ECS A85F2-A Golden Review: All That Glitters
by Ian Cutress on January 12, 2013 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ECS
- FM2
- A85X
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the 1250W Gold 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 MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 ECS A85F2-A Golden |
| Cooling | ThermalRight Copper TRUE |
| 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 (or as close to it) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - DimasTech V2.5 Easy |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| 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.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
In our setup, the ECS board has the lowest power consumption for idle, and is middle of the pack in both OCCT and dual 7970 loading.
Non-Windows 8 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 7 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.
A good result for ECS in POST timing, especially when compared to the previous ECS boards we have tested. The A85F2-A Golden also hits under the 12 second mark.
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Samus - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I had an ECS K7S5A years ago. VERY solid board, one of the best Athlon XP boards made. And it had an SiS chipset (one of the last)Death666Angel - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I had that same board! :D I was dirt cheap compared to other boards of the same speed. For me, it also always worked well, OC'ing my Athlon, supporting all the RAM I inserted. But I also read of a load of people who had issues with the board.As for ECS, I'm pretty sure they are big with OEMs.
silverblue - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
Mine slowly stopped allowing for 133MHz CPU and memory clocks, and in the end, it wouldn't even boot at 100/100. Bought a KT266A board and all was well again.It's amazing that back then, your choice of board and chipset could make for a large difference in performance...
blppt - Monday, January 14, 2013 - link
I had one too! No issues at all (although the onboard sound was beyond awful), and I remember around that time how popular this board was. A friend of mine had some sort of cold-boot issue with the board, but if you think back to that time, almost every motherboard had some sort of quirk to it. Amazing how far we've come since those days...my last 5-6 motherboards have had exactly zero issues.I really wouldnt hesitate to buy another ECS for any build, unfortunately I've gotten into the habit of buying most of my parts from the local Microcenter (instant gratification!) and they dont carry any ECS stuff.
fumigator - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I own since year 2008~9 when it was just released, an ECS GF8200A, socket AM2+ motherboard based on nforce 7 (8200 IGP). I love it, and its still working... also 24/7 for 2 years consecutive.JonnyDough - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
ECS has long been like most other board manufacturers. They have high and low end board but have not competed as strongly at the high end. It's good to see them moving more into this segment. However, I feel that it's a necessary move as well if they would like to stay in business because over the last five years or so motherboards have started using better quality components.Eggrenade - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
"A Golden Review" --right in the title.How modest!
Choppedliver - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
Purple... that would look bad ass... and lsu'ish. dark blue would look good too. and silver. Like the christmas cartoon silver and golllllllld silver and gollllllllldArbie - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
Meandering zero-value text. C'mon, AT! Please don't write like Tom's.
DanNeely - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
With the right edge of the board unsupported you're going to be flexing it any time you try to insert memory with the board screwed into the case.