Gigabyte GA-F2A85X UP4 motherboard review - Introduction

Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 Motherboard with the looks to kill

Oh for real that there's a pretty good chance you have just read our A10 series APU review from AMD. 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 an ASUS board, however in this review an Gigabyte board. 

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 chip-set 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.

Gigabyte for example, offer the board Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 Trinity motherboard as tested today an  AMD Socket FM2 based motherboard for the desktop Trinity APUs which have just launched. The motherboard offers the AMD A85 chip-set, a near silly (for this segment) three PCI Express x16 slots, four memory slots, six USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 6Gbps ports. It also is equipped with Gigabyte's new MOSFET design, which promises cooler operation.

A motherboard loaded with little tricks  and features, for example you'll spot no less then four monitor outputs on this product of which you may use up-to three simultaneously. But before we dive into the tech stuff, have a peek .. now I ask you again, does that look like an entryu-level product ?