ASUS A88X-Pro Review: Kaveri, Kaveri, Quite Contrary
by Ian Cutress on April 22, 2014 11:59 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Asus
- Kaveri
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
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Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
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Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
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mikato - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
"ASUS has suggested that my review CPU from AMD is from an initial batch of A10-7850K which may have higher-than-retail leakage issues. We are currently investigating this further.""Signs may point towards early batch of Kaveri processors that draw higher current, or the silicon lottery."
Wow, does this mean you are going to rerun the power consumption numbers from the Kaveri review and give us new graphs? You really should.
"we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio"
I'm just curious how that's possible? Do you use blank bars on the sides? Or do they all have the same length:width ratio to match 640x480 to begin with?
Hrel - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - link
"A side note: we are looking into the restarting flaw that seems to occur during our specialised benchmark under high CPU load. Signs may point towards early batch of Kaveri processors that draw higher current, or the silicon lottery. We need to get a newer one in to retest our Photoscan benchmark."The fact that you still recommended this motherboard, despite the above quote, makes this sites recommendations meaningless. You're AMD bias is only going to do harm, not good. Please stop yourselves from showing such obvious favoritism. AMD platforms are less stable than Intel, this is a long known fact.
silverblue - Sunday, April 27, 2014 - link
And this is the sort of FUD that AMD and its customers have to put up with.Haravikk - Sunday, April 27, 2014 - link
It's nice to see AMD still getting some good performance motherboards. This said, I have to say I really prefer the layout of the ASRock FM2A88-ITX+ motherboard, and wish more motherboards would do something similar. While it does get a little tight on the CPU cooler to have the memory angled "horizontally" towards the "top" of the motherboard, it just gives much better airflow and cooler RAM in general; I wish more manufacturers would do this, and just leave cooler manufacturers to adapt.