ASUS F2A85-V PRO Pro Reviews

Asus F2A85-V PRO made a very positive impression. It does have some shortcomings, like any other mainboard from any other mainboard maker, but they are not critical. However, when it comes to advantages, they are quite numerous. So far we have tested only two mainboards as part of our Socket FM2 mainboard review series, therefore, it is extremely convenient to perform side by side comparison between Asus F2A85-V PRO and Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4. Both mainboards are the top products in their respective lineups, they features and functionality are similar and quite comparable. These are full-size mainboards, they support AMD CrossFireX graphics configurations which can be built using three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (1x16, 2x8 or x8/x8/x4). Asus mainboard has two PCI Express 2.0 x1 and two PCI slots for expansion cards, while Gigabyte mainboard has three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and one PCI slot. Asus product boasts an intricate cooling contour with a heatpipe that covers all components in the processor voltage regulator circuitry that may run hot during work. Gigabyte mainboard doesn’t have a heatpipe and is missing a heatsink. Asus’ additional functionality includes EPU and TPU switches, DirectKey, MemOK! And BIOS Flashback buttons. Gigabyte mainboard boasts Power On, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, POST-code indicator, DualBIOS and Ultra Durable 5 technologies.

The ASUS F2A85-V Pro is a very solid AMD Socket FM2 motheboard from one of the top companies out there. If you're in the market to build AMD's latest 'Trinity' platform the ASUS F2A85-V Pro should be on your short list if not on the top of it!

I have actually made practical use of this platform in my home and have exercised a great many of its features with plans to grow into even more of them. Paired with what has become very familiar ASUS quality, it has a top-end version of the A series top end chipset. ASUS has really taken the great 85X Trinity platform and made it the pinnacle of control, quality, and versatility.

At a retail price of $140, the F2A85-V Pro is one of the most expensive FM2 motherboard on the market but ASUS has backed the pricing with plenty of features that users actually would find it useful. As always, ASUS offers the customer a wealth of control over their board with the excellent fan, power, and network control. In addition, we like the the USB 3.0 Turbo enhancements that ASUS has implemented. The board layout is excellent with a good low-profile heat-pipe cooling and a mix of expansion slots that offers the ability to supports triple wide video cards. It also leaves a nice assortment of slots if you’re running two dual-slot GPUs. The latest edition of AI Suite works much better than it used to be where we did not experience any lags and crashes. The software interface is intuitive and offers arrays of features that if you are willing to take a little bit of time to learn it, it does offer plenty of adjustments that helps you to improve the system performance.

For performance, well, that's pretty much prescribed by AMD's A Series APUs. Currently, that means a maximum of four AMD Piledriver cores running around 4GHz, give or take. Quick enough, for now, we'd say, but with that FM2 socket, the upgrade path is far from clear. AMD's FX desktop processors will be sticking to AM3+ sockets for the next few generations. All of which means it's best to view this motherboard with any Trinity CPU you buy as something of a permanent marriage. Future Fusion chips will no doubt be made available, for instance, AMD plans to release some cheap 'Athlon' chips without graphics for FM2. But there's no upgrade path to full-fat FX chips.