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AMD Launches Three Kaveri APU SKUs in February 2014 – Feature Set For A10 and A8 APUs Detailed

Gazb

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I'm starting to struggle with that motherboard would be a good match for an A10-7850K.
It seems the Gigabyte A88XN-WIFI has some issues, and the Gigabyte A88X Sniper uses a lot more power than other boards (could this be a bios issue?), and the Asus boards available at the moment are a bit lacking.

Maybe waiting for the MSI A88X-G45 GAMING motherboards is the best idea. (not sure how decent/good/bad MSI boards are these days though)
 
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grahamjenks

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Gazb said:
Doesn't seem to be available anywhere. Seems like there's a lack of upper end FM2+ motherboards available atm.
Click to expand...

You can get it quite a few places - including the obvious, I got one last week. Don't make the mistake I made, bought it to use in ITX case with a 7850K - but of course the BIOS it ships with doesnt support Kaveri! Another 30quid splashed out to buy a cheap FM2 CPU so I can update to the latest BIOS.
 

Electroshadow

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Although I would call it low to mid range. I went for the biostar A88M board which to be fair has been good for over clocking the memory and cpu. But not too good on the igp side of things. Although there is a BIOS update out so I might give it a try.
 

Legion

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Gazb said:
I'm starting to struggle with that motherboard would be a good match for an A10-7850K.
It seems the Gigabyte A88XN-WIFI has some issues, and the Gigabyte A88X Sniper uses a lot more power than other boards (could this be a bios issue?), and the Asus boards available at the moment are a bit lacking.

Maybe waiting for the MSI A88X-G45 GAMING motherboards is the best idea. (not sure how decent/good/bad MSI boards are these days though)
Click to expand...

The best current ITX board is the Gigabyte, on the new bios it's highly overclockable and keeps up with full size boards.
It's only current limitations are
1. you can't clock memory beyond 2400mhz
2. to get those speeds you need ram with a DDR3 2400mhz XMP profile, it wont clock the likes of Samsung Green at anything over 1866 as it has a DDR3 1600 XMP profile.
In other words Manual memory overclocking is hampered by the ram you put in it and it's XMP profile.
3. You need to update the bios to get Kaveri working with an older FM2 APU. If you don't have one it's better to wait for a new batch of boards with updated bios.

The Asrock board is fine at lower clocks, but it has no VRM cooling and it will be the cause of throttling the overclocks before you're cooling does.
It also doesn't like manual memory overclocking and is tied to the XMP profile of the ram you put in.

mATX
Asus A88XM-PLUS works with Kaveri straight off, clocks like a demon and clocks memory no problem up to 2400mhz.
(no comment on Gigabyte mATX boards, not seen one discussed yet, Asrock again has no VRM cooling)

The best current full size boards are the Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-UP4 and the Asus A88X-PRO, hands down.
Gigabyte G1 Sniper and the Asrock Xtreme 6 don't hold a candle to the above boards.

That's all the boards I'd be interested in if I was building right now.
They are the best of what is currently available, hardly Enthusiast Grade I'd agree, but that's it for now.
The MSI Gaming series boards are looking to be the first (close to) 'Enthusiast Grade' boards out the gate, and I can't wait to see how they perform.

This from my perspective as an overclocker and gamer, I appreciate not everyone has the budget or see's value in high end components in lower end builds.
I've had AMD APU builds since Llano and I enjoy tweaking the platform and seeing what I can squeeze out of it.

You certainly don't need the best of everything to enjoy what Kaveri has to offer, but there's tangible gaming gains with fast ram and tweaking the iGPU.
For people who just want an everyday PC or HTPC and have no interest in playing games or overclocking, fast ram is of course pointless.

The last thing that's irking me is there is no current (or announced) mITX board with Displayport (mATX now has the MSI A88XM Gaming board with Displayport)
I game on the iGPU (tiny mITX system I play in bed) and if Freesync gets into monitors sometime soon, you're tied to the current ATX boards which do have it onboard (Gigabyte UP4, MSI A88X-G45 Gaming and Asus A88X-PRO) which leaves mITX fanatics (like me) currently locked out.

I hope the post gives you clearer picture.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH

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The thing is with the ASRock it has much better power consumption than the Gigabyte.

FM2motherboardpowerconsumptionHardwareinfo_zpseae60bdb.png


Once the A8 7600 is out,I suspect it will be the de-facto choice for smaller Kaveri based builds.
 

Legion

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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The thing is with the ASRock it has much better power consumption than the Gigabyte.
Once the A8 7600 is out,I suspect it will be the de-facto choice for smaller Kaveri based builds.
Click to expand...

Yeah I saw that when it was posted Cat.
Having owned the previous iterations of the Asrock board, I wouldn't buy one again for an overclocked build.

I'd still take the Gigabyte for an A8-7600 (what I bought the board for in the first place) and will use it for that when I can actually buy one.
 
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suj999

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A vote for AsRock FM2A88X-ITX+ here, just built one and about to start build on another.

Bord booted up fine with the 7850K, updated the bios over LAN easy to do. I personally prefer it over the Gigabyte board. Has more functions too, eSATA and usable mSATA and better CPU layout so I can fit a Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev.B CPU Cooler on it in a mITX set up.

Will start a thread with PICs later.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH

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Legion said:
Yeah I saw that when it was posted Cat.
Having owned the previous iterations of the Asrock board, I wouldn't buy one again for an overclocked build.

I'd still take the Gigabyte for an A8-7600 (what I bought the board for in the first place) and will use it for that when I can actually buy one.
Click to expand...

It worries for a small build that the Gigabyte posts quite high load power consumption numbers, which means for small cases it might not be a good choice IMHO.
 

Legion

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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
It worries for a small build that the Gigabyte posts quite high load power consumption numbers, which means for small cases it might not be a good choice IMHO.
Click to expand...

Just wait till the horror stories of the burning hot VRM's and throttling on the Asrock in tiny cases start appearing.
 

Gazb

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I see the queries about motherboards have sparked some discussion.
What are people's opinions on RAM for kaveri then? Kingston Hyper?
 

Legion

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Gazb said:
I see the queries about motherboards have sparked some discussion.
What are people's opinions on RAM for kaveri then? Kingston Hyper?
Click to expand...

For gaming on the iGPU I'd suggest a cas10 2400 kit, the claims that the gains slow down after 2133 is only true if you game at 720p.
1080 is still hungry for bandwidth and will use (and scale well with) whatever you can throw at it.
Most current boards top out at 2400 and the premium after 2400 becomes rather large.
Make sure it's dual ranked (i.e. has memory modules on both sides of the stick) as this is a good boost over single ranked sticks too.

For HTPC and non gaming rigs, there's little point in anything over DDR3 1600.

As for brand, well that's purely personal preference, whatever gives you the best bang for buck.
I prefer Gskill, Corsair and Teamgroup.
 
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suj999

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OK. so here is an interesting choice guys

Which of these would you go for for a Kaveri 7850 Gaming build?

DDR3- 2133MHz at 9-11-10-28-2N

or

DDR3- 2400MHz at 11-13-13-31-2N

Price being almost the same
 

Legion

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Nice tight timings on the DDR3 2133, there's literally nothing between them in gaming usage with those timings.
If you've already got the ram, it's not worth swapping one for the other.
 
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suj999

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That's what I thought.

Have built one for my cousin using the 2133 cl9, just ordered the same for my build. But for a minute tempted to cancel and order the 2400 cl11, but going to stick with the cl9 2133 for my build too.

Supposedly latency matters quite a bit for the Kaveri APU.
 
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