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
During the testing of a motherboard, anything that seems out of the ordinary or is not default behavior compared to a normal usage scenario gets noted down in my lists under the benchmark results. It gives a point of reference for me when it comes to writing the review and tells you guys and gals how I felt about the product. Looking back on my notes now and simply put, there are none. The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 just worked out of the box without issues and no abnormal behavior. This is an oddly surreal experience, especially in my line of work.
Working normally is not grounds for an award, I should make that clear. Working normally should be the standard by which all boards are judged – everything should work as intended anyway. To give something an award for ‘working normally’ is to do injustice to an award system and devalue the importance it has on driving innovation. Innovation is a key word in the motherboard industry, and each manufacturer should be trying their hardest to provide something new to the table that no-one else does. Price is also another key word, which ultimately decides the fate on almost everything apart from halo products.
The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 is currently on sale for $130 at Newegg, some $10 cheaper than the ASUS F2A85V-Pro high-end model we reviewed, but $20-$25 more expensive than the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 and MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 we have also reviewed. For that money, as mentioned previously, we get PowIRStage IR3550 ICs in the power delivery, which are not exactly cheap. Video outputs come via each one of the four major outputs on offer today – D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort; audio and network use the Realtek ALC892/8111E combination often sold in bulk and at a discount when purchased together to motherboard manufacturers. The eight SATA 6 Gbps ports of A85X are split such that 7 are on the board as normal SATA ports and one becomes an eSATA – a slightly different tack than the mSATA variations we saw in the Gigabyte Z77 release. Aside from the normal USB ports on board we get an Etron EJ168 USB 3.0 controller for another pair of USB 3.0 on the back panel. Power/Reset buttons and a two-digit debug LED are always welcome.
The Gigabyte eco-system on their main lines of motherboards and chipsets revolve around the 3D-BIOS implementation, which is a way of saying ‘we use an oblique image in our BIOS’. I have critiqued the Gigabyte 3D BIOS system previously, noting its failings, both to our readers and directly to the people at Gigabyte who make these decisions. While the BIOS works, in my view it is not the easiest system to use for beginners, enthusiasts nor overclockers – small updates like a tooltip when hovering over the SATA ports, or actually telling the user what model motherboard they have on the front entry screen are some suggestions I have made. In the case of the F2A85X-UP4, based on the typical 3D-BIOS, I did not find anything to change my viewpoint of the system, but all the options I tried did work and was happy to do so.
The software package on board is still based around EasyTune6, except this time we are devoid of automatic overclock options. One small flaw is that the older versions of EasyTune6 fail to work in the presence of CPU-Z, and that as noted on previous Gigabyte models, EasyTune6 will disrupt DPC Latency, and thus for audio/video processing it may be advised to switch ET6 off while recording.
Performance of the F2A85X-UP4 is in line with the other FM2/A85X boards we have tested. The Gigabyte model seems better in terms of power consumption at the wall in all scenarios under our testing with two GPUs installed. Our IO and gaming tests did not pull anything out of the ordinary in terms of results; however the ultimate overclock was a little disappointing in only achieving 4.5 GHz on default LLC. In the box however is an assortment of six SATA cables ready to use, more than any other vendor so far in our Trinity/A85X coverage.
While overall a good product to have, and we have praised the IR3550 power delivery before, there is nothing else to make this motherboard stand out from the competition. The added effect of the IR3550s pushes the price to $130, but the extra expense may give a user piece of mind that the power delivery is cooler and should ultimately last under high-stress scenarios. It is certainly an important board to consider in the Trinity motherboard space and if our testing is anything to go by, and it should be a reliable purchase if your usage scenario comes close to ours.
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ssj3gohan - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
It's funny that you should ask, because you're totally right: inside is a miniscule bit of silicon with a - by modern standards - very old-fashioned package. But the reason it's so small is simply legacy and second (and third, and fourth) suppliers. Many companies make these (and have tens of millions in stock laying around, the date code on the SIO chip on one of my july '12 boards reads second week of 2010!) and they are mostly interchangeable between mfgrs. If one runs out of stock or asks a fraction of a cent more, they can shop around at the next corner for a better deal without having to respin the board.And also: on any motherboard there is a ridiculous amount of space. ATX boards rarely have better than 40% fill factor, you can fit at least twice as much stuff on there. There is no need to use smaller chips.
