GIGABYTE F2A88X-UP4 Review
by Ian Cutress on March 24, 2014 11:59 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Gigabyte
- FM2
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings, although multiple GPUs seems to have no scaling effect.
| F1 2013, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates |
|
|
| Minimum Frame Rates |
|
|
Surprisingly the UP4 seems to have a defecit on every test setup with F1 2013. A deeper look suggests that the turbo mode during this benchmark was not engaging fully.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Bioshock Infinite, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates |
|
|
| Minimum Frame Rates |
|
|
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates |
|
|
| Minimum Frame Rates |
|
|
Tomb Raider comes across very CPU agnostic, regardless of PCIe lanes or CPU speed in our small test.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
18 Comments
View All Comments
apertotes - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
The old EasyTune software may end up being a blessing in disguise. The newer Intel software has a nasty issue with global hotkeys and some non-English keyboard layouts. Those hotkeys can not be disabled or remapped and take control of some very usual key combinations like @,# or €.DukeN - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
Good mining board - inexpensive combined with a cheap AMD proc, even has onboard power button wired in.popej - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
Again dynamic range "From Graph"? Can't you believe, that numeric value and provided graph are only different presentation of the same result?Noise level drawn on the graph directly depends on FFT size, make FFT calculation with twice the size of data and it will drop by 3dB. RMAA probably draws graph normalized to 1Hz FFT bins, but it is only a convention, nothing there can suggest 102dB DNR.
StevoLincolnite - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
I'm really not all that interested in ATX sized FM2+ boards.However, where I think there is a gap that needs to be filled is actually in the AM3+ sector.
SERIOUSLY Where are the ITX based AM3+ boards!?
I have a Phenom 2 x6 and an FX 8120 laying around that would love to find their homes in a Mini-ITX system.
meacupla - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link
I think it's just not possible to load up an ITX board with that many voltage regulators.Asrock's first FM2 ITX board went up in flames, and an A10 is lower power than Phenom or FX.
bdub951 - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
ITX is where FM2+ shines. We really need a look at the various FM2+ ITX offerings. I've dealt with the GA-F2A88XN-WIFI and while the board itself is very nice, the BIOS and software really needs some work. Overclocking is a mixed bag on FM2+ due to the CPU throttling to 3Ghz under iGPU load. iGPU overclocking is the most important distinguishing factor between boards and the GA-F2A88XN-WIFI (possibly the rest from Gigabyte too) doesn't appear to allow the iGPU to clock beyond 960Mhz even though you can set it higher in BIOS.DrMrLordX - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
The 3 ghz P5 state throttling under iGPU load can be defeated:http://www.overclock.net/t/1459225/i-have-custom-l...
. . . but it isn't an elegant solution. I think the UP4 has been reported to restrict iGPU overclocking to 960 mhz by some folks at overclock.net, but my memory is fuzzy on that point.
bdub951 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link
I'm a little disappointed that Anandtech isn't able to look into issues like this. I think it's pretty important to know these things when determining what CPU and MB to go with. Why even bother with determining what CPU OC a board will support when the use of your iGPU just causes it to throttle to P5 making the OC useless. Given this appears to be a TDP limitation that is designed into Kaveri, wouldn't it make more sense to determine the iGPU OC??Now whether this TDP limitation affects the iGPU also remains to be seen but there are reports that the iGPU throttles to 450Mhz randomly causing stuttering when it's OC'd. I believe MSI afterburner shows this.
Regardless, I think it's time for a little more disclosure from AMD as to whats happening. This is supposed to be an unlocked processor but it's clearly locked. Whether you lock via clocks, multiplier, or TDP is irrelevant, it's still locked.
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link
Allegedly, MSI Afterburner can be used to defeat iGPU throttling, though at least one person I've talked to has voiced the opinion that the throttling behavior may be due to excessive polling by software such as . . . MSI Afterburner (and the person I am citing may step forward to elaborate, if he wishes).As far as the p5 state throttling, some boards are supposedly able to defeat that behavior by toggling a setting such as advanced power management (APM), but it is not 100% clear whether or not that is effective. Some boards do not offer this option in their UEFI.
I agree that more disclosure and coverage of throttling issues on Kaveri would be nice. Published benchmarks are all potentially tainted by throttling behavior. I don't fault the reviewers really, Kaveri is just an odd chip. Power delivery seems to be a major concern on the FM2+ platform when hosting a Kaveri CPU.
rozquilla - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
The link to the AMD A10-7850K (ES) processor actually links to the Intel Core i7-4960X.