ASUS A88X-PRO AMD Socket FM2+ Motherboard Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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ASUS A88X-PRO AMD Socket FM2+ Motherboard Review - It’s important to take a step back once in awhile and remember that not everyone can afford huge multi-GPU rigs and eight core processors. So if you are in the market for a shiny new APU, you won’t want to miss our coverage of the ASUS’ A88X-PRO. This new FM2+ socket motherboard may not be the answer for you, but it could surely be a solution.
 
Seems quite bias the review, eg who plays games at 640x480 and low settings with a nVidia GTX 670? 2 you are pitting this APU against a completely different target segment infact the i7's tested are almost twice the price and it's target segment is more in line with Intel Core i5-3470 Rather then i7 4770K.
 
Dazz said:
Seems quite bias the review, eg who plays games at 640x480 and low settings with a nVidia GTX 670? 2 you are pitting this APU against a completely different target segment infact the i7's tested are almost twice the price and it's target segment is more in line with Intel Core i5-3470 Rather then i7 4770K.
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Reading is fundamental.
 
My parents have a very old Dell with a single core Pentium 4 with H/T and Windows XP that I have been debating on upgrading. Based on the price I see in this review, this might be the perfect simple solution for them. I doubt they do anything other than web browse, check email, or watch a video here and there with the maximum monitor limited resolution being 1600x900. I just wish AMD was more competitive for those like me who desire faster performance.
 
Now, if AMD would give us a 4 module APU that is actually competitive for the price they are selling a 2 module part for, I'm sure many more would take interest in this platform. Myself included.

*stares at GlobalFoundries*
 
With all the PCs being retired because of Windows XP's demise, this comes in very handy for the budget-conscious.
 
If AMD ever really put effort into making a multiple APU board, where one controls the graphics card and the other controls the cpu, they might have a chance at mucking with intel.

The problem with that is, AMD would hurt their own graphics cards if the built in graphics were comparable to a discrete graphics board. *Shrug*
 
I'm just curious what you would need a PCI legacy slot for anymore?

A good review of this board and the AMD offerings.:D
 
magoo said:
I'm just curious what you would need a PCI legacy slot for anymore?

A good review of this board and the AMD offerings.:D
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I have several old PCI Audigy sound cards that keep making the rounds in simple systems like this. Digital out isn't usually isn't included on motherboard sound cards and I keep reusing the same old Boston Acoustics BA735s along with the old Audigy cards.

I'm currently running a Trinity system with my old Water Cooling gear (2x Black Ice Extreme rads & a D5 pump), the Auidigy, the BA speakers, and a pair of OCZ SSDs I picked up on black friday sale for cheap. Pretty solid little system, and more than enough to stream video or run 4 eve clients.
 
magoo said:
I'm just curious what you would need a PCI legacy slot for anymore?

A good review of this board and the AMD offerings.:D
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An older high end sound card is why I still seek out boards with PCI slots. More generally, it's nice to have PCI slots for these 'upgrade from old XP systems" to reuse old sound cards/NICs should the onboard stuff fail down the road. I imagine most readers of this site have a few laying around, but don't really use them in their own personal systems.
 
Uh, yeah. I got an A10-7850k + a free Asus microATX mobo + a BF4 coupon (which I sold on ebay for $20) for $129-20=$109 combined at Microcenter.

It will get to 4.3 stable but after that things start to fall apart. Sadly the tests I was running at 4.3 vs stock 4.1 turbo were like 10%, not a big deal and not worth the effort.
 
1995 called. They want their PCI slot back.

The issues with this board have more to do with AMD than Asus. The whole thing is just pointless. You have a board starting at just over 120usd and a CPU(APU) starting at 150usd. That's a min of 270usd total. I am pretty sure you can get a X4 with an decent board and mid range graphics card for around the same price. If you don't want a graphics card, why would you want a board with so many expansion slots? If you're building a powerful system, then your money is better spent on Intel.
 
