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ASUS F1 A75-V EVO FM1 ATX Motherboard Review

James White
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AMD was very clear about their intentions for the APU design when they first announced a new socket for these chips. The price, design, platform, and highlight features were all clearly targeted at the entry-level and mid-range markets. The only question I had was what did AMD consider to be mid-range? The difference in performance for a mid-range AMD graphics card and an entry level one is huge. Lets find out if the same can be said of the Lynx platform when paired with the top of its class F1A75-V EVO from ASUS.


Features and Specifications

This top end FM1 board from ASUS still uses the A75 FCH (Hudson-D3) chipset like the previously reviewed GIGABYTE GA-A75M UD2H. You can find the details about the platform design on the first page of that review. However, the ASUS F1A75-V EVO is a full sized ATX motherboard that not only has all the bells and whistles, but also, benefits from additional tweaks and tunings that the company is known for.

This FM1 socket motherboard comes with four DDR3 slots that support up to 64 GBs of DDR3 memory at up to 1866 MHz (2250 MHz OC). As we found out in the past, the overclocking headroom of the memory benefits the graphics performance on this platform.

In terms of connectivity, there are a total of 7 SATA ports with 6 SATA ports from the A75 FCH which support RAID 1,0, and JBOD. The additional port is provided by an ASMedia PCIe SATA controller chip that powers one additional SATA header and 1 eSATA ports on the back I/O. ASMedia is actually a division of ASUS that designs these chips and you’ll find them on many products including drive enclosures from many different manufacturers.

The F1A75-V EVO also has four USB 2.0 headers for a total of 8 USB 2.0 ports and one USB 3.0 header for two additional USB 3.0 ports (from the front I/O panel). To finalize the expandability you will find three PCIe x16 slots with two being at full x16 PCIe 2.0 speed (single x16 or dual x8 AMD CrossfireX). The final PCIe x16 slot is at x4 speed. You then have 2 PCIe 2.0 x1 slots and 2 PCI slots. All of this is provided by the A75 FCH.

The back panel I/O of this board is a veritable swiss army knife. The ASUS F1A75-V EVO has DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, and DVI-D for the fully array of display output options and support for multiple monitors. There are four USB 3.0 ports (two from the A75 FCH and two from an ASMedia USB 3.0 controller), two USB 2.0 ports, one 6 Gb/s eSATA port, optical S/PDIF output, 1 Gigabit Ethernet port, and 6 audio ports powered by the Realtek ALC892 8 channel HD audio codec.

ASUS carried the versatility they seem to aiming for into the features as well. The F1A75-V EVO has a set of mechanical switchs for TPU and EPU power modes. These switch give you control over the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 with DIGI+ VRM to tune your PC for performance or energy efficiency. To complete this package you get the ASUS UEFI graphical BIOS, AI Suite II, MemOK!, C.P.R. (CPU Parameter Recall), and Anti-Surge Protection. This software package will help tune and tweak everything about your system to work the way you want.

Whats in the Box?

It is rare, but I am actually quite impressed with the actually box that holds the F1 A75-V EVO motherboard. It uses a mesh under-layer to add texture to the otherwise flat black box. Then on top of that, every letter and icon is drawn in a bright color to bring attention to the features of the product inside. This is especially true of the back of the box which gives a general overview of each of the major ASUS features instead of just listing them in a checkbox. This is a good move considering that this board may end up in the hands of many entry level or first time buyers.

Inside the box you will find the bare essentials for installing most motherboards. This includes the rear I/O plate, driver install CD, user manual and a “Powered by ASUS” case badge to complete your build. You will also find two of the black/white SATA cables which is a little disappointing considering that this motherboard that has 7 SATA ports. You also get the ASUS  Q-connector which turns a handful of case plugs into a single plug which is easily my favorite accessory from ASUS. It turns the most annoying parts of a PC build into something easy. There is also a Q-connector for USB which I find to be completely pointless with most front panel connectors these days. However, it may prove useful if the case you are choosing is on the budget side of the spectrum, and the manufacturer has not chosen to bundles the USB connectors in the correct orientation.

With a $139.99 MSRP I think the total package for the ASUS F1A75-V EVO is an above average bundle. Its time to find out if the AMD Lynx Platform is worth building a full sized desktop with, or something that should be limited to micro ATX only.

Let’s start putting together a test system to test out all these great features.





