ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ Review
by Ian Cutress on March 19, 2014 11:59 AM ESTASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ Conclusion
Motherboards bearing the FM2+ name fall into two categories – those released before the Kaveri launch in January and those released alongside or after. For the first category, certain assumptions about the state of the final Kaveri silicon had to be made, and the motherboards built around those assumptions. Because of the processing node difference between Richland and Kaveri and the differing voltage characteristics of the two processors therein, it was important to ‘over-engineer’ a motherboard to consider the potential consequences a hungry Kaveri could have made.
A similar comparison could be drawn with 990FX motherboards, first taking Zosma/Thuban K10 style cores and then moving onto the Bulldozer/Piledriver combination that exists. Some 990FX motherboards built could not seem to handle the stress of the new architecture.
The ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ is not that problematic – it will run both Richland and Kaveri without skipping a beat, as long as sufficient provisions are made to the power delivery cooling especially if the system is overclocked. It seems rough that the system would provide very high temperatures at stock (or stock + 20 minutes of intense CPU usage), but that is the unfortunate reality of the situation of our review. Ultimately this leads to the recommendation that users update the BIOS before they start installing an operating system, which in our testing led to a better temperature gradient after heavy CPU loading.
Temperature issues aside, the Extreme6+ sits at the top end of ASRock’s FM2 stack, with the Realtek ALC1150 audio codec, additional USB 3.0 ports and the BIOS/software platform being worthy of note. In performance terms ASRock trades blows with another motherboard we have on our test bed but not yet reviewed, although we will have to test a number of other FM2+ motherboards to see where it stacks up against the competition. Having a POST time lower than 10 seconds is a plus, although the lack of extras in the box for a high end FM2+ motherboard might be cause for concern. For legacy users who want to dabble with HSA, lots of memory, PCI and a COM port, ASRock has you covered with the FM2A88X Extreme6+.
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fteoath64 - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
AMD/ATI needs to be very aggressive in lowering the power demands of their gpu. What NV has done in Maxwell should tell them a very important thing. Lowering the power demands means, one can cram more cores into the die, hence it will boost performance. There is so much one can cram into a specific node-technology but the power demands meaning heat dissipation is going to be a real issue that is hard to solve.With the latest R9 series running at such high heat and high power demands, it is going to impossible to cram even half that performance into an APU without resorting to water cooling so the challenge is huge for AMD to tackle. I hope they can make headway into power optimization so that we can get more serious APU chips with powerful gpus for once and help move the industry along.
Ammohunt - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
cpu performance is one thing getting a stable glitch free windows system has always been the true challenge. I had never seen a Win7 BSOD until i ran an FX-6100 AMD Build which i promptly replaced with an intel rig. As a server it runs linux like a champ though.Demiurge - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
I have multiple laptops, all Intel based, at work that BSOD Win7. It isn't the CPU, it's the drivers. I know because mine doesn't crash anymore after updating the drivers. I'm pretty sure it isn't the CPU that was the weak point of failure in most problems because the CPU is one of the few things that gets tested and validated the most. Not saying it can't happen, but it is far more likely you or the device manufacturers screwed up. Trust me, I own a Creative X-Fi =)... sometimes I don't get sound on reboot. I know the hardware's good there too.MrBungle123 - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
I've noticed instability with AMD rigs before and discovered that the issue was that the stock voltage was too low. AMD is always trying to compete from a process node behind so I think they drive the Vcore as low as possible to try and bring down their TDP numbers and as a consequence bring the CPUs to the edge of instability.0ldman79 - Saturday, March 29, 2014 - link
Odd.I've found that most of my AMD chips can work fine with a little less voltage at stock speeds.
Of course they don't stay that way, the tech in me overclocks them and gets Cool'n'Quiet working so they idle nice and cool then ramp up when needed.
Demiurge - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
Not sure why...I see something a little different...Tomb Raider is probably very heavily AMD CPU (just assuming relative to the other benchmark performance) optimized because the $200 APU + GTX 770 is actually outperforming (ever so slightly) the $1000 and $320 I7... In the F1 game the exact opposite is happening ~84fps vs ~129fps... from what I see in the other games, it looks like about a -15% typical difference toward the APU just by looking at a high level. That's not bad considering the price/performance ratio.
The numbers (to me) aren't important as a CPU comparison for the vague remarks I made about suspected optimization, but it does matter if you are comparing the game performance in order to make a decision about which CPU to buy if I play a particular set of games.
PUGSRULE! - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link
As of today 8-10-15 an Intel i7-4960X costs $1,100 versus an AMD A10-7850k that goes for $130. If you have an unlimited budget, yeah go for the Intel. But dollarwise, you cannot do better with the AMD. It's like comparing a Hennessey Venom GT to a Mustang.TETRONG - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Hmm, I agree. It's confusing why they keep reviewing and devoting so much time to something that hasn't been viable for a long time. Anyone can compare performance/price and conclude that there is no good AMD buy relative to Intels Core/Xeon lineup. It doesn't sound so bad until you factor in electricity which completely negates anything AMD might otherwise have going for them. Whatever you would save with the cheaper chip would get eaten up by the utilities -No thanks
tech6 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I think they can be viable at a certain price point. Offering "good enough" performance for office and non-3D gaming computers is AMDs strength and that is where OEMs should be aiming also. Making a $100+ "Extreme" AMD board makes no performance sense at all.bobbozzo - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
A mini-ITX Kaveri is attractive for HTPC builds, thanks to the excellent integrated graphics.