ASUS F1A75-V Pro vs. Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H – Llano at ~$120
by Ian Cutress on November 7, 2011 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Asus
- A75
Board Features
| ASUS F1A75-V Pro | |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | FM1 |
| CPU Support | Llano - AMD A series and E2 series |
| Chipset | AMD A75 |
| Base Clock Frequency | 100.0 MHz |
| DDR3 Memory Speed | 1866 9-9-9 |
| Core Voltage | Auto, offset and manual, 0.8 V to 1.7 V |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, 8x to CPU limit |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, 2.30 V to 1.35 V |
| DRAM Command Rate | Auto, 1T or 2T |
| Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB Dual Channel Support for DDR3, 2400/2200/1866/1333/1066 MHz |
| Expansion Slots |
1 x PCIe x16 (runs at x16/x0 or x16/x4) 1 x PCIe x4 2 x PCIe x1 3 x PCI |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 6 x SATA 6 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1, 10 |
| Onboard |
7 x SATA 6 Gbps 4 x Fan Headers 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x Front Panel Audio Header 1 x S/PDIF Out Header 4 x USB 2.0 Headers 1 x USB 3.0 Header 1 x COM header 1 x TPU Switch 1 x EPU Switch |
| Onboard LAN | Realtek RTL8111E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit) |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek® ALC892 |
| Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector |
| Fan Headers |
1 x CPU Fan Header 2 x CHA 1 x PWR |
| IO Panel |
1 x PS/2 port 1 x D-Sub 1 x DVI-D 1 x HDMI 1 x DisplayPort 1 x Optical S/PDIF Out Connector 2 x USB 2.0 4 x USB 3.0 1 x eSATA 6 Gbps 1 x Gigabit Ethernet Audio Jacks |
| BIOS Version | 0902 / 1501 |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
As with the Gigabyte board, we see a Realtek NIC+Audio combination, although this is the ALC892 rather than the ALC889 on the Gigabyte. Also of note is that there is no Firewire here.
One of the big things to note is that the second PCIe x16 lane actually only runs at x4. This should put severe limitations on throughput if CrossFireX is planned between to discrete GPUs - however our GPU testing later shows that for some titles, it's not that much of a bottleneck.
In The Box
Driver CD
User Guide
IO Shield
Q-Connector for Front Panel
2 x Locking SATA 6 Gbps cables, right angled.
As we are in the $120 region for motherboards, we do not expect anything spectacular in the box. It is a shame that there is nothing special in here, such as a USB 3.0 back panel connector.
Software
Driver installation is very easy from the driver CD, using an ‘Install All’ option to do everything, or drivers can be picked from a list then installed at once. The same goes for the software, though ASUS’ software has focused primarily on the AI Suite application, which we have covered on various ASUS boards before, so I will only cover it briefly here.
The AI Suite is designed to cover everything—overclocking options, energy efficiency options, fan controls, sensors for monitoring, and BIOS updates. Over the iterations it has got quicker to use and works rather well.
The fan controls are of importance here, allowing the user to control the CPU and Chassis fans, in terms of a double gradient speed profile.
One flaw to mention is the saving of overclock profiles. When a profile is saved, if you have changed the voltage in the software, saving the profile does not save the current voltage. It saves the voltage to which the board was booted at. Hopefully this will be corrected in future iterations.
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Death666Angel - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Like he said, no reason to have that in a consumer product. If you need those controllers, buy server stuff. I haven't used a PCI card in my last 3 builds.PC13 - Saturday, November 12, 2011 - link
Just because you never needed them doesn't mean we don't. It's not your right to talk for everybody.Roland00Address - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I understand your point but those add on cards exist in a pci express option as well.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
knedle - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
yeah, but it's cheaper to use your old card, than to buy a new one ;)also from time to time I make linux based routers, and they need two nics, it's a lot cheaper for me, to just add some $3 ethernet pci card, than buy something with pci express
oh! and don't forget those old scsii scanners, that some offices use, and they need cheap scsii pci card (or printers that need two way lpt port)
there is no harm in keeping those pci slots, so they just kept it, I'm pretty sure that if they were changet to pci express slots, there would be pci guys complaining ;)
Googer - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
An INTEL brand PCI-e NIC can be bought for less than $30 on newegg. That's cheap.DanNeely - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Maybe, maybe not. Intel's removing it from some of their 7x series chipsets; and if the MSI x79 boards are an accurate indication, my prediction that most mobo vendors would initially add it back with bridge chips appears to be incorrect. If that's the case it'll disappear from all mainstream boards in the next year or three, although there will almost certainly be a few vendors that sell boards with it. You can get boards as recent as LGA1156 with ISA slots from industrial system vendors. (LGA1155 +ISA is probably still in design, a year ago when I looked the most recent I could find was LGA775.) Once you get into very low volume products the price gets ugly ($400 for an otherwise low end board); but thier target customers are using them to control legacy hardware with typical prices starting in the 5 figure range and soaring rapidly from therehttp://www.ibt.ca/v2/items/mb950/index.html
Googer - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
IDE is available as a PCI-express addon. My Local CompUSA sells a bootable IDE add-on card in PCI-e for $29. I think it also had 2 usb ports as well. Not a bad deal.Googer - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
What do you have that would still require PCI that you can't get in PCI-express?DanNeely - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Probably a limited number of PCIe lanes on the chipset.mariush - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
People still use the pci slots for:* tv tuners (especially here in Europe where HD is not that popular),
* additional sata controllers
* sometimes SCSI controllers for some old scanners, firewire cards
* serial / parallel port controllers (not all usb to serial devices are good)
* sound cards (some still think soundblaster live sounds better than integrated cards)
* quality 100mbps network cards (connecting pc to a printer for example)
etc etc