Testing System

Our test system was setup with the following components. Although some of the components would be over spec for a build like this, it should still give us a real world look at performance.

Hardware

Software

  • Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate
  • PCMark07
  • 3DMark11
  • Alien Vs. Predator DX11 benchmark
  • Resident Evil 5 DX10/DX9 benchmark
  • FRAPS
  • Metro 2033
  • Battlefield 3
  • CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
  • OCCT’
  • ATTO Disk Benchmark
  • FurMark Burn-in
  • RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3

Let’s get to installing the board and providing some of our notes on the installation process.

BIOS, Motherboard Layout, and Installation Notes

There is a lot going on here with the additional controllers, audio chip, display I/O component array, DIGI+ EPU, etc.; however, nothing seems to be crowded or forced into areas it should not be. Thanks to the great use of spacing, you will have no issues with the installation of the F1A75-V EVO. Once the entire system is built, you will have no issues reaching ports or headers if needed to add new components such as a graphics card or two.

The only problem I had during installation was that there were only two USB 2.0 ports on the back. Once occupied by my keyboard and mouse, I did not have a working USB port for pre-installing Windows 7 drivers or so I thought. The ASMedia ports, however, needed their own drivers to be properly recognized by the system, so they are not functional until the OS is installed. Moving the thumb drive to one of the two ports from the A75 FCH provided USB 2.0 support.

The ASUS F1A75-V EVO come with the UEFI graphic BIOS you would find on their top tier boards. By default you are given the EZ mode which gives you all the basic information you would need on a single page. You can see the time, current clock speeds, hard drive boot order, major voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures of CPU and motherboard. Since the only things you can change are the boot order of drives and presets provided by the EPU/TPU, this is a great mode for most people who just need to get their system up and running quickly.

If you click on the Exit button you will seen an option to enter the Advanced UEFI BIOS mode. This takes you to a design that is much more familiar to DIY builders with the addition of being able to use your mouse. You will find any and everything you would ever need to control the options of this motherboard including APU, voltage, timing, and on-board feature controls. You can also save your settings to easily restore to a stable point during overclocking.

The nice thing about the ASUS boards is that the BIOS isn’t your only option as their software seems to be just as capable.

Software Bundle

I know I normally don’t exclusively talk about the included software with my reviews, but this time is a little different. Most bundled software are trial offers of other products such as Norton Anti-virus, or MediaEspresso 6.5, etc. The only software you find with the F1 EVO is the ASUS AI Suite II. While a single piece of software, it is a veritable swiss army knife of features for your motherboard.

The ASUS AI Suite II allows you all the access you need to tweak your motherboard without a required restart. It is a fan controller, overclocking tool, temperature monitor, and BIOS updater all in one. If you needed to tweak your system, iron out performance kinks from your last overclock, or just turn the fans on low so you can watch a movie, the AI Suite II is all you need. This is something that other companies can learn from. As we found out in our review of the GIGABYTE User Experience, having a bunch of non-unified apps installed all over your hard drive doesn’t really help you. All manufacturers could learn from ASUS in this respect.

Just like the ASUS UEFI BIOS, the AI Suite II can be a simple tool for average users or a complex PC control center for experts. I personally like being able to control the EPU settings without restarting my PC. The automatic setting works well, but not nearly as well as the Max Power Saving Mode. I use this mode for watching Netflix as it made my build near silent.

The only really weakness to the ASUS AI Suite II is the BIOS updater. It had real trouble locating the correct BIOS update for the F1A75-V EVO. After waiting nearly 10 minutes, I found it easier to download the file myself and use the “Update from file” option. I am not sure if it was the software or the BIOS update server creating the issue, but it was an easy enough work around. Hopefully it’s just an easily rectifiable server glitch on their end.

Tools like this often feel like you are forcing your motherboard to do something it should not be. The AI Suite II feels like it is there to help your motherboard do what you need it to do to the best of its ability. This could be because it is all bundled together and provided by the manufacturer; or because all the key features are represented in a way that seems like the version of AI Suite you are using was built just for your F1A75-V EVO. Again, something that many manufacturers simply do not do right, thus we end up just not installing them at all.

Let’s have a look at the overclocking experience.





The ASUS F1 A75-V EVO Overclocking Experience

Speaking of overclocking, the ASUS F1A75-V EVO has several different methods you can use to achieve a stable overclock. The easiest method by far is to simply flip the TPU switch on the board. This will give you a small, but stable boost in performance based on the APU installed. I recommend this if you have a A6-3670K or A8-3870K as these chips have unlocked multipliers to be overclocked independent of the rest of your system.

