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The Guru of 3D posted a review on the ECS A85F2-A Golden Motherboard



It's very likely you have read our AMD A10 series APU reviews. These APU's slash processors offer value for money in the entry level PC market. Obviously the APU needs some sort of infrastructure as well, and that's where FM2 motherboards jump in. In the weeks to come you are going to notice a lot of reviews on A85X motherboards from various manufacturers. Now we have multiple of these motherboards in the lab here so for the APU reviews we used ASUS board in this review an ECS board and there will be more.

But what are these new motherboards all about ? Well, the chip used on these puppies is the FCH and alongside the Trinity processor APUs the new A85X FCH is born.

First off, to clear some confusion, Trinity-based APUs are not socket-compatible with Llano. So the new A10 APU would not fit on the older models motherboards. The old chipset and the new one however are hard to separate. The A85X FCH gives you eight SATA 6Gb/s-capable ports, RAID 5 support, and the ability to divide the APU’s 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 into a pair of x8 links. That really is the big difference right there. Then of course the motherboard manufacturers will add more ICs and designs to make the products more attractive.
  ECS A85F2-A Golden Motherboard Teview