Well AMD is working on getting HSA and other stuff running on their APUs. The GPU on this thing can play Civ 5, BF4, etc. It would be great for someone that's willing to play games with some of the eye candy off. The new Civilization game that's an update to Alpha Centauri is going to use Mantle. So these little APUs will be able to run it too. Crytek is going with Mantle support so I wouldn't be surprised to see Crysis 4 or whatever running on these at reduced settings.

With that said it's not for power users. I see it as a complimentary PC in another room.
 
My bad, fixed. - Kyle
 
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I would have hoped for some Mantle tests as well. Because Dan already stated the obvious in the cpu department it is not going to make waves.

Something unrelated to the review:
Have [H] been in contact with AMD on their official reaction towards AM3+ and the lack of support on that platform and the reason why there will be no more cpu (other then Piledriver) coming to the platform. Also is AMD planning to release new cpu (latest architecture) to a new platform with DDR4/AM4?
 
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At full price I can agree these apus are a bit overpriced. Further, I'll argue that this reviewed board is way overpriced. I got in on the micro center 7850k, Asus a88, bf4 combo and think I have about $180-190 in my CPU and mobo. For that price I'm a big fan. Is it as fast as Intel? No plain and simple no. Yet for the $, I could afford this upgrade for my son and daughter for their school PC's. They can do some light gaming and decent response and OK graphic settings. Plus I had enough to buy an SSD which IMO makes these systems seem faster or at least more fluid in windows vs using Intel, a cheap dedicated graphics card and an old spin drive. Apus are not going to displace power CPU and graphics systems. IMO apus were not really compelling up until kaveri or maybe the prior version. I hope the tech continues to evolve to where AMD gets closer to Intel performance and power draw at some point. For now, I feel we got a good value for the price point I paid. Paying full price I would probably feel different tho.
 
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I purchased the A10-7850K and an MSI A78M-E45 in a combo deal at MC for $150. It also came with the BF4 code, but I activated it for myself rather than sell it.

I had some issues with the motherboard not recognizing the APU, so I ordered an AMD A6-6400K for $50, upgraded the BIOS, found out that the A10 is still not recognized even in the newest BIOS that lists Kaveri compatibility, then picked up a Gigabyte F2A88X-D3H back at MC on clearance for $35. I installed the A10 APU and it works great.

I've been playing a lot of older games including Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim on it at 1080p and High or Ultra detail settings. The games are quite playable, though there are dips in intensive action sequences. The PC spends the rest of its time performing HTPC duties.

At the right price, AMD can't be beat in terms of the bang they provide for the buck. There is no way that I am going to be able to build an i3 based system with a dedicated video card that will deliver comparable performance for less. The value proposition is quickly lost when you start spending a lot of money on the motherboard, but even then AMD provides a lot of expandability for a $100 motherboard, so it is not a complete waste.

I am glad that reviewers are taking the time to review AMD's APU offerings, including different motherboards for the platform, especially since they are the underdog when compared to Intel in terms of CPU performance. With each successive iteration, AMD really seems to be making strides in APU territory. This has the added benefit of forcing Intel to take integrated graphics seriously, and Intel is making great strides on that front, even if their CPU performance is not advancing at the same rate.
 
mr caffine is right about the a10-7850k being able to run older games well. i loaded up deadspace 1, 2 the other day and was able to turn on everything at 1080. i'm betting the hd 7750 gpu will handle most unreal 3 games just fine. the caveat is that you need fast memory to achieve that performance. truthfully, the difference in cost of an a10 7850k and a i3 1150 for those of us who don't live near a microcenter is about 30 bucks. and that discrepancy is largely due to 2133 memory coming down in price, and for whatever reason 1600 memory going up in price. i went ahead and speced out two builds via the egg. intel on left and amd on right.

egg.png


see. not hot hugely more expensive on the intel side, and one can argue that the price difference is worth the performance bump.
 
Gosh forbid AMD up their IPC. It's embarrassingly pathetic compared to Intel and this is coming from an AMD fan.
 
Endgame said:
I have several old PCI Audigy sound cards that keep making the rounds in simple systems like this. Digital out isn't usually isn't included on motherboard sound cards and I keep reusing the same old Boston Acoustics BA735s along with the old Audigy cards.

I'm currently running a Trinity system with my old Water Cooling gear (2x Black Ice Extreme rads & a D5 pump), the Auidigy, the BA speakers, and a pair of OCZ SSDs I picked up on black friday sale for cheap. Pretty solid little system, and more than enough to stream video or run 4 eve clients.
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fantabulous said:
An older high end sound card is why I still seek out boards with PCI slots. More generally, it's nice to have PCI slots for these 'upgrade from old XP systems" to reuse old sound cards/NICs should the onboard stuff fail down the road. I imagine most readers of this site have a few laying around, but don't really use them in their own personal systems.
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Point taken, but I would bet you that most new motherboards have as good or better sound that the older PCI stand-alone sound cards.
That, and I would bet a cheap PCI-e sound card could beat up on my old PCI X-Fi card.
It just seems a waste of space to do this....../shrug....
 
magoo said:
Point taken, but I would bet you that most new motherboards have as good or better sound that the older PCI stand-alone sound cards.
That, and I would bet a cheap PCI-e sound card could beat up on my old PCI X-Fi card.
It just seems a waste of space to do this....../shrug....
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In my case, it's an old "prosumer" card for recording that still sounds nicer than onboard/inexpensive PCIe cards. A sidegrade to a PCI-e or external solution would be probably be more than an FM2 bundle. It's nice to have that kind of flexibility on a value platform.

Regarding value, I'm not seeing much point in this board specifically. I can see a niche use in a combined HTPC and large storage server, or similar setups. The FM2 APUs are something I'd consider for a new small build, not so much for a full blown ATX build.
 
fantabulous said:
In my case, it's an old "prosumer" card for recording that still sounds nicer than onboard/inexpensive PCIe cards. A sidegrade to a PCI-e or external solution would be probably be more than an FM2 bundle. It's nice to have that kind of flexibility on a value platform.

Regarding value, I'm not seeing much point in this board specifically. I can see a niche use in a combined HTPC and large storage server, or similar setups. The FM2 APUs are something I'd consider for a new small build, not so much for a full blown ATX build.
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My thoughts exactly.
 
rennyf77 said:
.....see. not hot hugely more expensive on the intel side, and one can argue that the price difference is worth the performance bump.
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The i3 has better cpu performance in most things, but the gpu portion is weaker. Also the Kaveri has AES, more complete virtualization features, and a few other features that the i3 is missing completely. The Kaveri is a much more feature rich way to go. You just have to pay a penalty in the cpu performance department. It's a fair trade off for many, especially if it's a cheaper path.
 
The ATX motherboard could be just to fill up a bigger case :) I actually felt a little weird setting up the Kaveri build in a large case. The mATX combo made the case seem empty. Even in the Antec case that I'm using right now there is a lot of extra space left over.
 
pgaster said:
The i3 has better cpu performance in most things, but the gpu portion is weaker. Also the Kaveri has AES, more complete virtualization features, and a few other features that the i3 is missing completely. The Kaveri is a much more feature rich way to go. You just have to pay a penalty in the cpu performance department. It's a fair trade off for many, especially if it's a cheaper path.
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of course the gpu portion of the i3 weaker. that's why i included a discrete gpu. and as to advanced encryption, vm, hsa.....i know people like to go on and on about this stuff but hsa is really just future tech and has a limited foot print in terms of current consumer computing. and that's what we're really talking about here. at the $300 range for some key computer components, the target audience is the web surfer/emailer/budget gamer/media encoder type. sure you might dabble with vm or aes, but anyone seriously invested in either of those features will be going with enterprise level hardware anyway. my post, if you missed it, was trying to address mr caffeine's point about the amd's bang for the buck advantage in budget gaming. and while he's quite right about intel not being able to provide the same performance for less, the $30 more expensive intel build provides more performance for a bit more money, thus making their bang for buck ratio pretty even.
 
