ECS A55F-A2 Review

On our first outing with the A55 chipset from AMD, we put the ECS A55F-A2 on the bench and to see how it performs.

Product on Review:ECS A55F-A2
Manufacturer: Elitegroup Computer Systems
Street Price: £40 est. retail

ECS aim to set a standard in performance and reliability while being committed to delivering environmentally friendly products, the A55F-A2 is no exception. Coming in with the now familiar greyscale aesthetic, the A55F-A2, while being ignorant to the synonyms used to market the latest high end products, focuses more on reliability and longevity. The Hudson D2 A.K.A the A55 chipset, targets a more cost conscious audience while offering the flexibility and performance the mainstream user would need, which ultimately translates as missing out on some of the latest and greatest, arguably not entirely important, features, namely USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s.

EliteGroup’s Overview

ECS newly emerged A55F-A2 model in AMD FM1 Socket
A55F-A2 is a combination of AMD FM1 Socket integrated with A55 chipset. It’s furnished with Dual-Channel DDR3 memory, 6 SATA (3Gb/s), multipule outputs (DVI, HDMI, VGA) with DirectX 11 for absolute visual experience and MIB III utility for advanced tuning performance. In order to bringing best quality, A55F-A2 passes 50℃ burn test, designed in all solid capacitors, and pocesses Non-Disk utility for easy initial LAN boost set-up. ECS exclusive technologies EZ charger function and application kit (eSF, eBLU, eDLU and eJiffy) are definitly something you could ever dream of. A55F-A2 is for sure the top chioce without any hesitation.

Technical Specifications

A75 vs A55
At a glance you could miss the difference between the A55 and A75 chipsets because they are almost identical. The differences are primarily with connectivity. The A55 chipset supplies 14x USB 2.0 ports, the A75 supplies 10x USB 2.0 and 4x USB 3.0. Again it is a similar story with the SATA interfaces, A55 supplies 6x SATA 3Gbps while the A75 supplies 6x 6Gbps. The whole idea behind this, is to offer a variety of chipsets. Another interesting feature of the A75 chipset is more aimed at those who use eSATA connections, that is FIS switching (Frame Information Structure). This acts comparitive to a USB hub by allowing the host controller to communicate to a number of connected devices via eSATA simultainiously, otherwise the commands would have to stack/wait between individual drives. While it is a feature that many may never use, it is a significant one for those that do.

ECS A55F-A2

CPU
º Socket FM1 for AMD A series/ E Series/Athlon Quard-core/Athlon Dual-core/Sempron Dual-core processors
º Note: This board supports CPU up to 100W TDP; you can refer to AMD website to check your CPU.

CHIPSET
º AMD A55 FCH

GRAPHICS
º Support UVD 3
º Integrated DirectX 11 graphics processor

MEMORY
º Dual-channel DDR3 memory architecture
º 2 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM socket support up to 32GB per one DIMM support 16GB
º Support DDR3 up to 1333/1600/1866/2133(OC)/2400(OC)/2600(OC)
º *Duo to limitation of AMD chipset spec, it supports up to 1866 MHz for motherboards with a single DIMM per channel
º * Please refer to Memory QVL for more information
Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® 32-bit OS.
For Windows® 64-bit OS with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation

EXPANSION SLOT
º 1 x PCI Express x16 slot
º 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
º 3 x PCI slots

STORAGE
º 6 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s devices
º Support by AMD A55
• RAID0, RAID1, RAID10 configuration

AUDIO
º Realtek ALC662 6-channel HD audio CODEC
º Compliant with HD audio specification

LAN
º Realtek RTL8111E VL-CG Gigabit Lan

REAR PANEL I/O
º 4 x USB 2.0 Ports
º 1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
º 1 x D-sub(VGA)
º 1 x DVI Port
º 1 x HDMI Port
º 1 x RJ45 LAN connector
º 1 x Audio port 6 CH 3 JACKS

INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS
º 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply Connector & 4-pin 12V Connector
º 1 x 4-pin CPU_FAN connector
º 1 x 3-pin SYS_FAN connector
º 2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB ports (F_USB1 supports EZ Charger)
º 6 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors
º 1 x Clear CMOS header
º 1 x COM header
º 1 x LPT header
º 1 x Case open header
º 1 x Front panel audio header
º 1 x Front panel header
º 1 x Speaker header
º 1 x SPDIF out header

