ASUS F1A75-M Pro Review - Micro-ATX Llano at $110
by Brendan van Varik on January 22, 2012 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Llano
Final Words
The ASUS F1A75-M Pro definitely has strong points and not-so strong points, but overall it performs to a level which you may have expected from a mid-range A75 motherboard. For the features which you get with this motherboard and how it performs, it certainly is not a bad contender in its price bracket of around $110 from Newegg.
As with most A75 boards, dual discrete graphics cards in a Llano based system is made possible due to the fact that ASUS have included two full length PCIe slots - however, there are two issues with this. The first problem being the fact that users may be somewhat limited due to the second slot being positioned right at the bottom of the board (as an mATX motherboard would typically be in an mATX sized case, there may not be enough room to fit a dual slot GPU). The second issue is with the chipset being limited to providing a x16/x4 PCIe lane split. This really limits the second slot to any x1/x4 sound or RAID cards at best.
When we tested the board's performance, in single threaded mode it was good, but showed some inconsistencies when multi-threaded applications were used. Even when retested to try to eliminate any issues with bad boot ups, the scores which you see in this review remained statistically around the same value. When this board was put through its paces with the overclocking part of the review, it delivered some great results. It is currently one of the best overclockable boards which we have on record for the A75 platform, and there was most likely more performance left in it if a user was willing to go beyond our self imposed 1.5 V overclock limit.
With A75 (and A55) producing boards all much of the same price, with usually the same onboard features, it comes down to the extras, the warranty, the software, and how much a consumer likes the manufacturer. ASUS have always done well in most of these areas - perhaps at this level we would have liked a couple more SATA cables, but the three year warranty and AI Suite software/fan controls are top notch.
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amxn - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
I don't know if the tables are wrong or if Asus are actually expecting people to pay more for a product that loses quite a few features than its lower priced variant?just4U - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
Well it's mini-itx so that's likely the reason why the deluxe version is more expensive.StevoLincolnite - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
That's Micro-ATX.Mini-ITX only has the one PCI/PCI-E slot.
Death666Angel - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
What? The Deluxe version is mini-ITX and costs more (and pretty much all mITX boards I know come with PCIe x4-x16 depending on CPU/chipset). The tested version in this article is micro-ATX and has 1 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe x1, 1 PCIe x4 and 1 PCI slot. So I'm not sure what your comment is referring to. :-)chui101 - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
I didn't realize CPU temperatures could be measured in FPS too! ;)Great review, thanks! I'm really tempted to build a mini ITX Llano system... this might be the board I go with!
BLaber - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
Please mention power supply used on Power consumption test page to help make sense of power consumption test numbers.bobbozzo - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
Also, I would like to see power consumption without any added video cards.thanks
Dobs - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
Totally agree !!! Prolly a 1000W monster PSU like last time."These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system" ummmmmmm whose real world?
Why does it seem sooo hard for Anandtech to give decent psu and power consumption info on anything related to Llano? Seriously
fic2 - Monday, January 23, 2012 - link
Have to agree. This would probably make a good HTPC, but who would put dual 5850s in an HTPC. Seems like bizarro test setup to measure the power consumption of a motherboard. Like measuring the mpg of a car when it is pulling a horse trailer and calling it "typical".Kevin G - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
I'm curious how far this board can take the unlocked A8-3870K when overclocked.