Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 Review – Are PowIRStages Needed with Trinity?
by Ian Cutress on December 14, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- FM2
- A85X
Metro2033
Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from 4 runs.
Performance under Metro is consistent with most other motherboard testing.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 2560x1440 with Ultra graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
While it seems that the Gigabyte takes the top spot in single and dual GPU for Dirt 3 and then bottom for tri-GPU and NVIDIA, all results are within the margin of error to other FM2/A85X motherboards, except that dual GPU result. Unfortunately I cannot attribute why there would be so much discrepancy, especially when in other tests this type of variation is not shown.
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Beenthere - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
This mobo looks pretty nice IMO. The sad reality is that what one person finds a mobo necessity other folks may find unnecessary be it 4+ fan headers, dual locking RAM, an IDE port, (28) or more USB and SATA ports, dual BIOS chips, etc. While some of these features are useful they all add to the price.The same applies to the BIOS. UEFI is basically for people who don't know how to use a standard BIOS. You're not going to find either BIOS design that makes everyone happy. Mobo makers deliver what they believe most consumers will like, particularly on the high priced mobo models.
As far as the VRM circuit is concerned, Gigabyte does need to upgrade this on all of their AM3+ mobos so that consumers can run an overclocked FX-8000 series CPU without overheating the VRM circuit and having it throttle the CPU frequency. This VRM issue has been documented and reported to Gigabyte.
Gothmoth - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
has this gigabyte board AHCI as default or IDE?most gigabyte boards are still defaulted to IDE.. stupid for todays HDD´s and SSD´s.
geforcefly - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - link
On the overclocking page I noticed how high the voltages were pushed on the Trinity part. I remember 1.75v being a nominal voltage for a 180nm CPU... If the AMD CPUs didn't need so much voltage (which has been the same 1.4v for standard voltage since the 90nm Athlon 64) maybe they would use much less power for the same level of performance.Beenthere - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - link
Trinity laptop does not require a lot of voltage and performs fine.Trinity desktop is capable of using higher voltage for overclocking but in normal use it does not run hot nor draw a lot of power as it's only a 100W APU and that's the TDP for both the CPU and GPU segments under maximum load. This lower total power consumption of an APU is the reason why in the future most people will be using APUs instead of a discrete CPU/GPU as is currently the norm for enthusiast or performance oriented desktop PCs.
You will be able to have as good or better performance with an APU - with lower power consumption and heat, compared to a highend discrete CPU/GPU package and the APU will cost much less than the discrete package.
just4U - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
I am pleased (overall) with this board although the price was a bit of a kicker. (we only had 4 choices at the time for trinity and all of them were a little pricey)Anyway... onto the problem...
My Girlfriend plays a few mmo's and while waiting for a replacement videocard I setup the onboard video for her to use. Framerates were aceptable if you turned down the resolution and details. they would have been very playable if she didn't keep on disconnecting. I couldn't figure it out... still can't.. and it only happens when the onboard video is enabled. I keep hoping that Gigabyte will release a new bios so I can see if that solves what ever is going on but so far no luck. Not sure if this is a problem with the board, the onboard video.. or what. I've ruled out everything else.