SYSTEM BIOS
º AMI BIOS with 32Mb SPI ROM
º Support Milti-language BIOS Utility
º Support ECS M.I.B III Utility
º Support Non Disk utility
º Support EZ Charger
º Support GUI UEFI BIOS
º Support eBLU
º Support eDLU
º Support eSF
º Support eOC

FORM FACTOR
º ATX Form Factor, 305x190mm

Packaging & First Look

Packaging front

The green packaging reflects ECS’s commitment towards environmentally friendly products while showing off some of the features of the motherboard. Compatible with A4, A6 and A8 series APUs from AMD as well as supporting dual graphics mode with a compatible, discrete AMD Radeon graphics card. We also see the icon showing that this motherboard supports a disk-less startup as well as features that improves reliability, such as 50°C burn test, anti static protection and all solid capacitors.

Packaging rear

The rear of the box displays the collective features of the motherboard including the ECS GUI UEFI BIOS as well as EuP and RoHS certificates.

Bundled items

The motherboard is bundled with with the manual and start up guide, I/O backplate, Driver and software CD and two SATA cables. It is a shame that the cables provided were not white as per the board aesthetic.

Motherboard overview

The most striking thing you will notice on first look, is that this board is slightly narrower than usual ATX motherboards. The A55F-A2 is only 190mm wide which causes a slight overhang from the screw mounts when installed in a case, one should take care when plugging the 24pin ATX power connection in. The PCB is a dark brown/ near black with grey DIMMs and PCIe x16 slot while the 3x PCIe x1 and 3x legacy PCI slots are an off white colour. Overall the aesthetic, abeit being a little dull and monochromatic, it is uniformed and pleasing.

Closer Look

A little too grey? The dual channel memory DIMMs

Supporting upto 32GB, 16GB per slot, there is little justification for the average user to need more than the two DIMMs we see here. Able to support up to DDR3 2600MHz speeds with an overclock, my only shame is not being able to test that feature out! Slots are placed fairly close to the FM1 socket so ram clearance may be an issue if you are using performance ram with tall heatspreaders, however, in the main this is not likely to cause an issue. Using the traditional AMD heatsink retention bracket with fitted plastic push-pins, some may want to refrain from using some 3rd party coolers unless they are supplied with a backplate as the motherboard is not supplied with one. Just above the retention bracket, adjacent the memory DIMMs we can also see the CPU 4pin PWM fan header.

Regimented SATA ports.

On the bottom right part of the board we see two 3pin fan headers straddling the regimented 6 white SATA 3Gb/s ports, as to why manufacturers still do not opt for using right angled SATA ports in situations where there is no need for space consideration is beyond me, still, they do their job. In this area we also see two USB 2.0 headers, the front panel headers as well as the CMOS battery and the clear CMOS jumper.

The bottom left quadrant

In this area we see the various headers for the speaker, SPDIFO, case alarm and COM features leading towards the AMI APTIO chip which powers the ECS GUI UEFI BIOS. The following SMD is the Realtek ALC662 audio codec which leads towards the front panel audio header. Sitting at the far right of the image is the Realtek RTL8111E lan controller.

3+1 makes a party… right?

ECS have placed a 4pin 12V ATX connector where we could expect, feeding the APU via a 3 + 1 phase delivery. Overclocking is likely to be very limited, not to mention that there is no MOSFET cooling. By the HDMI/DVI video outputs we see an ASMedia ASM1445 controller which allows automatic selection of DVI or HDMI protocol.

The rear I/O seems a little light

The rear I/O affords dedicated PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse, VGA, DVI and HDMI video out, 4x USB 2.0, Gigabit lan and 3 audio jacks. It is a little disappointing to not see more USB 2.0 ports here as the A55 chipset affords 14 of them, including the 2 internal USB headers, the most USB ports this board can afford is 8, wasting a relatively significant potential. If like me, you have a USB mouse, a USB keyboard, a webcam, external USB hard drives, a printer as well as various other USB based devices, the native 4x USB 2.0 ports will very quickly be saturated.

BIOS

Featuring a graphical user interface, the ECS UEFI BIOS, may not be the prettiest out there, but appears to work well. Giving users language options, should they feel like learning others, a quick ‘load default settings’ button, boot options and advanced settings. In the advanced settings we find the standard functions we would expect within a BIOS. Under the M.I.B. III tab we get overclocking functions for the CPU, GPU and memory, while this board may not offer record breaking overclockability, these controls are a welcome sight and can allow the user to eke out that extra bit of performance from their APU.

