AMD A8-3850 Llano APU and Lynx Platform Preview

For the purposes of this article, we acquired a handful of A75-based motherboards to give you all an idea as to what type of boards would be hitting the scene when AMD A-Series APUs are first made available.

 

 
MSI A75MA-G55

First up, we have the MSI A75MA-G55. Like the other A75-based motherboards featured here, all of the chipset’s features are available on the A75MA-G55, but MSI works a bit of their own magic as well. The MSI A75MA-G55 features a mouse-friendly EFI BIOS that’s much easier to navigate than traditional text-only based BIOS menus, although it does look rather plain compared to some of the other boards (Asus in particular). The board is also in MSI’s “Military Class II” family and features super ferrite chokes, highly conductive polymer capacitors and / or solid capacitors throughout, which should offer increases stability and longevity.

The MSI A75MA-G55 also supports all of the overclocker-friendly features we’ve come to expect from MSI for manual performance tweaking.

Other features of the MSI A75MA-G55 include USB3.0 and CrossFire support, along with “i-Charger” which allows users to more quickly charge USB devices. We found the layout of the MSI A75MA-G55 to be quite good despite its micro-ATX form factor and also like the dark blue and black features on the board.

 

 
Asus F1A75-V PRO

Next, we have the Asus F1A75-V PRO. The Asus F1A75-V PRO is one of the more feature rich motherboards featured here. In addition to exploiting all of the features inherent to the A75 chipset, this board P8Z68-V PRO offers what Asus calls its “Dual Intelligent Processors 2”. The Dual Intelligent Processors consist of Asus’ EPU unit, which we’ve covered in the past, and the TurboV processing unit. The processors work together with the F1A75-V PRO’s digital VRM (DIGI+ VRM) and give users the ability to monitor and adjust power delivery. According to Asus, the combination of the programmable digital VRM and Dual Intelligent Processors 2 results in superior efficiency and longevity.

The Asus F1A75-V PRO also supports CrossFireX and Asus includes a copy of their AI Suite II, which gives users easy access to all of the Asus-proprietary features mentioned here in a single software package. In addition to the aforementioned features, the F1A75-V PRO also sports an UEFI BIOS with one-click overclocking and tuning that’s navigable using a mouse. The UEFI BIOS on this board is one of the cleanest and easiest to navigate that we have come across.