The second way is also an automated system which you will find in the AI Tweaker under the UEFI Advanced Mode. As you are probably thinking (or not), this mode will set the voltage of your chip to just under maximum recommended tolerance and gradually move up the multiplier. After a set of stability tests, it repeats until it finds the maximum overclock. This is a good way to test your chip’s potential, but can sometimes end up using more power than needed to reach an overclock. Something to think about if your goal was to build a power efficient system.

Finally, you have the good old fashion manual overclock. If this is your preferred method I suggest you set the UEFI BIOS to start in Advanced Mode. You will find everything you need under the AI Tweaker tab. I will not be including overclocking figures in the test results as I am using a different APU than what is optimal. I will say that using the TPU feature overclocked an A8-3870K to 3.3 GHz and set the GPU to Turbo Boost (800 MHz core speed) with no change in voltage settings. Your mileage may vary of course, but it is worth noting just how easily the ASUS made this look.

Overall System Performance (PCMark07)

As usual, we’ll be starting with PCMark07 and a total system performance break down. PCMark07 provides a very comprehensive set of real world simulations to gauge performance. Results show a variety of categories and can often comparatively show weaknesses in a system. This time I am also including the F1A75-V EVO when EPU is enabled.

Considering the test system for the GIGABYTE 990FX-UD3 was an FX-8150 with an HD 6850 graphics card, the F1A75-V EVO has a strong showing here. I was a little disappointed in the performance when EPU mode is enabled. Across the board there is a near 50% drop. Lets take a close look at what is being affected.

Synthetic Graphical Performance (3DMark11)

This test, as you know, will be testing the general expected performance of the system when playing a full screen 3D game. I have also included the results from two other FM1 motherboards, but please  note that the APU’s and BIOS/software have received a few updates since the tests were run. To keep the test fair I limited the A8-3870K to 2.9 GHz and the GPU to the stock speed of 600 MHz with boost disabled.

Clearly the driver update has improved the performance of the on-die GPU by a huge margin. Even when EPU mode is enabled, the F1A75-V EVO cruises past the competition. Also you should note while there is a drop in performance, I am curious as to whether it is caused by the CPU or GPU side.

Real World Graphical Performance (Alien Vs. Predator, Resident Evil 5)

In this test we are going to put the F1 A75-V EVO through its paces with a real world gaming test. As always, the AvP benchmark is done with the default settings with DX11 mode enabled, tessellation on, with high detail at 1920 x 1080. Resident Evil 5 is tested at maxed settings with frame rate unlocked and Vsync disabled with the same screen resolution.

These results provide a little more incite into what the EVO mode is doing. As both of these benchmarks are low threaded games, the CPU has less of effect. This means even with EPU enabled the HD6550D on-die GPU is running at full speed. It would also appear that the CPU is also running at full speed most of the time with no change in performance. Also note the driver updates seem to be limited to improving the performance of DX11 titles.

SATA 6 Gbps I/O Performance (CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 and ATTO Disk Benchmark)

One of the primary purposes of any motherboard is to get the information from the disk drive to the CPU. The faster the better. Now we will be testing the performance of the F1A75-V EVO’s implementation of the FCH I/O. The first test will be the SSD performance. Here I am going to include the numbers from the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 again as it is an AMD 990FX board within a similar price range.

As you can see the F1A75-V EVO easily matches the UD3 in write performance with Sequential writes actually being 10 MB/s faster at peek speed. The Read performance is also virtually the same with the 4K random reads with 32 queue depth being the odd man out. There is a distinct drop in performance of 26.3 MB/s here.

Next I will re-run the test focused on a mechanical drive instead of an SSD. This test will include results from the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 and the ASRock A75-ITX boards. This should give you an idea of how the F1 A75-V EVO stands up to similarly price boards on a similar platform.

Here the ASUS F1 A75-V EVO falls behind by a little in all of the tests except for sequential tests. Only the Random 512K read test concerns me as there is a 10 MB/s difference; however, the same can be said of both of the sequential tests with the F1 A75-V EVO holding a similar lead over the others.





USB 2.0 I/O Performance (CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1)

Now it is time to test the tried and true USB 2.0 which has been the backbone of external device interfaces for over a decade. The F1A75-V EVO clearly is more forward thinking only having two USB 2.0 ports on the back I/O, but does have four headers for a total of 8 additional USB 2.0 connections.

