Board Impressions
The sheer amount of features that this board has is impressive. It might not be mind-boggling, but it sure does catch one’s attention. Asus has packed a lot into this board for the pretty reasonable $159 US that most places are charging. There are obviously cheaper solutions out there, but if a user wants to go the AMD APU route and have a high quality, highly configurable board that will last quite a while then the Asus Crossblade Ranger should be high on the list.
The Sonic Radar reveals the direction of sound around a character in first person shooters.
The board layout is really good. I like the spacing of the two primary PEG slots in that they do not cover up any of the vertical USB, audio, or case connections at the bottom of the motherboard. I am actually somewhat surprised that Asus included two PCI slots in this board, as most users would only use a soundcard in such an application. Since the onboard audio offers up a whole lot for free, I do not foresee many people transitioning an older/favorite soundcard to this board. There are two PCI-E x1 slots on the board, but one will most likely be covered by a dual slot graphics card (this is still essentially an enthusiast board).
I was able to run the A10-7850K fully enabled with an NVIDIA GTX 580. This, in theory, should allow the use of such features as TrueAudio that the APU supports. It also allows the GPU portion of the APU to work on HSA enabled applications without impacting the installed graphics card. This is a neat and flexible way to leverage the features that AMD provides with their latest generation of APU along with any graphics card from any vendor out there.
Eight SATA-6G ports should be enough for anyone (not named Allyn).
I was disappointed with the lack of a DisplayPort connection, but most users will not have much of a problem here if they install their primary video card. 4K monitors might be a BIT too much for the graphics portion of even the top end Kaveri APU. The inclusion of six total USB 3.0 ports is a big plus, but I do often question how many USB 3.0 peripherals the average user has plugged in most of the time. Things like mice and keyboards are much more sensitive to latency than any particular need like bandwidth.
The bundle for this board is pretty standard, but Asus does up their game a small amount by including a mousepad. The design on the mousepad is eye-catching, and the quality is perfectly adequate. The rest of the bundle includes the necessary manuals, driver disk, SATA cables, door hanger, and cable labels/stickers. The manual is thick and in-depth about the functionality of the board, firmware, and included software.
Shiny! Don't look too close, one might see a naked man taking a picture of a teapot.
The audio was great for a motherboard. This implementation edges out the previous champ, the Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X. The ability to control the sound and amplification is outstanding. The sound comes out very clean and accurate. Users can color that sound to their own preferences by using the bundled applications to further enhance effects. I really appreciated how clean the audio was coming from the front connections with a high end set of headphones. When the audio was quieter than I wanted, even with the sliders all the way up, I was able to go into the control software and increase the amplification. This should allow users plenty of freedom to adjust the volume levels to their liking. In other news, I may be going deaf.
The audio functionality of the board is very impressive. Note that the application takes note of the resistance value of the headphones that are currently plugged in.
I feel that overall that this is a much more focused board that is truly aimed at the enthusiast. While the CPU side of the AMD APU is not entirely impressive, they are still fairly quick quad core parts that should not hold back users in many games or applications. Some judicious overclocking will help that performance by a significant degree. Users who will want to do a lot of compute intensive work that will leverage more than four cores will obviously want to look elsewhere. We still have not seen a whole lot of HSA enabled applications, but eventually those will make their way into the ecosystem. If and when that occurs, then the AMD Kaveri APUs might be a bit more desirable.
Before I forget, the BIOS battery is in a position where it can be easily swapped if needed. Some might consider it an unconventional placement, but we cannot argue that it has excellent accessibility even with a larger than average video card installed. Unless of course the user has a monstrous air cooling tower…
finally! and not just the FM2
finally! and not just the FM2 APUs get love, the FM2 athlons as well!!
the FX boards are $$$$$$ so FM2 is a great budget.
Now we just have to wait for
Now we just have to wait for more AMD Mini-ITX boards to show up. I would think that an APU equipped system would be perfect for a Media Center PC.
they have some pretty small
they have some pretty small micro atx boards, just find the case of your choice and you are good to go.
won’t be mini itx but no bigger then an xbox.
… maybe post more game
… maybe post more game benchmarks, instead of the above posted benchmarks. I can think of no reason anyone would buy this board other than as a low to mid range gaming replacement.
I was considering approaching
I was considering approaching AMD about a gaming scenario with testing centered around that. I want to try out the Crossfire perf of say 2 x R9 285s in such a solution and see how it matches up with the i7 3770K or something like it.
No need to compare to an
No need to compare to an i7-3770k. AMD will have a hard enough time competing with an i5-2500k.
won’t be the highest end but
won’t be the highest end but don’t snuff your nose up at this board.
Quad core athlon with a beefy video card and you’ll have a pretty smoking system on the cheap.
well nice board, just hope
well nice board, just hope something comes along that is better than the 860quad core.
A high end m-itx FM2+ would
A high end m-itx FM2+ would sell well I think.
You mean something like this?
You mean something like this? http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4745#ov
Whenever someone reviews an
Whenever someone reviews an FM2 board they always say the end user could just buy a dedicated GPU and everything would be rosy. I think 95% of the pc community misses the point of AMD’s venture into APU and built in graphics: to give the end user an affordable decent gaming platform that does not need a dedicated GPU. Combine it with high performance ram, tweek the video settings and many games can be very playable. Just keep it in perspective, don’t expect the moon and the end user won’t be disappointed with these very affordable parts !
So, how much more FPS does it
So, how much more FPS does it give you compared to the other budget FM2+ boards for lots more of $$$? 1 or 2?
Also, AMD APUs’ CPU performance will bottleneck any mid-end X Fire or SLI setup. You’d need at leasr an i5 and this is just a fact, I’m not Intel fanboy, I always go with AMD whenever I can.
But a high-end FM2+ motherboard, it’s useless. Not worth it.
Current APUs are for budget gaming builds without the need to spend on a dedicated GPU, not this.
Athlon will stack up just
Athlon will stack up just fine with an i5
FM2+ isn’t just for APUs.
It is unfortunate that the
It is unfortunate that the TrueAudio portion is bundled in with the GPU on APUs. The Athlons don't enable that particular functionality. Not a big deal if you use a couple of R9 285s or R9 290s, but still… if you go for an NV part, you are out of luck.
Just bought this new
Just bought this new motherboard and doing a new install and the motherboard runs for one second and then shut down abruptly.
Your mention of the ASUS
Your mention of the ASUS Crosshair Extreme was a bit harsh to say the least.See it’s people like yourself that weren’t educated enough to know how the logix setup even worked and still don’t, so you dismiss it. Like alot of far advanced technology. To say I still crank mad benchmarks with this board do to the lack of support for the AMD chipset, there is not much to work with. Do to intel fanboys flipping noobs to that side of the road so AMD gets no true support in sales leading makers to build intel crap boards.
Wait… what?
Wait… what?