ASUS F2A85-V PRO Motherboard Review

Testing:

Testing the  ASUS F2-A85-V PRO will involve running it through OCC's test suite of benchmarks, which includes both synthetic benchmarks and real-world applications, to see how each of these products perform. The gaming tests will also consist of both synthetic benchmarks and actual gameplay, in which we can see if similarly prepared setups offer any performance advantages. The system will receive a fully updated, fresh install of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition, in addition to the latest drivers for each board and the latest AMD Catalyst drivers for the XFX HD 7970. To ensure as few variables as possible, all hardware will be tested at their stock speeds, timings, voltages, and latencies – unless otherwise stated. Turbo Boost is disabled to make a fair comparison without skewing results.

Testing Setup:

• Processors: AMD A10 5800K 
• CPU Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100
• Motherboard: ASUS F2-A85-V PRO
• Memory: Mushkin 993997 Redline PC317000 9-11-10-28 8GB
• Video Card: XFX HD 7970 Black Edition
• Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
• Hard Drive: Corsair Force GT 240GB
• Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-Ray
• Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Comparison Boards:

• Gigabyte F2-A85X

Overclocking:

• AMD A10 5800K @ 4.7GHz ( 100MHz x 47)

Overclocking the A10 5800K manually is a breeze if you are familiar with the different settings used for the digital controllers incorporated in to the A85-V Pro. If you are not it may take some time to become acquainted with the response from them. I disabled all energy saving functions such as Cool 'n' Quiet, C6, Turbo, etc. and set load line control to 75% ending up with a healthy overclock of 4.7GHz or 900MHz above the stock. The integrated GPU section also again overclocked nicely from the base frequency of 800MHz to 1100GHz or 300MHz above stock. I tried out the auto tune mode in the TurboV EVO for kicks and it found a stable 4.4GHz overclock within 30 seconds.

Maximum Overclock:

Each CPU and motherboard has been tested for stability at the clock speeds listed when in an overclocked state. These clock speeds will be used to run the test suite and will show the performance increase over the stock settings in the overclocked scoring.

Benchmarks:

Scientific & Data:

1. PCMark 7
2. HD Tune 5.0
3. AIDA64 2.50
4. Sandra 2012 SP6
5. x264
6. HandBrake 9.8
7. ATTO 2.47

Video:

1. DiRT 3
2. Battlefield 3
3. 3DMark11

We have have our maximum overclocks which are evenly matched. I am not surprised by this as the previuos test was with a high end board that also incorporated digital power VRM. This should provide a good platform to spot any differences between them. Let's go to the benchmarks.