the CPU. Benchmark Reviews has proven consistently that, with a high end GPU in use, frame rates are not often noticeably impacted by changes in processor or RAM.

Capcom's Street Fighter IV is part of the now-famous Street Fighter series that began in 1987. The 2D Street Fighter II was one of the most popular fighting games of the 1990s, and now gets a 3D face-lift to become Street Fighter 4. The Street Fighter 4 benchmark utility was released as a novel way to test your system's ability to run the game. It uses a few dressed-up fight scenes where combatants fight against each other using various martial arts disciplines. Feet, fists and magic fill the screen with a flurry of activity. Due to the rapid pace, varied lighting and the use of music this is one of the more enjoyable benchmarks.

Street Fighter IV uses a proprietary Capcom SF4 game engine, which is enhanced over previous versions of the game. In terms of 3D graphical demand, Street Fighter IV is considered very low-end for most desktop GPUs. While modern desktop computers with discrete graphics have no problem playing Street Fighter IV at its highest graphical settings, integrated and mobile GPUs have a difficult time producing playable frame rates with the lowest settings configured.

While PC games are generally playable regardless of CPU, the Street Fighter IV game is surprisingly dependent on the CPU. That is why it is included here.

Let's take a look at some video transcoding tests next.

Video Transcoding Tests

ArcSoft MediaConverter 7

ArcSoft MediaConverter 7 is a powerful and easy-to-use all-in-one multimedia file converter. This utility quickly and effortlessly converts multimedia files into formats optimized for use on your mobile phone, PMP, TV, and many other popular devices. Newly added is the ability to turn your 2D photos and videos into 3D for playback on supported devices, as well as uploading to YouTube. Your desired media is just one click away! ArcSoft MediaConverter 7 takes advantage of Intel QuickSync when transcoding videos, making it a powerful tool for testing media transcoding capabilities.

Handbrake 0.9.4 Video Transcoder

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder program designed to convert MPEG video (including DVD-Video) into an MPEG-4 video file in MPEG-4 Part 14 (.mp4) or Matroska (.mkv) containers. The program is used to convert DVDs into other forms so they can be viewed on portable media devices and with most media players. While Handbrake was originally developed for BeOS, it is now available for Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

Handbrake is a readily available program that easily handles and utilizes multiple CPU cores and threads. This makes it an ideal program for us to use to test CPU performance. The amount of time it takes for Handbrake to convert a media file scales very nicely based on the clock speed and available cores of the CPU. For this test, I used a 1.12GB video file in MPEG format to be converted to MP4 format using the "iPhone &iPod Touch" presets. I recorded the total time in (min:sec) that it took to transcode the video file.

That's it for the benchmarks. Let us know what you think below.

A8-3850 Overclocking

Overclocking the Lynx platform is quite a bit more difficult than it was on the previous generation of AMD platforms. The Athlon-II and Phenom-II series of CPUs were excellent overclockers, and it was easy to do. With Black Edition Processors, the CPU multiplier was unlocked and you could crank it up as high as it would go and still boot. This is the best way to overclock the CPU alone, as increasing the reference clock ends up overclocking the RAM and GPU (if one is onboard) as well. On the A-Series APUs, however, the reference clock is the only way to overclock. Overclocking enthusiasts were dismayed when the Sandy Bridge CPUs were locked down tight on the H67 boards and severely limited on the P67 boards. Luckily, the AMD A-Series APUs are not limited to Turbo overclocking only, but, as I said, the only way to overclock them is through increasing the reference clock. The CPU and GPU are completely locked.

With the ASUS F1A75-M PRO motherboard, even overclocking with just the reference clock was a breeze. With the voltage set to AUTO, it automatically increased based on where the reference clock was at. The only tweaking I really had to do was playing around with the numbers to get the highest overclock possible. I also had to tune down the RAM settings because the reference clock hits everything, so the RAM was out of its league while the CPU and GPU were still cooking.

I started off the overclocking by increasing the reference clock from 100MHz to 125MHz. Everything ran solid at that level, so I continued on. At 133MHz I was able to boot into Windows fine, but the stress testing failed. I scaled back 1MHz at a time to 130MHz, where everything past the testing. I had to scale back the RAM a little as well. The RAM I am using is rated for 1600MHz, so overclocked it got a little too high. I scaled back to what would normally be 1333MHz on the RAM so it sat at 1733MHz after the overclock. Check out our review of the AMD A8-3850 APU for the overclocking results.

Temperature

The ASUS FM1A75-M Pro runs very cool. This seems to be a trend with 32nm processors systems and is one that I look forward to the industry enhancing in the future. When testing the temperature of the A8-3850, the ambient temperature stayed at a constant 22 degrees Celsius.

