Review: amd a8-5600k & asus f2a85

After the great success of the Llano APUs (Processor + Integrated GPU). AMD today released its new AMD Trinity processors and FM2 Boards. It is a pleasure for us to bring together AMD and ASUS the analysis of their AMD A8-5600K processor and the ASUS F2A85-V PRO board. Ready! Ready! Yaaa!

Product ceded by:

Before we begin by explaining all the features of the new AMD Trinity processors. I would like to solve a question that our readers will be asking : What is an APU?

APU stands for: P rocessing Units A held. This begins with the AMD Fusion project in 2006. This is a design by AMD and ATI that combine their powerful processors with mid / low level graphics cards on a single chip. Already at AMD Llano we saw one of the best quality / price / performance options on the market.

It is not the first time that we have analyzed such a processor, we had our first contact with the excellent range of processors. Specifically with a 65w AMD LLANO 3800 and a Gigabyte A75M-UD2H. We tested its graphics power with excellent DIRT 3 and FULL HD video playback.

AMD assure us a profit of 13% in CPU and 18% in graphics towards their equivalents. Regarding synthetic tests, 37%.

This palpable improvement is due to the increase in speed and cores (Up to 4). The integration of the HD 7000 graphics series and its manufacturing at 32 nm have a lot to say.

Regarding games and integrated graphics Intel HD4000 (Only on i5 and i7) sweep the company.

What AMD Trinity models have been released? Never better than one of our boards?

MODELS	A10-5800K	A10-5700	A8-5600K	A8-5500	A6-5400K	A4-5300
PRICES	122	122	101	101	67	53
TDP	100W	65W	100W	65W	65W	65W
CORES	4	4	4	4	two	two
AMD TURBO	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
SPEED (MAX TURBO / BASE GHZ)	4.2 / 3.8	4.0 / 3.4	3.9 / 3.6	3.7 / 3.2	3.8 / 3.6	3.6 / 3.4
L2 CACHE	4MB	4MB	4MB	4MB	1MB	1MB
UNLOCKED	YES	DO NOT	YES	DO NOT	YES	DO NOT
GPU INTEGRATED	7660D	7660D	7560D	7560D	7560D	7480D
SPEED CLOCK GPU (MHZ)	800	760	760	760	760	724
CORES	384	384	256	256	192	128
POSSIBILITY DOUBLE GRAPHIC (CROSSFIREX)	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	DO NOT
MAXIMUM DDR3 FREQUENCY	1866MHZ	1866MHZ	1866MHZ	1866MHZ	1866MHZ	1600MHZ

* The A10-5800K processor allows us to make a hybrid CrossfireX with the ATI 6570/6670 and 6770.

The chipsets available so far are A55, A75 and A85X. We leave you a table with all its characteristics and functionalities.

A85X top-of-the-range chipset architecture drawing:

ASUS F2A85-V PRO FEATURES
Processor	AMD Socket FM2 Athlon ™ / A- Series ProcessorsSupports CPU up to 4 coresSupports AMD® Turbo Core 3.0 Technology
Chipset	AMD A85X FCH (Hudson D4)
Memory	4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR3 1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory Dual Channel Memory Architecture Support AMD Memory Profile (AMP) memory
Integrated Graphics	Integrated AMD Radeon ™ HD 7000 Series Graphics in A-series APU Multi-VGA output support: HDMI / DVI / RGB / DisplayPort ports - Supports HDMI with max. resolution 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz - Supports DVI with max. resolution 2560 x 1600 @ Hz - Supports RGB with max. resolution 1920 x 1600 @ 60 Hz - Supports DisplayPort with max. resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 60 Hz Maximum shared memory of 2048 MB AMD® Dual Graphics technology support * 1 Supports DirectX 11 Supports AMD 3-Way CrossFireX ™ Technology Supports LucidLogix® Virtu ™ MVP Technology * 2
Audio	Realtek® ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC- Supports: Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking Audio Feature: - Optical S / PDIF out port (s) at back panel
LAN	Realtek® 8111F, 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller (s)
Expansion Sockets	3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode) 2 x PCIe 2.0 x12 x PCI
USB	ASMedia® USB 3.0 controller: 2 x USB 3.0 port (s) (2 at back panel, blue) AMD A85X FCH (Hudson D4) chipset: 4 x USB 3.0 port (s) (2 at back panel,, 2 at mid- board) AMD A85X FCH (Hudson D4) chipset: 10 x USB 2.0 port (s) (2 at back panel ,, 8 at mid-board)
Storage interface	AMD A85X FCH (Hudson D4) chipset: 7 x SATA 6Gb / s port (s), gray1 x eSATA 6Gb / s port (s), redSupport Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD
Rear connectors.	1 x PS / 2 keyboard / mouse combo port (s) 1 x DVI1 x D-Sub1 x DisplayPort1 x HDMI1 x eSATA1 x LAN (RJ45) port (s) 4 x USB 3.0 (blue) 2 x USB 2.01 x Optical S / PDIF out6 x Audio jack (s)
BIOS	64 Mb Flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.7, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3, F12 PrintScreen Function, F3 Shortcut Function and ASUS DRAM SPD (Serial Presence Detect) memory information
Format	ATX Form Factor12 inch x 9.6 inch (30.5 cm x 24.4 cm)

We have the most powerful ASUS-designed board on this platform. Here is a table with your little sisters and differences:

What a chest! What treasure will it house?