rennyf77 said:
of course the gpu portion of the i3 weaker. that's why i included a discrete gpu. and as to advanced encryption, vm, hsa.....i know people like to go on and on about this stuff but hsa is really just future tech and has a limited foot print in terms of current consumer computing. and that's what we're really talking about here. at the $300 range for some key computer components, the target audience is the web surfer/emailer/budget gamer/media encoder type. sure you might dabble with vm or aes, but anyone seriously invested in either of those features will be going with enterprise level hardware anyway. my post, if you missed it, was trying to address mr caffeine's point about the amd's bang for the buck advantage in budget gaming. and while he's quite right about intel not being able to provide the same performance for less, the $30 more expensive intel build provides more performance for a bit more money, thus making their bang for buck ratio pretty even.
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Agreed, and not arguing with you. I think you were replying to another poster anyway, but my point in my post was at non MC pricing, the intel would be the better bet for anyone gaming. For grandma etc.. it's a wash, as the normal user won't notice anyway, and that $30 could be applied to an SSD vs spin drive and that would make a bigger difference. Anyway, APU's are not the be all end all, but IMO are a nice alternative for many people and I think in bulk buys are a nice option for all in one computers where discreet graphics become a bigger issue as like my dell 27" all in one unit has a Nvidia 640 graphics which is a laptop chip from what I understand. Sure it's got an i7 in it, but cannot run Diablo III at all max settings where my daughters 7850K can :). So, it all depends. If I was ripping dvd's or using the i7 as intended the i7 would destroy the AMD chip. But what one person finds valuable maybe different than the next person. Most of us here appreciate gaming and power PC use. most people just want something that works well and is a fluid experience. For 99% of what most people do, an APU is fine. Grandma and mom/dad don't generally use super pi or Futuremark. I'm not arguing the i3 isn't a "faster" system. Just that we sit and cry about IPC, but today's PC's are in many ways overpowered for what most people do anyway, and enough power is enough power. think a honda minivan having 600hp vs 900hp. More than enough anyway ;). Anyway, not trying to start an argument, just pointing out that I agree with you that the i3 is faster, that at normal internet pricing I would probably do the i3 myself, but at MC pricing, the AMD APU is a hell of a deal for what you get :).
 
the amd apu also has in its favor the small foot print factor. even without micro center pricing, for a tiny foot print computer with some gaming capacity, the amd apu's are the only option. my post wasn't to suggest that apus are irrelevant, but simply to refocus the discussion on what we're all chiefly concerned with here; gaming. pgaster brought up aes, vm, and i'm assuming hsa. the truth of the matter is that if your work depends on any of those technologies you're not spending $300 worth of hardware, you're looking at what the enterprise sector has to offer and the support that goes along with that equipment. to that end, saving $30 over the intel build to buy an ssd cache drive/boot drive is a good compromise.

the intel build's gaming superiority isn't only about ipc, that build also benefits from a faster gpu in the r7 250x. the only discrete version of the 7850k gpu is the hd 7750. there is no discrete r7 equivalent. one step up from the 7750 is the 7770 which was re-branded the r7 250x. the hd 7750 and r7 250x are the same price, with the hd 7770 strangely more expensive by $20. the difference between the two video cards is not a trivial thing. at 1080p we're not just talking about better frame rates on the intel build, but also enough processing advantage to up a few more settings.
 
Thanks for the review, [H]. I've used these APUs and paired then with a SSD. They are the perfect low end computers for mom and pop or a kid who doesn't need it for gaming. The latest one I built boots up and and is ready to go before the monitor displays anything. That's with the el cheapo 4 core APU which let me afford the SSD in the first place. Normal use is just as snappy as my gaming rig.

