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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PEJUman - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
^This^I love my kaveri ITX build:
1. it's quite capable for HTPC-NAS unified solution with the large numbers of SATA 3 out of A88X 2. $130 A10-7850K CPU+GPU pricing @ microcenter.
3. $90 ASrock A88X-ITX+ @ newegg.
Sold my ivy bridge ITX HTPC & nehalem X58 NAS. each are more capable than the Kaveri CPU. but now I run both
PEJUman - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
systems on 1 kaveri system alone, saving a boatload of idle power consumption + getting more capable GPU for MADVR in the process.duploxxx - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
not sure how you look at charts, but the issue with these reviews has always been to compare equal products, which is very obvious many tech sites can't. Again today this review is a mucked up comparison.Why not do a decent test with the onboard gpu and for example mantle and see the difference again, these amd series are not thrown into the market to compete on that CPU front, they are there for general purpose and mid stream market. Who ever believes he need a 4770 for general use (not all are video freaks) should think twice, but yet they can't since they are stuck in believing just benchmark results....
why?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
309$ vs 184$
with that price difference i buy a 128Gb latest gen SSD and you know what the AMD will fly over any application while the intel with a normal HD would cripple. so useless compare of benchmarking as if one would watch a usb3 copy being few secs faster - slower, people buy a chinese brand usb or budget usb3 device which on its own will already be slower...
the mucked up mind is with the reviewers and believers looking purely at benches while daily almost every user is stuck with stupid MS OS.
Viewgamer - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I wanted to see overclocked performance.It's a shame that he didn't even bother to benchmark the overclocked CPU.
Also complaining that you get high temperatures with overclocking on the stock CPU cooler is stupid.
Intel Haswell CPUs operate at extraordinarily high temperatures without any overclocking and yet the reviewer has the nerve to complain about Kaveri temperatures after overclocking the chip by 700mhz.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Overclocked performance is given in the overclocking section under the PovRay column in that table. Here it shows the score PovRay gets at the given overclock.Also, I talk repeatedly about the VRM temperatures - not the CPU temperatures. 'At stock' and 'using the stock cooler' are not interchangeable phrases. I cannot find anywhere in this review that I use the phrase 'stock cooler'. The heat given off at stock by the VRMs (a point which I highlight many times), not the CPU, can be the cause for concern, especially when the system is overclocked.
If you would like to discuss the above issues, I do have an email you can contact.
Tom01 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
There is no reason to give up AMD. The AMD FX-9590 is equal to an Intel Core i7-4770.That is very fast.
I personally am an Apple-Intel user, but would prefer AMD-chips.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
LMAOA 220 watt AMD process is equal to an 84 watt Intel processor?
Tom01 - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
Yes, speed wise.Lucian2244 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
As i remember this has always been a "problem" with most AMD based boards, their VRM runs hot. I guess this can be an issue in the long term but who has the time to test that :).alyarb - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Recently, I paid ~$120 for a "new" Asrock board from Newegg. I received a box with no plastic wrap, no seal on the ESD bag containing the board. The socket had bent pins under the plastic cap and neither Newegg nor Asrock assumed any responsibility or offered any recourse besides a $60 repair job that would take 2 months.I ended up eating the $120 and bought an ASUS board that came new and undamaged. I've been dealing with Newegg since the beginning and was let down by this, so I get my LGA boards from Amazon now :(. ZIF sockets and less fragile stuff is OK to get from Newegg.