Surprise! If it is a rabbitds and an AMD A8-5600K.

This rabbit has turned out to be unruly and curious.

Rear view of the A8-5600K.

And once installed on the ASUS F2A85-V PRO

Asus presents this motherboard in a black box with many certifications. These include compatibility with Windows 8.

We emphasize the aesthetics of the plate, the color black and blue predominates. Which I particularly like quite a bit.

The layout of the board is very interesting, since it allows us to install a well-separated Crossfire, sound card and a PCI port for video capture, network card…

The board incorporates several internal USB connections.

The dissipation is very well weighed at both the phase and southern bridge levels.

This system supports up to 32GB at 2400mhz with OC. Serial does not support more than 1866 mhz?

Up to 7 sata 6.0 connections allow us to mount from a home server to a home computer with large storage capacity.

TPU technology: The TPU chip offers very precise control of voltages through the Auto Tuning and TurboV functionalities. Auto Tuning offers a simple way to optimize the system at clock speeds as incredible as it is stable, and TurboV gives you complete freedom to adjust processor frequencies and ratios for any usage scenario. And EPU technology: Provides overall system savings by detecting charging it and moderating the power in an intelligent way-

Rear connection input and output: digital output hdmi, dvi, usb 3.0, and sound card.

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	AMD Trinity A8-5600K
Base plate:	ASUS F2A85-V PRO
Memory:	Kingston Hyperx Predator at 2133mhz
Heatsink	Corsair H60
HDD	Kingston Hyperx 120gb
Graphic card	Integrated.
Power supply	Thermaltake TouchPower 1350W

As always we start with our particular battery of tests:

TESTS
3dMark Vantage:	4863 TOTAL.
3dMark11	P1200 PTS.
Heaven Unigine v2.1	14.3 FPS and 361 PTS.
Aida 64 - Reading - Writing - Copy - Latency	11462 MB / s 9360 MB / s 15309 MB / s 60.4 ns
Lost planet	13 FPS
Evil Resident 5 CineBench	62 FPS 31.35 FPS OPENGL / CPU 3.13 FPS

Regarding consumption, we leave you a table:

The Asus F2A85-V PRO is an ATX board for the recent high-end FM2 socket. Its characteristics are excellent 6 + 2 in phases, possibility of mounting a dedicated CrossfireX or Hybrid, memory compatibility of up to 2400 mhz with Overclocking, A85X FCH chipset, 7 SATA 6.0 ports, 6 USB 3.0 and TPU and EPU technology.

As we have commented on some occasion, Asus include in all its new plates two important characteristics:

• Leader in USB 3.0 certification on your boards (we include the Asus Maximus V Extreme and the entire 7 series). This certification is acquired by successfully passing more than 180 tests. Ensuring a better user experience and product compatibility. TCO = Total Cost of Ownership . What does this mean? That your products reduce the operating costs of the equipment, saving energy, increasing the useful life of the equipment, enhancing the performance of the components and also reduces maintenance costs, thanks to protection against overvoltages, ESD, CrashFree BIOS, USB BIOS Flashback

The performance of the set has met all our expectations in robustness and overclocking. The A8-5600k processor is the second best processor in the series and incorporates an ATI 7660D. We have achieved at stock speeds with 3DMARK11 1200PTS and with Resident Evil 5 62 FPS at a FULL HD 1080 pts resolution. We have also tested the performance depending on the needs of each user:

• Daily and office tasks: The team runs smoothly, without stops or problems. The installation of an SSD storage device is very interesting, since its SATA 6.0 ports make the most of the equipment.Multimedia (movies): FULL HD playback is 100% fluid and I really liked how it was shot in a 48 "Sony television. Games: Designed for casual gamers or with few filters. With this APU we have been able to play old and not so old titles: Diablo 3 and Dirt3 without problems with normal graphics.

Another of the notes is its excellent consumption capacity: In idle it never went over 63w and in full 97w. AMD has done its homework and manufactured a great processor, which we can classify as the best in quality / price on the market (€ 100). As we have seen in this review, we accompany it with a high-end plate such as the Asus F2A85-V PRO (it ranges from € 140) we have an excellent set that allows us the possibility of mounting a very interesting CrossFire Hybrid.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ PERFORMANCE.	- NONE.
+ IDEAL QUALITY / PRICE.
+ SATA PORTS, USB 3.0.
+ THE AMD APU CARRIES VERY GOOD INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CARD.
+ POSSIBILITY OF CROSSFIREX
+ GOOD CONSUMPTION

The Professional Review team awards you the recommended product and gold medals: