A decent board for a good price, but
it can’t quite catch the Gigabyte
A SRock’s FM2A75 Pro4-M is a micro ATX
board, but unlike the Asus F2485- M Pro, it has both Display Port, and has
fewer USB 3 and SATA 6Gbps ports. Plus, with two PCI-E graphics cards
installed, the second slot drops to 4x, potentially affecting performance.
Otherwise, though, the FM2A75 Pro4-M’s
design comes up trumps. The 24-pin ATX connector, SATA ports and on-board USB 3
connector and located at the edge of the PCB. The 12-pin EPS 12V connector is
inset a little, but otherwise you’ll have no issues fitting large CPU coolers
or routeing cables out of sign. Unlike the Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H, the FM2A75
Pro4-M also has a heatsink on its VRMs, which became very warm on all the
boards on test during overclocking.
ASROCK
FM2A75 Pro4-M
The FM2A75 Pro4- M also detected the
correct memory timing and had no issues running it at its rated speed of
2,133MHz. The EFI layout us a little messy in comparison to Asus and Gigabyte’s
designs though you have to scroll up and down whole pages to find settings that
should be grouped together, but it at least provides absolute CPU voltage
control rather than offset control, along with access to most other key
voltages. At stock speed, the FM2A75 Pro4- M was on a par with the Gigabyte
board in most test, and it had a small lead in the video encoding test too.
However, like the Gigabyte board, it lagged behind the A85X boards.
This wasn’t the case in the games, though,
where its minimum frame rates of 26fps and 46fps in Skyrim and Crysis 2
respectively were within a fraction of the other boards on test. Its 46Mb/sec
SATA 6Gbps write speed was the only cause for concern, but this was the case
with the other examples too.
We also managed to overclock our 5800 K to
4.4 GHz with the FM2A75 Pro4-M to 4.4 GHz, using a vcore of 1.5V and a 44x multiplier,
while disabling Cool ’n’ Quiet, CPU thermal throttle and Core C6 mode on the
EFI. However, it failed to smoothly recover from a couple of overzealous
overclocks – a problem we didn’t have with the Gigabyte. We also managedto
boost the GPU core frequency to 1GHz as well, which saw a major boost in our
on-board graphics Skyrim test, with the minimum frame rate rising from 26fps to
29fps. Meanwhile, the increase in CPU speed saw the overall score in our Media
Benchmarks suite rise to 1,463, but Crysis 2 with a discrete GPU saw little
improvement.
The
FM2A75 Pro4-M also detected the correct memory timing
Conclusion
Despite its low price, the FM2A75 Pro4-M
keeps us with the Asus F2A85-M Pro, which costs nearly twice as much. However,
the cheaper Gigabyte offers a superior BIOS and more overclocking headroom,
while also recovering better from failed overclocks.
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Details
·
Red bull: Inexpensive; PCI and PCI- E slots
·
HRT: A Little flaky when pushed; EFI isn’t as
slick as the competition
·
Product code: FM2A75 Pro4-M
·
Price: $90
·
Manufacturer: www.asrock.com
Scores
·
Speed: 40/ 45
·
Feature: 21/ 30
·
Value: 22/ 25
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