| BIOS Frequency and Voltage settings (for overclocking) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 | Asus F2A85-V Pro | ECS A85F2-A GOLDEN | |
| Reference Clock | 100-136 MHz (1 MHz) | 90-300 MHz (1 MHz) | 90-200 MHz (1 MHz) |
| CPU Multiplier | 14-63x (1x) | 8-63x (1x) | 5-63x (1x) |
| DRAM Data Rates | 800-1866 (266.6 MHz) | 800-2400 (266.6 MHz) | 800-2400 (266.6 MHz) |
| CPU Vcore | 0.60-1.55V (6.25 mV) | 0.68-2.08V (6.25 mV) | 1.50-1.98V (20 mV) |
| CPU NB | 0.60-1.55V (6.25 mV) | 0.50-1.90V (6.25 mV) | 1.30-1.80V (20 mV) |
| A85X Voltage | 1.10-1.40V (100 mV) | 1.10-1.40V (10 mV) | 1.11-1.21V (~35 mV) |
| DRAM Voltage | 1.17-1.80V (5 mV) | 1.35-2.135V (5 mV) | 1.20-2.01V (10 mV) |
| CAS Latency | 5-14 Cycles | 5-16 Cycles | 5-14 Cycles |
| tRCD | 5-19 Cycles | 2-19 Cycles | 2-19 Cycles |
| tRP | 5-19 Cycles | 5-19 Cycles | 5-19 Cycles |
| tRAS | 15-40 Cycles | 8-42 Cycles | 8-42 Cycles |
| BIOS Frequency and Voltage settings (for overclocking) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 | MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 | Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT | |
| Reference Clock | 100-200 MHz (1 MHz) | 90-190 MHz (1 MHz) | 100-300 MHz (1 MHz) |
| CPU Multiplier | 8-79x (1x) | 8-63x (1x) | 16-58x (1x) |
| DRAM Data Rates | 800-2400 (266.6 MHz) | 800-2133 (266.6 MHz) | 800-2133 (266.6 MHz) |
| CPU Vcore | 0.80-2.10V (6.25 mV) | 1.20-1.90V (12.5 mV) | 1.20-1.70V (6.25 mV) |
| CPU NB | 0.80-2.10V (6.25 mV) | 1.00-1.50V (12.5 mV) | 1.20-1.54V (6.25 mV) |
| A85X Voltage | 1.00-1.40V (10 mV) | 0.91-1.51V (~11.5 mV) | 1.10-2.30V (10 mV) |
| DRAM Voltage | 1.10-2.62V (10 mV) | 1.29-2.01V (15 mV) | 1.30-2.30V (10 mV) |
| CAS Latency | 5-16 Cycles | 5-16 Cycles | 5-14 Cycles |
| tRCD | 2-19 Cycles | 2-19 Cycles | 2-19 Cycles |
| tRP | 5-19 Cycles | 5-19 Cycles | 2-19 Cycles |
| tRAS | 8-42 Cycles | 8-42 Cycles | 8-40 Cycles |
Some motherboards have far broader frequency ranges than others, but a 300 MHz reference clock limit on Sapphire’s motherboard is about as realistic as a 300 MPH speedometer on a Honda Civic. PCIe and integrated GPU overclocking limits are far more restrictive.

Asus, ASRock, and Gigabyte support our 45 x 100 MHz setting, with the difference between each vendor's board attributable to reference clock rounding errors.

Gigabyte reaches the highest reference clock with its integrated GPU intact. The second-place Asus F2A85-V Pro achieves a 156 MHz base clock with full CPU stability, but reference clocks over 130 MHz destabilize the APU’s integrated Radeon HD engine. Similar problems on the PCIe bus would affect graphics cards in a similar manner.

The F2A85-V Pro take top honors in memory overclocking, allowing us to use its highest 24x memory multiplier with four DIMMs installed. ASRock doesn't support a high memory ratio, but the board is able to reach a high data rate through increases in reference clock.
- AMD's Answer To Ivy Bridge-Based Core i3
- ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6
- FM2A85X Extreme6 Firmware
- Asus F2A85-V Pro
- F2A85-V Pro Firmware
- ECS A85F2-A Golden
- A85F2-A Golden Firmware
- Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4
- F2A85X-UP4 Firmware
- MSI FM2-A85XA-G65
- FM2-A85XA-G65 Firmware
- Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT
- Pure Platinum A85XT Firmware
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: F1 2012
- Benchmark Results: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Of Six Socket FM2 Boards, Two Rise To The Top
These sound like great ideas for a platform-oriented story. In fact, Thomas and I have discussed doing a piece on memory and Trinity. Maybe we could expand that to include an exploration of graphics and processor bottlenecks, too. Thanks for the feedback!
You still have never posted your 1GHz+ clocked GPU results.
I am also upset that you didn't run the gaming benches with the OCed RAM. I want to know how a PROPERLY configured setup like this could perform.
8% gains approx from going to 1866 over 1600, does higher clocks after this have any effect?
How does OCing the GPU part limit your CPU clock OCs? or is the heat not too bad ?
So many questions unanswered....
Sneaky, lol. Now he's going to be downvoted.
Penalizing a company over a PCB's color is asinine and petty. Even if you have a case with an acrylic window, do you stare into your PC all day and night? If so, that is trend I don't care for.
There are much more important things to worry about, like quality, price, and features, to name a few...
"Adoby Creative Suite"
just one?
who cares, good job to crash and the rest of the crew . . .
edit: i had to fix a typo . .oh karma!
Heh, apparently, editing motherboard round-ups in a Thanksgiving food coma is not conducive to catching typos. Got that one as well--thanks looniam!
You still have never posted your 1GHz+ clocked GPU results.
I am also upset that you didn't run the gaming benches with the OCed RAM. I want to know how a PROPERLY configured setup like this could perform.
8% gains approx from going to 1866 over 1600, does higher clocks after this have any effect?
How does OCing the GPU part limit your CPU clock OCs? or is the heat not too bad ?
So many questions unanswered....
These sound like great ideas for a platform-oriented story. In fact, Thomas and I have discussed doing a piece on memory and Trinity. Maybe we could expand that to include an exploration of graphics and processor bottlenecks, too. Thanks for the feedback!
Well, in days gone by we'd have had green or gold boards. To be perfectly honest though, unless you're going to have a side window, you're not likely to care about the PCB colour. I'm far more interested in features and performance than the aesthetics, personally.
I thought that the brown PCB meshed decently with the black and grey color scheme utilized by most of the rest of the board. Hey, at least it doesn't look like those ugly low end FoxConn boards
Here is a relevant quote from a randomly-googled article:
Longtime Elder Scrolls fans hoping Skryim would take full advantage of the PC's strengths: unfortunately we have to disappoint you. Game director Todd Howard says besides higher quality textures and bigger resolutions, it "looks the same" as on consoles, and it's "mostly a DirectX 9 game in terms of how the shaders work."
He does note DirectX 11 support is a possibility down the line, however: "When it comes to DirectX 11 there are things they get us for free, like performance gains. You’re going to get performance gains out of it versus an older version. But the specifics DX11 does, like tessellation and all that kinda stuff, we aren’t taking advantage of that right now. That doesn’t mean we won’t in the future. We aren’t right now because we want to author it so it looks great.”
On the bright side, the new engine means Skyrim looks quite lovely as is, just nothing mind-blowing, which it could be. No doubt the modding community will improve the situation before long, though.
He wasn't asking for proof of what DX is utilized by Skyrim, he was asking where in the article was it claimed that Skyrim used DX11.
As far as performance goes, there doesn't appear to be any difference worth noting (which I'd expect).