Desktop Llano Motherboards: The ASRock A75 Extreme6 Preview
by Ian Cutress on June 14, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Llano
Test Bed
| Processor |
AMD A8-3850 APU with AMD Graphics 6550D 4 Cores, 4 Threads |
| Motherboards | A75 Extreme6 |
| Cooling | Corsair H50-1 Water Cooler |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 1000W 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory |
Patriot Viper Extreme DDR3-2000 9-10-9-27 2x4GB Kit, 1.65V G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-2133 9-11-9-28 4x4GB Kit, 1.65V |
| Memory Settings | DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24 1T 2x4GB |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB Sapphire HD 5850 1GB |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 10.12 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed—CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
Results and Numbers
Most of the comparison data, as with many motherboard benchmark results, are usually CPU based—you won't see much in the way of variation for a lot of them. Here's a sneak peak at some of the more worthwhile ones:
Power Usage
The Desktop Llano system we're using, the A8-3850, is a 100W chip. Given that this is near in line with the 95W of the Sandy Bridge i5-2500K I've been using for the Cougar Point reviews, we can have an apples-to-apples comparison on power consumption against a Z68:
In terms of dual GPU usage, there's not much difference, though a 10W gap at high CPU usage with OCCT and Metro2033 for the A8-3850.
Compared to Z68, at low CPU conditions, the power of the A75 system is reasonable. However at high CPU conditions, or in general compared to the H67, we're using a lot of power here. Of course, Llano's iGPU is a significant step up in performance compared to Sandy Bridge, so we're not necessarily doing the same work here.
CPU Temperatures
Again, we have a prime opportunity for a comparison to Z68:
In each situation, using a Corsair H50, the A75 Extreme6 has a couple of degrees on the ASUS Z68.
USB Performance
Using CrystalDiskMark, we probe the sequential speeds of the USB 3.0 ports, then tackle the port with our standard motherboard copy test, consisting of 33 large and ~2100 small files, total size of 1.52 GB.
In terms of USB 3.0 copy time, we're not seeing much difference between the controller based Z68 and the native A75. ASRock's XFast is still providing a healthy increase in USB 3.0 speeds as well.
3D Movement Benchmark
In terms of pure CPU throughput, we're dealing with a quad core 2.9 GHz processor in our A8-3850 APU. Against the other processor families I have at my disposal:
Even though AMD has a 2.9 GHz, 4C/4T CPU, it falls way behind the i5-2500K with the same number of threads. CPU performance is definitely mainstream in this regard.
iGPU
With the A8-3850, we're dealing with a 400 streaming processor model APU, the HD 6550D. Early web leaks led us to believe it's something special compared to Sandy Bridge offerings—I'm inclined to agree.
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marc1000 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
this is exactly what NEEDED to be done! now we will sum money & performance from APU + GPU, I guess this could be a very interesting thing for the consumer, if it shows proper scaling!JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Hopefully it works better than on the notebook I tested!http://www.anandtech.com/show/4444/12
marc1000 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
well, I was just reading these articles, but after your results, I believe "hope" is the best word to use on the launch of anything amd-branded this year. it was AMD/Ati fierce competition that led the market to the performance race we all love (with the unsuspected launch of Athlon64 and R300 on the perfect time-frame, some years ago).anyway, I hope AMD can deliver as much as possible (with Llano and Bulldozer), because this market needs competition.
yyrkoon - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
I wonder whats up with those USB3 times there Jarred. Nearly a minute to copy only 1.52GB worth of data ? Granted, it is a mix of large, and small files, but I think the ExpressCard USB3 adapter, and external USB3 enclosure I have here does better than that. That, and the setup I have I view as slow. At the very least, I am unhappy with it.Seems to me though, that with USB3, and GbE performing the way they do. That something else is afoot, and perhaps this is the best we're going to see for a while. Whats up with that ?
yyrkoon - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Well actually I shouldn't say I am completely unhappy with USB3. It is faster for single large files. Say in the size of around 700MB to around 1.2 GB in size. 10-15 second copies isn't too terrible. Also, I needed an external enclosure to put my desktop SATA drives into while not using my desktop. Pretty much a no brainer considering the enclosure cost was not more than the cost of a decent USB2 enclosure. Then, $24 for an ExpressCard adapter was no huge deal.Still, while I did not expect 10x speed like advertisers are spouting everywhere. I did expect more.
So, what exactly is the bottleneck ?
peterfares - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link
The hard drives are the bottleneck, not USB3.knedle - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Actually I had an AM3 motherboard that used hybrid crossfire, but it didn't work as you expect it to work (and lets be honest, I was also disappointed).In my case I was hoping that I can crossfire my onboard GPU, with GPU I have in PCIE card, but in reality it just allowed me to switch dynamically from onboard GPU, to expansion card when needed.
Galcobar - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Noticed in the comparison chart on the first page the Display Output line refers to "VGA + 1 dedicated/4 shared (HDMI/DVI/DP) from APU" under Sandy Bridge. I could have sworn APU was the preferred term for AMD's Fusion setup.IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
My apologies, I turned that part of the table the wrong way round compared to my original notes for some reason. Many thanks for spotting it.Ian
lamonf - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
from your own test :core i5 2500K = 100%
A8-3850 = 72%
and because core i3 is a dual core :
core i3 = 50%
You (anand) lack something and you are a one legged biped, mostly the Intel's one ;)