How we test
Comparison systems |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | ASUS F1A75-V PRO | ASRock A75 Pro4 | ASUS P8Z68-V PRO | |||
| Motherboard BIOS | 0802 | 1.50 | 0651 | |||
| Processor | AMD A8-3850 | Intel Core i3-2100 | ||||
| Chipset driver | AMD Catalyst 11.6 | Intel Inf 9.20.1030 | ||||
| Memory | Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 | |||||
| Memory timings | 9-9-9-24-2T @ 1,600MHz | |||||
| Graphics | N/A | |||||
| Disk drive | Corsair V128 SSD | |||||
| Optical drive | Sony AD-7263S | |||||
| Chassis | Corsair Graphite 600T | |||||
| Power supply | Zalman 400W | |||||
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit | |||||
CPU and memory benchmarks |
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| AIDA64 | The successor to Everest - useful for measuring memory bandwidth and latency | |||||
| HEXUS.PiFast |
Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places | |||||
| wPrime 2.0.4 | Another number-crunching benchmark that stresses all available CPU cores/threads | |||||
| CINEBENCH 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores | |||||
| 7zip 9.20 | We use the built-in benchmark in this open-source file-compression utility | |||||
| TrueCrypt 7.0a | An encryption/decryption benchmark that's partial to AES acceleration | |||||
Integrated GPU benchmarks |
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| Just Cause 2 | DX10, 1,280x720 low/medium quality | |||||
| Call of Duty: Black Ops | DX9, 1,280x720, low/medium quality | |||||
| 3DMark Vantage b1.2 | DX10, Run at the default performance preset | |||||
General benchmarks |
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| Storage performance | USB 3.0 read/write speed via AS SSD benchmark | |||||
| Power consumption | While idling, running wPrime and Just Cause 2 | |||||
Testing notes
We've got a couple of A-series FM1 boards up against one another, featuring the same CPU and ancillary components. Providing reference numbers from Intel's side is a roughly price-equivalent CPU-and-motherboard combination.
Taking a look at CPU, GPU, storage and power-efficiency in this review, let's see how the ASUS board stacks up.