The F1 A75-V EVO seems to have a little trouble with sequential writes, but comes in ahead in all of the read tests. It even comes in on top in the sequential write tests. This particular set of benchmarks is a clear win for the F1 A75-V EVO overall.

USB 3.0 I/O Performance (CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1)

Now we move on to testing the USB 3.0 with the external HDD. Here we need to see if the performance of the Samsung F3 is seriously affected. Please note there is also a USB 3.0 performance boosting mode in the AI Suite II, but my external HDD enclosure (which does use an ASMedia chipset) did not support the technology being used. This could prove to be beneficial with a newer USB 3.0 thumb drive.

The F1 EVO falls right between the two other boards in this test delivering solid performance in every test. It is good to see that the performance of USB 3.0 has no unusuay anomalies since these are the primary expansion ports by number on the ASUS F1A75-V EVO.

Audio Performance (RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3)

The audio test as always is done at 24-bit at 48 kHz with a crossover linking the mic input to the audio output. The objective is to simply find out how well the audio chip and its implementation can handle an audio signal.

There are no surprises here to discuss. The ASUS F1A75-V EVO does not stand out here for good or ill. It comes in the same as other boards with the same feature set and price range. The only thing that truly out performs it are the dedicated ASUS Xonar card, top tier GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7, and the ASRock A75-ITX, but this is only due to its unusually low stereo crosstalk. But in the real world, these differences may not be audible in most cases.

Power Consumption

This test is going to be very interesting as the F1 EVO can switch to a low power mode via the EPU. This means we are going to test the system at stock settings and with the EPU enabled.

The F1A75-V EVO has a very impressive showing here. While its idle power is a little high by default, the maximum power is lower than previously tested A75 boards. While this could be discounted due to the difference in APUs being tested, the default voltages for both chips were 1.385 V for the APU previously used and 1.387 V for the current A8-3870K. When EPU mode is enabled, the ASUS F1 EVO cuts peek power use in half. Even though we know this will result in lower CPU performance in some cases, it could be a great way to save money if you only need a system for simple daily PC tasks. The nice thing is that ASUS provides you with that choice and gives a clear cut benefit in either case (power consumption or performance).

Final Thoughts

The ASUS F1A75-V EVO is one of  the rare boards that actually respects the AMD APU platform. There are no cut corners, no shortage of features, and no loss of quality at any level of its build. Instead of trying to figure out what a consumer would use the Lynx platform for, ASUS simply treated the F1 A75-V EVO as though it could be anything that the user chooses it to be. I does not matter if you are using just the APU for an Eco-friendly setup or for building a quad-core CrossfireX gaming system. The F1A75- V EVO seems to have it all covered.

I did have a few system hangs during daily use while the EPU Energy Efficiency Mode was enabled. This very aggressive power saving mode did not allow the A8-3870K to switch from its minimum speed of 800 MHz unless absolutely necessary. This meant single threaded tasks like web browsers, media players, and e-mail client could possible hang if you did too much at once. An example would be something as simple as refreshing 15 websites at one time. While it was annoying, it was very rare and easy to avoid once I realized what was causing it. Just don’t refresh 15 web browsers at the same time.

Ultimately the ASUS F1A75-V EVO is the complete package from the AMD Lynx platform. No other FM1 motherboard on the market can claim to have something the F1 A75-V EVO does not, save for small form factor compatibility. Even when compared to entry level AM3+ 990FX motherboards in the same price range, it does hold its own, but you have to consider your graphics card and CPU as well. To match features similar to AM3+ build is roughly $30 more expensive, making the choice slightly difficult. But then you realize that the AM3+ platform has no graphics onboard and this one does.

I think the price of $139.99US MSRP is just right for a great motherboard of this calibre. It’s anything you want it to be and it’s clearly the best FM1 A75 based motherboard we’ve come across, earning it a rare Editors’ Choice Award.

Pros

  • Two PCIe x16 slots (8x/8x)
  • Seven SATA 6 Gb/s headers
  • Plenty of rear I/O connectivity
  • Well Designed UEFI BIOS
  • ASUS AI Suite II
  • Impressive power saving capability

Cons

  • Same price range as Entry level AM3+ motherboards
  • Lack of SATA cables

Overall Score: 9.25/10

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