ASUS A88XM-A review: A no-frills board for AMD Kaveri APUs

We had tested the higher end **Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4** couple of months back and were impressed with the board but found the price point too high for an AMD platform. This time we have a micro-ATX form factor board - ASUS A88XM-A which is a comparatively affordable model. Thanks to the FM2+ socket, it will take in a Kaveri APU. Let us check out the board.

Board Layout and Design

[caption id=“attachment_226791” align=“aligncenter” width=“614”]  ASUS A88XM-A is microATX board with an FM2+ socket[/caption]

Being a micro-ATX form factor board, the ASUS A88XM-A board does not appear as dense as some of its higher end siblings. There is no heat sink around the voltage regulator module and just a small square one with multiple fins over the chipset. There is sufficient clearance area around the socket region.

The four DIMM slots are placed at a respectable distance from the socket. Behind the DIMM slots you have the 24-pin ATX power connector. This is followed by all the six SATA 6Gbps ports pointing upward. This can be inconvenient and we would have liked to see at least two ports pointing sideways.

  [caption id=“attachment_226794” align=“aligncenter” width=“614”]  There are six SATA 6Gbps ports pointing upwards placed on the bottom right hand corner[/caption]

On the bottom edge you have the front panel IO ports, two USB 2.0 ports followed by one USB 3.0 port. There are no dedicated power or reset buttons on the A88XM-A board. Clearing CMOS needs to be done in the old-fashioned way by shorting pins as there are no dedicated buttons for that on the board. In terms of the PCI express ports, there is a single 3rd gen PCIe x16 port followed by a PCIe x1 port and finally a PCI port. There are only two fan ports.

Features

[caption id=“attachment_226792” align=“aligncenter” width=“614”]  ASUS A88XM-A has three display ports, two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports on the back panel IO[/caption]

The ASUS A88XM-A is a board featuring the FM2+ socket, which has two additional pins. This means that the Kaveri APUs will need the latest socket FM2+ boards, but the older Richland and Trinity APUs are compatible with the FM2+ socket. Kaveri APUs however, are not backwards compatible. It supports up to 64GB DDR3 memory. The A88X chipset codenamed Hudson D4, supports 4x USB 3.0 ports, 10x USB 2.0 ports and 8x SATA ports, natively.

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  [caption id=“attachment_226793” align=“aligncenter” width=“614”]  Absence of a heatsink around the voltage regulator module is a bit strange[/caption]

On the back panel I/O you have the PS/2 ports on the left, HDMI port, D-Sub and DVI ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports and a LAN port and finally an audio port. It can support a display resolution of up to 4096x2160 pixel via the HDMI port.

  [caption id=“attachment_226796” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  UEFI BIOS on the ASUS A88XM-A (Picture: ASUS)[/caption]

Coming from the ASUS stable, the A88XM-A is packed with proprietary ASUS features such as 5x protection, DIGI+ VRM which not only have hardware components but is complemented well with utilities such as the ASUS AI Suite 3. The board has all solid state capacitors which come with a 5000 hour lifespan. There is overcurrent protection built onto the board in the form of fuses placed just behind the DIMM slots.

AI Suite 3 has time and again proved to be a helpful utility and with the A88XM-A it continues that tradition. It allows you to flash the BIOS, overclock, adjust fan settings, monitor temperatures and clock settings and much more from the utility itself. The UEFI BIOS has been improved upon, coming in the EZ mode as well as Advanced mode. You can enable the XMP profile, change fan speeds from the home page itself. The BIOS has a clean blue backdrop and tabs such as Main, Ai Tweaker, Advanced, Boot and so on. You can also use keyboard shortcuts for bringing up your most used settings and you can also make notes while in the BIOS. There is a My Favourites tab where you can list the most frequently used parameters which you may want to tweak.

Test Setup

Processor: AMD A10-7850K, AMD A10-6800K, Intel Core i7-4770K

Motherboards: ASUS A88XM-A, Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4 (AMD), ASRock Z87 Extreme4 (Intel), Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H (Intel), ASUS Maximus Impact (Intel)

RAM: 2x 4GB GSkill Ripjaws @ 1866MHz

Cooler: Stock AMD cooler, stock Intel cooler

PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Monitor: BenQ GL2250

Performance

We flashed the ASUS A88XM-A board with the latest BIOS and installed all the latest drivers before starting the testing. We ran our regular suite of tests, which is a mixture of synthetic and real life tests. Let us first look at the synthetic tests such as PC Mark 7, 3D Mark 11 and Cinebench R11.5 where higher score is a better score.

    

We use three real-world testing scenarios, to check how well the processor performs with regular tasks. In the 7-zip file compression test, we compress a 100MB assorted file folder using a 4-character encryption. In the POV-ray test we render a 800×600 pixel scene with 0.3 anti-aliasing. Finally, in the video encoding test, we convert a 1 min MPEG file to x.264 MPEG-4 using AVIDemux. All these tests are timed and the lower the score, the better the processor.

  

Verdict and Price in India

ASUS A88XM-A comes at Rs 6,000, which is a good price for a board which is ideal for someone looking at building a Kaveri APU based system. The board is simple and does not promise a lot as compared to the Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4, but then it all boils down to your requirements. In terms of onboard features, the Gigabyte surely has more in terms of USB 3.0 ports, PCIe x16 ports, side-facing SATA ports and so on. But if you are looking at a no-frills board, and have no ambition of doing crossfire setups, then the ASUS A88XM-A makes for a decent buy. We would have still liked to see a heatsink around the voltage regulator module and some side-facing SATA ports. The A88XM-A comes with the useful AI Suite 3 utility as well as a user-friendly BIOS.  If you just plan to stick to the AMD processor for your compute and graphics need, then opt for an AMD A10-6800K or the latest AMD A10-7850K whose internal graphics are good enough to play most games at 720p resolution at medium settings. If you have plans of getting a higher end GPU eventually, then opt for an Intel platform.