ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 Review
by Ian Cutress on December 3, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- ASRock
- Trinity
- FM2
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the Power Supply and USB testing SSD
Micron for donating our SATA testing SSD
G.Skill for donating our memory kits
ASUS for donating AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit
ECS for donating NVIDIA GPUs
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
AMD Trinity A10-4800K APU 2 Modules, 4 Threads, 3.8 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASUS F2A85-V Pro ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 |
| Cooling |
Intel AIO Liquid Cooler Thermalright TRUE Copper |
| Power Supply |
OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Rosewill SilentNight 500W Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill TridentX 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 9-11-11 Kit |
| Memory Settings | 2133 9-11-11 |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Corsair Force GT 60 GB (CSSD-F60GBGT-BK) |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - DimasTech V2.5 Easy |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
For comparison, we have adjusted the graphs to include three Z77 motherboards using the i7-3770K, a 77W processor. In terms of power consumption, we can see that Trinity has a lead during idle and during Metro 2033 using two GPUs, however due to the 100W nature of the A10-5800K, Trinity loses out on pure CPU workloads (both in power and performance, especially if the benchmark is primarily FP).
POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
Any POST time under 13 seconds is a good result in my book, however the launch of adaptive BIOSes from ASUS and inklings from MSI are starting to put ASRock under pressure. 12.6 seconds to POST is by no means the slowest, but the competition are swarming.
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Garestle - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
Click on https://www.google.com/">google and get more infoslacr - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I wish there were high end FM1-2 motherboards that include more than the standard 6-7 SATA ports. For a HTPC/storage solution with lower power consumption than my current P45/Q6600 setup, having to go really high end Z77 or similar in order to get to the 9-10 SATA port cards, or buying separate (expensive) sata controllers is not great.ForeverAlone - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Why the dual PCI-E slots? None of the APU processors are powerful enough to properly support crossfireX or SLI anyway. Pointless.Even the A10-5800K isn't going to have enough power to support a proper Crossfire setup. Crossfiring anything below a 6850 is a stupid idea. An A10 won't support crossfired 6850s.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Don't worry g, you are not alone - you are correct.It's called AMD fanboyism - and the marketing PR team decided so long as they hack out the insane non workable boards, the amd fanboys will buy them, telling themselves all is well in fanboyville.
Nil Einne - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
Whoever told you two PCI express is only used for graphics cards appears to be the real fanboy here ....jobby99 - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
Some people need low cpu and graphics memory only. Thus, they have some insane multi-monitor setups with two independent video cards. Coders for one use at least two monitors. Financial analysts use 3 or 4 for day trading. I just wouldn't assume crossfire is the only use for two or more video cards.batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Thanks for these tips! I love the tip about checking where the model is in the store. I just finished reading another article that has some more research based tips about making sure you get the best big ticket items for you, which I also found useful. website:[socanpower,ca]Thanks again and happy shopping! Power supply Australia!
xerces8 - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
How is 12 sec a fast boot time?I have a cheap Medion PC which also has 12 seconds from power switch to boot menu (the one loaded from the boot sector).
2 seconds is fast. (my previous Asus netbook had such boot/POST times)
But kudos for actually measuring this usually neglected property.
PS: For more accurate measuring configure the boot loader to present a menu. Or even beep (should be trivial with GRUB). Also recording the measurement on video should make it easier to read the timings)
Nil Einne - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
Combining DVI-D with D-sub isn't going to work since the D-sub is supposed to be usable with the HDMI and DVI-D for triple monitor/Eyefinity support. (While some dislike D-sub for these purposes because of the quality loss due to the D-A-D conversion steps it's still fairly popular because many monitors still have D-sub ports but lack Displayport and they can't be bothered spending for an active converter to get HDMI/DVI from the Displayport.)