The reason not to ditch these chips at all is because it allows for any sort of high-voltage power/interface stage to be delegated to this cheap external chip. It's a huge pain to build 3.3 or even 5V buffers into a mostly 1.05V chip (i.e. chipsets), especially if they also need to have proper ESD protection circuitry. That's stuff that takes up a lot of expensive silicon area. Just having one chip that interfaces everything high voltage hugely simplifies the design of a motherboard. Note that it's not just legacy parallel/serial port connections, but also LEDs, fan control, measuring voltages and even power conversion interfacing that these chips can do.
klmccaughey - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - link
Yup, exactly. They probably have a lot of that silicon not standard transistors / circuitry, but more for voltage and power regulation. It's a bit like a 1/4 inch bolt - industry standard and no need to change it.ssj3gohan - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
Haha, I see you responded to the complaints of a couple of people on power consumption (among which I have also had my say in the comments of one of your earlier reviews), but your response is not entirely satisfactory IMO.You say that it's the relationship between the numbers that we should look at to get an idea of which is more efficient than the other, but the relationship is not linear and not indicative of what a consumer will get! I build extremely efficient computers (5.4-15W idle, typically) and these absolute differences in power consumption still carry over to low power computers as well: employing a 10W more power hungry motherboard in a 15W computer means my efficiency goes down the drain, whereas on a 150W idle dual-graphics monster PC it doesn't matter one bit. What people need to know is the individual power draw (or losses) of components, not a number that is obfuscated by many, many other uncharacterized components with little or no links to information on their share of the power consumption pie - or influence on power consumption on this particular part!
Second, I know from my experience with these boards that these power consumption numbers mean not a damned thing without the context of which BIOS/EFI settings you used, as well as how well you installed current drivers and such things. Or even what services are running at the time of measurement. One faulty setting can absolutely ruin power consumption, it's a sad fact of life.
We, as readers, have absolutely no way of comparing your findings to anyone else, probably not even to your own other reviews. The only way to have robust power consumption figures is to have DC measurements of isolated system components, with known settings (e.g. 'stock bios F1, no modifications, running windows 8 fully idle, no active background services') and verified use states (i.e. 'system running in ACPI C2'). It's a lot to ask all at once, but waving away the extreme nonorthogonality of your measurements is not the direction I want to see the increasingly important segment of power consumption to go.
Parhel - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
How is power consumption becoming "increasingly important" for ATX desktop motherboards? I'm not seeing it.klmccaughey - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - link
It is important for always on devices. If you are anything like me you have a lot of computer equipment about the house. I had the guy come round to do an Electricity provider switch-over and he did a few measurements and calculation for me. The computer power added up to a hell of a lot more than I expected.Energy prices are rising world-wide and there is a big push on in many sectors to get power consumption down and stop wasting so much. Initially I was a bit sceptical, but the more oil/gas goes up each year the more I am taking it seriously.
If this is to be used as an always on media server or Raid board, I would actually be checking to make sure it isn't a power hog.
ggathagan - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
As you clearly understand, it IS a lot to ask all at once.The granularity you desire in this particular area of motherboard testing is well outside of the scope of these reviews, especially when factoring in all of the variables that you mention.
There are time limitations, both on the part of the reviewer, as well as the part of the manufacturer.
If you feel this particular arena of testing is so important, might I suggest starting your own site and performing reviews that focus on the details of power consumption you consider to be important?
Or perhaps you could ask an existing review site if they would be interested in beginning a partnership that would allow you to produce a review addendum that covers these details on the boards that they've reviewed.
I would think that power efficiency would be of particular interest to sites that focus on HTPC systems or sites that focus on low noise systems.
Just as Anandtech has branched out over the years with regard to the areas of technology it covers, I can also see reviewing various products with this sort of focus in mind.
This is especially true as the desire to reduce the size of systems tends to run into limitations due to power consumption and, by extension, heat production.
ssj3gohan - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
I kind of do already have a site on these subjects, although I don't do reviews, rather I push on the extremes of PC power consumption: http://bit.ly/Of2jrHOn the face of it, I don't actually ask for that much extra testing, I mostly ask for reviewers (in general) to publish materials that show that they understand power consumption completely and have done the things that need to be done to get consistent, comparable results. This basically means understanding power states, measuring power consumption at true steady-state and verifying that all power saving methods are operating as they should. Only then can you get truly comparable power consumption results.
The bit that is really hard to do is to completely isolate motherboard DC power consumption and losses. I don't expect this to happen anytime soon, but at least the DC power measurement can be done. That alone would be a big, big improvement.
Even for ATX boards, power consumption is an issue for enough people and is something that has a place in a proper in-depth review. But these power consumption measurements should really mean something, and what I am seeing right now is measurements that can probably go either way depending on what the reviewer did - which is a black box to me.
Tech-Curious - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
Fascinating blog -- and amazing work on those custom builds of yours.That said, I think you're more concerned about power efficiency than ... uh, anyone else in the world. And you're probably more knowledgeable about computer power consumption than most anyone who visits this site, including the people who write reviews for it.
None of which is to say that Anandtech (and similar hardware-review sites) couldn't or shouldn't try to improve their power measurements, but we must acknowledge that the audience for Anand's reviews isn't primarily concerned with power measurements. Power consumption matters, but it isn't the meat and potatoes of the meal here; it's more like a side salad.
klmccaughey - Sunday, December 30, 2012 - link
Pwned ;)popej - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
Your results for THD+N look bad. Most probably are limited by input quality. Audio input on motherboard usually isn't used for anything more demanding then simple microphone, so its quality isn't important for manufacturer. Would be more interesting to measure output only, using good reference audio card or USB adapter.Result dependency on frequency isn't right either. Probably something is wrong in configuration, maybe drivers do poor resampling of audio signal.