You simply can't beat these APUs for all around cheap and basic computing if you put the right things in the system.
 
rennyf77 said:
of course the gpu portion of the i3 weaker. that's why i included a discrete gpu. and as to advanced encryption, vm, hsa.....i know people like to go on and on about this stuff but hsa is really just future tech and has a limited foot print in terms of current consumer computing. and that's what we're really talking about here. at the $300 range for some key computer components, the target audience is the web surfer/emailer/budget gamer/media encoder type. sure you might dabble with vm or aes, but anyone seriously invested in either of those features will be going with enterprise level hardware anyway. my post, if you missed it, was trying to address mr caffeine's point about the amd's bang for the buck advantage in budget gaming. and while he's quite right about intel not being able to provide the same performance for less, the $30 more expensive intel build provides more performance for a bit more money, thus making their bang for buck ratio pretty even.
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Sorry, I looked too fast and missed the discrete gpu in the list with the i3. That does change things and probably does make it a better value.
 
What a disgrace! Pitting an entry level APU against one of Intel's best CPUs?!?! I can't imagine why it had such shit scores. Raise the bar, don't lower it.
 
an entry level apu would be the sempron 2650. the a10 7850k is the premium apu utilizing amd's fastest core architecture. though i would have preferred the tests pitting the chip against an i5 instead.
 
Well, proper way to compare APU's/CPU's is in the same platform(MB+APU) price bracket, IMNHO. And where is the usual "maximum playable quality" settings test? I was expected something better from [H], this is more like a fail.
 
"maximum playable" is for video card articles. your reading comprehension is quite-how do the kids say it-"fail"?
 
Zolishoru said:
Well, proper way to compare APU's/CPU's is in the same platform(MB+APU) price bracket, IMNHO. And where is the usual "maximum playable quality" settings test? I was expected something better from [H], this is more like a fail.
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Sounds like you just wanted them to find a slow enough Intel cpu that the apu could beat. That would be a slower AMD apu.
 
rennyf77 said:
"maximum playable" is for video card articles. your reading comprehension is quite-how do the kids say it-"fail"?
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I don't see why it can't be applied to CPU/APU's too; care to explain?
And about YOUR reading comprehension:
Well, proper way to compare APU's/CPU's is in the same platform(MB+APU) price bracket, IMNHO.
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Fail, even in the cherry-picking.
 
pcjunkie said:
Sounds like you just wanted them to find a slow enough Intel cpu that the apu could beat. That would be a slower AMD apu.
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I would estimate that ANY Intel quad to be faster than the tested AMD APU, there's no competition. But the fairness would ask to level the playing field, otherwise anybody can point out (imaginary or real)bias.
 
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Zolishoru said:
I don't see why it can't be applied to CPU/APU's too; care to explain?
And about YOUR reading comprehension:
Fail, even in the cherry-picking.
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easy explanation chief, they don't do that with mobo reviews. they've never done that with mobo reviews. if you have a problem with that, send your e-whine to kyle.

and one more thing, since you're on this super self righteous price rant, the a10 7850 is $190. do you know which i3 haswell costs that much?....none. do you know what haswell cpu matches the 7850k's price?...the i5 4430. wanna guess how the 7850k compares to an i5 4430 in the same battery of tests?
 
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rennyf77 said:
easy explanation chief, they don't do that with mobo reviews. they've never done that with mobo reviews. if you have a problem with that, send your e-whine to kyle.
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Well, that's not an explanation; the times are changed, maybe it's time to change the testing methodology - pretty much that was my "question/request". And if you have nothing but e-whine, better keep it for yourself.
 
Even the latest Intel Gigabyte Z87 boards include 1 pci slot for stuff laying around you might want to use.
Sadly my turtle beach card can't be, no driver support.

Last year I built a A10 trinity board for barely over $200 bucks for my brother who was still using a P4 system.
Safe to say it kicked the piss out of it and he's more then happy to not have to swear at the computer for being too slow now.

He does not play games, just net browser and music so it's plenty, maybe even overkill but it works.
 
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