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FM2A85X Extreme6 Firmware

Six Socket FM2 Motherboards For AMD's Trinity APUs
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ASRock dresses the FM2A85X Extreme6's firmware in stellar fashion, but doesn't allow new artwork to complicate its classic menu arrangement. Kudos for that. The OC Tweaker menu works the way we expect it to.

We chose 1.45 V for our overclocking attempts, and ASRock's Extreme6 board produced that voltage level at its 1.4375 V setting. AMD's APU was then overclockable to nearly 4.5 GHz with 100% stability.

The FM2A85X Extreme6 provides load-line calibration to stabilize CPU voltage under load, but we found it most consistent at the “0%” setting.

Since EPP is no longer mainstream, we were happy to find Intel’s competing XMP standard supported by ASRock’s AMD motherboard. XMP Profile 1 made it easier for us to nail down the highest stable DRAM frequency using our memory kit's rated timings.

XMP made things easy for us, but we still could have picked those same timings manually if we needed to. The FM2A85X Extreme6 displays XMP settings in its DRAM Timing Control menu, and provides a broad array of manual adjustments to match them.

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  • 0 Hide
    swamprat , 26 November 2012 18:26
    Does the hybrid crossfire thingymajig work (and if so how well) on the desktop APUs? It could be an interesting addition to the discrete graphics 'conundrum' by keeping some of the graphics value of the APU
  • 0 Hide
    spare_flash , 28 November 2012 04:16
    Ha, I followed the link expecting to read an article about a motherboard that would hold 6 processors. I need new glasses.
  • 0 Hide
    Macheri , 31 March 2013 08:18
    Does is it really influence the performance? It's nice to have some more connectors but doesn't worth paying 60$ more for an expensive motherboard like these.