Conclusion
I have to admit that I really like this board. It is a unique design with that (overly) beefy power deliver system for the CPU. It overclocks as well as any other board and has many of the same features of products in its price range. It is an enthusiast level product, but unfortunately the CPU that fits into it is not. While AMD has the best integrated graphics on a CPU, the two module A10-5800K does not perform in CPU intensive applications as well as its Intel counterparts at the same price. Enthusiasts will not want to utilize the onboard graphics unless some application can directly access it for GPGPU/OpenCL workloads. True HSA is not here yet, and that will have to wait for Kaveri in Q4 2013. Very few applications can utilize the graphics portion of Trinity for non-graphics work, and those that do will likely perform better on a standalone video card (even when the card is still rendering 3D graphics and doing OpenCL work at the same time).
Here is a nice shot of the power delivery system. Gigabyte went all out on this particular feature and I hope that it really pays off with future AMD APUs.
The performance of this board is right next to that of the Asus board. Typically Asus is a bit more aggressive in their early tuning than Gigabyte, but it is nice to see such a small difference between the two products. The Etron USB 3.0 controller is going to be slower than the native one, but it will still be significantly faster than any USB 2.0 controller. The differences are around the 5% mark. So while it is slower, it is not going to dramatically infringe on an individual’s productivity.
The overall layout and design of the board is very pleasing to the eye. It also works very well in a functional sense. There is plenty of space between the two cards in CrossFire, and they allow the use of multiple slots depending on the configuration. The SATA ports are unobtrusive and easy to access even with a graphics card installed. It has fast e-SATA support. Seven internal SATA ports should be good enough for nearly everyone. The Gig-E and sound support are provided by Realtek, but that isn’t such a bad thing anymore.
The back is very plain. Some motherboards have some power chips on the back due to a lack of space on the front of the board, but not in this case.
Overall the GA-F2A85X-UP4 is a well rounded board with some very interesting features. It has been a solid and stable motherboard throughout testing, and the performance is right on par with the best in the industry. The price is very reasonable for what is offered and the end user can see the value that they have with all the extras built onto the board.
The only problem is the CPU that is placed in it. Trinity is a good product, but it is not a great product. Enthusiasts are not flocking to it. While it is doing well in desktop applications that do not require heavy CPU power and better than average graphics, it does not require a motherboard nearly as stout as what Gigabyte offers.
The Gigabyte and Asus boards are very similar overall in layout, but I believe the UP4 is slightly better. There are some strange decisions by Asus (3 PCI slots?), and the placement of the seventh SATA port on the Asus board is bad. It becomes unusable when a full sized graphics card is installed. The Gigabyte board does not have that particular problem.
I cannot fault Gigabyte for this motherboard, as it really is a great piece of engineering. They offer a lot of board for a very good price. Hopefully Kaveri will be more performance oriented than the current batch of Trinity processors, and thereby more attractive to enthusiasts who want to find a good product in this price range.
Nice board for FM2. One of
Nice board for FM2. One of the best I have seen. Good job Gigabyte. No AMD you need to make a monster chip for the FM2 socket. Maybe drop the Gpu part and pack more cores. a 6 core fm2 would be sweet
I think a Matx version with
I think a Matx version with similar features and a slightly lower price tag would have made more sense.
Full Atx for an apu is hard to understand.
But I do like it overall, just too bad Trinity really can’t take advantage of anything in the OC department.
nice board, hopefully it will
nice board, hopefully it will work with kaveri.
Looks like a good and solid
Looks like a good and solid motherboard but i lean more towards Asus plus if you get the F2A85-V PRO FM2 AMD A85X you also receive a bonus Razer Kraken pro headset ! id say thats a sweet deal :)http://event.asus.com/au/2013/FM2/
If your work depends on it,
If your work depends on it, learn to check just three times.
If you want to get into reselling of used printer cartridges, yyou
will need to source for additional empty cartridges to make our efforts viable.Sony Ericsson Satio
operated on Symbian OS series 60 with 5th edition, is
a camerta focused phone and it also supplies same size touchscreen display but the scren resolution is 640 x 360 Pixels here and
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will not find QWERTY keyboard.
My brother suggested I might like this website.
He was totally right. This post actually made my day. You cann’t imazgine simply how much time
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This is what I plan on using
This is what I plan on using on my next build. Love Gigabyte…
Gorden Web Design
No numbers? That makes this a
No numbers? That makes this a sort of “general opinion” review?
Kind of like.. well…I like this one sort of better than that one?
Very strange.
I “kind of” wish I had the 5 minutes back.
I see multiple benchmark
I see multiple benchmark pages in the review… are you not seeing them?
I recently purchased one of
I recently purchased one of these boards. The POST screen that is supposed to show on boot up is not visible. All we see is a black screen until the the message “Starting Windows” come on. After several attempts at entering the Bios program I did a bad thing. I tried to reset the bios using the bios reset button. The computer will not boot at all. So I wound up contacting the vendor. They sent me a new board. This one does the same thing. The screen that prompts to hit Del to enter setup never shows up.
Has anyone else experienced this ? If so what can I do?
as seen on a forum, just use
as seen on a forum, just use a VGA cable to enter the bios, it appears that with hdmi the bios is not visible sometimes.
but i didn’t test it myself.
a french guy trying to speak english 😉
I have this board with a A8
I have this board with a A8 5600K APU, 3.6 GHz, 3.9GHz stock…im running rock solid stable @ 4.1GHz, 4.7GHz. i have a corsair H60 water cooler and 12GGB od corsair DDR3 1333MHz, radeon HD 7770 GHz edition, win7 HP x64, 1TB HDD, havent had any problems with it, been putting it thru the ringer for almost a year now, the board’s bullet proof…the apu isnt bad either…awesome buy, and a new found love for gigabyte products
Stopped by to check it out
Stopped by to check it out and found the aricle infomative enough for me to get the mb. Unfortunately some of the people commenting sound like they are as old as I am and quit learning a few years back. Thanks for rhe info.
David Leo Rice
Just bought GA-F2A85X-UP4
Just bought GA-F2A85X-UP4 mobo. What memory should I buy for it? Anybody recommend where I should buy it?
Just bought GA-F2A85X-UP4
Just bought GA-F2A85X-UP4 mobo. What memory should I buy for it? Anybody recommend where I should buy it? Thank you
@bgchip
use 2x4GB Kingston
@bgchip
use 2x4GB Kingston Memory with Clock of 1833Mhz
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