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

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Test Settings

Test System Configuration
APUAMD A6-3650: 2.60 GHz, four cores, 4 MB Combined L2 Cache, Socket FM1
APU CoolerRosewill FORT120
RAMG.Skill F3-17600CL9Q-16GBXLD: 4 x 4 GB (16 GB Total), DDR3-2200
Benchmarked at 2 x 4 GB (8 GB total), DDR3-1600 CAS 9
GraphicsIntegrated Radeon HD 6530D: 320 Shaders, default settings, shared system RAM
Hard DriveSamsung 470 Series MZ5PA256HMDR, 256 GB SSD 
SoundIntegrated HD Audio
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit Networking
PowerSeasonic X760 SS-760KM: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Gold
Software
OSMicrosoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Graphics and ChipsetAMD Catalyst 11.6


AMD was fresh out of A8-series APUs by the time this editor needed one, but the lower price of its A6 series makes the runner-up an attractive option for buyers in the $100 motherboard market.

Rosewill’s FORT120 might not be available on the market any longer, but it has proven itself the perfect cooler for our socketed AMD processors. Anyone envious of this older model can find similar performance from the similar designs of other manufacturers.

G.Skill’s 16 GB DDR3-2200 kit provided the four super-fast DIMMs needed to assess memory overclocking capabilities. We set these to DDR3-1600 CAS 9 for remaining benchmarks.

After determining that our 80 PLUS Gold-rated 760 W Seasonic power supply was 84% efficient at a mere 2.5% load, this editor decided to use it in every possible review.

We included a few games in today’s tests to gauge the benefit of improved memory with AMD’s integrated GPU.

Benchmark Configuration
3D Games
Aliens vs PredatorAlien vs Predator Benchmark Tool
Test Set 1: Low Textures, No Shadows/SSAO/Tesselation/AA, 1x AF
Test Set 2: Low Quality, No Shadows/SSAO/Tesselation, 4x AA, 1x AF
Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare 2		Campaign, Act III, Second Sun (45 seconds FRAPS)
Test Set 1: Lowest Quality/Details, No AA
Test Set 2: Lowest Quality/Details, 4x AA
CrysisPatch 1.2.1, DirectX 10, 64-bit executable, benchmark tool
Test Set 1: Low Overall Quality, High Shaders, DX 10, No AA
Test Set 2: Low Overall Quality, High Shaders, DX 10, 4x AA
Audio/Video Encoding
iTunesVersion 9.0.3.15 x64: Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 minutes, default AAC format 
Lame MP3Version 3.98.3: Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min, convert WAV to MP3 audio format, Command: -b 160 --nores (160 kb/s)
MediaEspresso 6.5Version 6.5.1210_33281: 1080i HDTV (449MB) to iPad H.264, 1024x768
MediaConverter 7Version7.1.0.68: 1080i HDTV (449MB) to iPad, SmartFit profile
Handbrake CLIVersion 0.94: "Big Buck Bunny" (720x480, 23.972 FPS) 5 Minutes, Audio: Dolby Digital, 48 000 Hz, Six-Channel, English, to Video: AVC Audio: AC3 Audio2: AAC (High Profile)
MainConcept ReferenceVersion: 2.0.0.1555: MPEG-2 to H.264, MainConcept H.264/AVC Codec, 28 sec HDTV 1920x1080 (MPEG-2), Audio: MPEG-2 (44.1 kHz, 2 Channel, 16-Bit, 224 kb/s), Codec: H.264 Pro, Mode: PAL 50i (25 FPS), Profile: H.264 BD HDMV
Productivity
Adobe Photoshop CS5Version 12.0 x64: Filter 15.7MB TIF Image: Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates
WinZipVersion 14.0 Pro: THG-Workload (464MB) to ZIP, command line switches "-a -ez -p -r"
WinRARVersion 4.0 Beta 4: THG-Workload (464MB) to RAR, command line switches "winrar a -r -m3"
7-ZipVersion 9.2: THG-Workload (464MB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=5"
Previous Next
Summary
  1. AMD's A75 Platform: The Triumph Of Adequacy
  2. ASRock A75M
  3. Overclocking ASRock's A75M
  4. Asus F1A75-M Pro
  5. Overclocking Asus' F1A75-M Pro
  6. ECS A75F-M2
  7. Gigabyte A75M-UD2H
  8. Overclocking Gigabyte's A75M-UD2H
  9. Jetway TA75MG
  10. MSI A75MA-G55
  11. Overclocking MSI's A75MA-G55
  12. Test Settings
  13. Benchmark Results: Aliens Vs. Predator
  14. Benchmark Results: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  15. Benchmark Results: Crysis
  16. Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
  17. Benchmark Results: Productivity
  18. Power, Heat, And Efficiency
  19. Overclocking
  20. Which A75-Based Motherboard Is The Best?
About the author
Thomas Soderstrom

Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.

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  • 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
    dogman_1234Thank 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?
    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
    _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.
    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
    CrashmanSFF 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...


    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
    buzznutI 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.

    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
    buzznutI think micro atx fits into plenty of SFF cases. Maybe we need to redefine.
    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
    noob2222I 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.
    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
    ozonepilotI 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.
  • 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
    CrashmanI 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?

    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.
  • Yuka
    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...
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