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Asus F1A75-V PRO review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £81
inc VAT

This Asus ATX motherboard is a little more expensive than some FM1 rivals, but its features more than justify the cost

Specifications

FM1, ATX, AMD A75 chipset, supports: Llano

http://www.ebuyer.com

Asus’s F1A75-V PRO is one of the most expensive FM1 motherboards around, but there are several immediately obvious justifications for the price that impressed us when we first reviewed it. If you’re going to overclock your Llano processor then you’ll be pleased to find a glossy UEFI interface rather than the old-fashioned BIOS. There are plenty of automatic optimisation settings that make it easier for inexperienced overclockers to boost their PC’s performance too.

Asus F1A75-V PRO

F1A75-V Pro has two PCI-Express x16 slots for one or two graphics cards, a couple of PCI Express x1 slots for newer expansion cards, one of which will be blocked if you fit a dedicated graphics card, and three PCI slots for older expansion cards. The board has seven SATA3 ports for hard disks and optical drives, plus one eSATA3 port.

Asus F1A75-V PRO

On the back panel are two USB2 and four USB3 ports, in addition to four USB2 headers and a USB3 header for two more USB3 ports if your case has the necessary sockets. This gives you a huge amount of room for expansion. There’s even a serial port header. A DisplayPort socket caters for your Llano CPU’s on-chip graphics capabilities, as do the HDMI, VGA and DVI video outputs.

Asus F1A75-V PRO

The F1A75-V Pro’s performance was excellent, providing an overall score of 68 in our benchmark tests and a frame rate of 28.5 in our integrated graphics test running Dirt3 at a 720p resolution and high quality.

We replicated a minor problem encountered when we installed Windows the first time we used this motherboard, the problem being that the UEFI only responds to a keyboard and mouse plugged into two of the USB3 ports, while Windows’ installer only recognises them when they’re connected to the USB2 ports.

However, this is a known issue with the operating system installer’s lack of native USB3 support, something we subsequently encountered with other motherboards. It’s easily solved by ensuring that you use the USB2 ports when installing Windows, so we’re happy to withdraw our previous objection and give the F1A75-V Pro our coveted Best Buy award, particularly given the motherboard’s recent drop in price.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Processor socket FM1
Form factor ATX
Size 305x244cm
Processor support Llano
Processor external bus 100MHz
Chipset north bridge AMD A75
Chipset south bridge AMD A75
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics Yes
Supported memory type DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600(OC)/1866(OC)/2250(OC)
Maximum memory speed PC3-1800
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 64GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £81
Supplier http://www.ebuyer.com
Details www.asus.com

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 2
Dual graphics architecture Hybrid CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 2
PCI slots 3
Fan headers 4
Floppy ports 0
IDE ports 0
Serial ATA ports 7
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD A75 (6x SATA III, RAID 0, 1, 10)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC892 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 6/10
Firewire ports / headers 0/0
Legacy ports 1x PS/2, serial header
Other ports DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI, VGA, 4x USB3, 1x eSATA3
Cables included 2x SATA
Brackets included none
Software included Norton Internet Security

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment N/A

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