Power Consumption

Power Consumption was very impressive as well. With discrete level graphics, I would have expected a much higher pull from the system. The following is a measure of the power consumption of the complete system at certain points during operation. Measurements were taking with a P3 Kill-A-Watt meter. While these wattages are somewhat low, it is important to note that they are definitely higher than the Sandy Bridge H67 platform with an i5-2500K CPU.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro Motherboard Conclusion

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate.

ASUS is solidly consistent when it comes to their motherboards. I have always been impressed by their dedication to providing a lot of different options for their consumers, even when the chipset manufacturers don't include all the options. ASUS also consistently provides high performing, long-lasting, durable components. We have come to expect this from ASUS and so it would be a surprise to see anything different. ASUS does not disappoint with their A75 motherboard, the F1A75M-Pro.

With so much of the new A75 Chipset relying on components built into the APU, ASUS has to find other ways to tune the performance of the F1A75M-Pro. The A8-3850 APU performs very well for its price point, battling successfully against the Intel Core i3-2100. The integrated Radeon HD6550D proved to be more than twice as fast at times as the 2^nd Generation Intel HD Graphics. For the most part, even the CPU portion of the A8-3850 APU ran faster than the i3-2100. This didn't occur in all areas, however, which is a little disappointing. Still, I can't fault ASUS for that. ASUS' specific implementations that helped improve performance across different areas were the TPU and EPU and the MemOK! button.

ASUS is generally big on appearance. Their motherboards have a tendency to look cool, even if it means some of the features don't do much. That is certainly the case on the F1A75-M Pro motherboard, at least with the heatsink that sits above the MOSFETs. Since it doesn't cover the PWM at all, it isn't going to displace much heat from that. The components it does cover aren't likely to generate much heat at all, so the heatsink is purely cosmetic. With the ASUS 990FX motherboard I reviewed a few weeks ago, the color scheme matched up with other AMD motherboards and ASUS strayed from the wavy style heatsinks. On the F1A75-M Pro, the wavy, Sydney Opera House-esque heatsinks are back and the colors are blue and black. That matches up more closely with their traditional Intel chipset colors. While the colors don't do anything functional, I kind of liked the opposing color schemes for the different chipset manufacturers.

While ASUS didn't have a lot to do with the performance seen from the A8-3850 through the F1A75-M Pro motherboard, they had everything to do with the motherboard construction. They start off right with great quality components. ASUS uses Solid State High-Quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors for enhanced longevity and efficiency. Their solder quality is top-notch. Even their heatsinks, while arguably stylish or not, are high quality. The motherboard components and connectors are all solidly in place. I always get worried and I am a little concerned when the SATA, USB, or Power Connections are a little loose. I am scared to plug things in, especially with my fat fingers, lest I break a component off. This is not the case with the F1A75-M Pro.

Even with a lot taken out of their hands, ASUS still provides plenty of extra functionality with the F1A75-M Pro. Overclocking is somewhat of a bust, considering the only way to overclock is through increasing the reference clock. Still, ASUS provides the TPU for automatic overclocking and their uEFI allows you to set specific overclocking profiles. Speaking of the uEFI, it is an extreme upgrade in functionality over older BIOS setups all by itself. The DIGI+ VRM is very functional, allowing for precision tuning of the voltages and power management. The EPU helps by conserving energy when turned on. Another functionality boost comes from the AI Charger that boosts the speed at which your USB devices charge. Anti-Surge, AI Suite II, and MemOK!, in addition to the Realtek controllers for Audio and GbE all add to functionality as well. As I said before, ASUS knows what their consumers want and consistently strives to supplement native features with their own.

As of July 2011 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro is priced for $120 at Newegg, the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard sits pretty close to the top of the A75 motherboards in price. The most expensive are around $130, with the least expensive coming in around $70. Of course, on those really inexpensive motherboards, you won't find features like DIGI+ VRM, TPU, EPU, MemOK! and all the others we've mentioned. High quality components also feature into the mix, as do a full four DIMM slots. ASUS does offer a cheaper A75 motherboard, the F1A75-M, but it doesn't include many of those features. It also uses other third-party controllers for Audio and GbE. So, compared to the $10 less expensive ASUS F1A75-M, I'd say the F1A75-M Pro is worth it. Of course, for $10 more than that and you could go for the F1A75-V Pro that comes with more PCIe x1 slots and a larger form factor. My point here, I suppose, is that ASUS products generally run a little more expensive than other products. They have the reputation and features to support it, so I'd say it's worth it, but I would never complain if I found an ASUS product a little more toward the middle or low-end of the price scale.

Pros:

Cons:

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.00
• Appearance: 8.00
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 9.50
• Value: 8.50

Final Score: 8.90 out of 10.

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