Foxconn A75M review

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Verdict:

It’s no good for overclocking, but if you’re building a cheap Llano PC then this Foxconn motherboard is well worth your consideration

Review Date: 1 Mar 2012

Price when reviewed: £52

Supplier: http://www.hardwareking.net

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Foxconn's A75M is one of the cheapest FM1 motherboards around, which makes it a great choice for a budget Llano-based desktop system, allowing you to make the most of your processor's integrated graphics. In our Dirt3 frame rate test, we got a score of 27.8fps at 720p and high quality.

This microATX board is remarkably cheap and its features are limited accordingly. The BIOS, in particular, is a weak point. Although we've seen proper UEFI interfaces on Llano motherboards from manufacturers such as Intel, Foxconn has opted for a plain BIOS that lacks basic overclocking options for the memory and CPU. The motherboard failed to boot entirely during our many attempts to use Hybrid CrossFireX with a dedicated graphics, a problem that other users have reported.

If you don't want to overclock your processor or use CrossFireX to improve graphics performance, however, then this petite motherboard is actually rather smart for the money. It covers the basics, having a PCI-E x16 slot, as well as a PCI-E x1 directly below it in a position that'll be blocked by larger graphics cards. Two PCI slots complete the line-up. There's some upgrade potential there, although it's limited.

There are also the obligatory four memory slots that are capable - like most FM1 motherboards - of handling up to 64GB of RAM, and six SATA3 ports. At the back there are analogue 7.1 audio outputs that are connected to the usual Realtek ALC892 audio codec chip, as well as two USB3 ports, six USB2 ports, VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs. The obligatory Gigabit Ethernet port and legacy PS/2 port are present too. There are also USB headers on the board, two USB2 and one USB3.

In terms of performance, we had no complaints - the A75M netted a decent overall score of 67 in conjunction with our AMD A8-3870K processor. Its features are very limited, but this is certainly a board that presents good value for money.

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