Bundled Software

It is worth noting that this motherboard supports the use of various utilities from ECS which ofer convenient control over your system.

eBLU

The ECS BIOS live update utility is a BIOS update application that operates within the OS. Traditionally many users have been wary of using such applications, however, in recent times they tend to be stable and work well. I certainly did not encounter any issue updating to latest BIOS through this means. It is worth keeping your wits about you of course when using such a thing, close all applications and pray that you do not get a power failure. Remember, it is recommended that you do not update your BIOS unless you are encountering certain issues with your motherboard.

eDLU

This utility checks for the latest drivers for your motherboard and lets you know if your current ones are up to date. Nice!

eOC

An overclocking and monitoring utility? Such applications are becoming more ever prevalent with modern motherboards to enable keen witted beginners to sit at the table of overclockers. Parameters are all set within a boundry of safety so no huge risk of killing anything, however you are likely to experience a BSOD with an over zealous attempt. Unfortunately, again, there does not seem to be a real way to monitor the APU temperatures accurately but that isn’t a huge loss as we have already established that this motherboard is not likely going to be used for overclocking anyway.

eSF

The final ECS utility is one to control your fans, you can even customise the fan setting to your likes and save it as a profile, eSmartFan.. yup!

Test Setup & Overclocking

APU: AMD A8-3850
Motherboards
– ECS A55F-A2
– ZOTAC A75M-ITX Wi-Fi
– Foxconn A75M
– GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H
Memory: Team Xtreem PC3 12800 DDR3 1600 7-7-7-21 @ 1333MHz 9-9-9-24
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
Graphics
– Integrated Radeon HD 6550D
– Discrete AMD Radeon HD 6570
PSU Corsair CX430
HDD Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII
OS Microsoft Windows 7 64bit

Overclocking

This motherboard is rated for APUs upto 100W TDP, using the AMD A8-3850 I would already be at the max draw for this motherboard. Trying to overclock proved to be very finicky, someone with an APU with a 65W TDP or less could prove some fruitful results, but in this case I was barely able to make these screens. Having the ability to overclock is a welcome pro none the less.

A note on Dual Graphics
The ECS board, so far, has been the easiest to set up dual graphics mode using the Radeon HD 6570 by following these instructions.
http://www.ecs.com.tw/extra/a75dual/index.html
Unfortunately, due to driver issues, there has been terrible stutter rendering CrossfireX results unbarably useless. For this reason I have omitted the results using Dual graphics.

Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards because energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use. Then the system is loaded with LinX 0.6.4 and MSI Kombustor simultainiously – watts are again monitored throughout the period of testing and the highest and lowest rated watts are then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

The ECS A55F-A2 proved to be falling in the lowest tier of power consumers we have tested. That being said, the overall lack of features doesn’t appear to aid in the reduction of power consumed significantly. Power consumption has quickly become a hot topic in todays market and there is generally a trade off for power consumption vs performance, however, that is not entirely true, power reduction is also caused by increased efficiency so it will be interesting how well the ECS A55F-A2 performs compared to the rest of the line up.

Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64

CPU Queen Benchmark

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

CPU Photoworxx Benchmark

This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be “fighting” over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

FPU Mandel Benchmark

This benchmark measures the double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular “Mandelbrot” fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x87, SSE2, AVX or FMA4 instruction set extension. FPU Mandel test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

Synthetic Benchmarks: x264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

Synthetic Benchmarks: Cinebench 11.5

CPU Rendering

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Open GL Graphics Rendering

This procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase (by renderbaron) which measures the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode. The performance depends on various factors, such as the GPU processor on your hardware, but also on the drivers used. The graphics card has to display a huge amount of geometry (nearly 1 million polygons) and textures, as well as a variety of effects, such as environments, bump maps, transparency, lighting and more to evaluate the performance across different disciplines and give a good average overview of the capabilities of your graphics hardware.

Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2011

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU, memory and GPGPU tests.

Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2011 cont…

For some reason the ECS A55F-A2 displays some interesting results in the GPGPU benchmarks, retesting showed the trend continue so it is no fault. However this is little likely to affect real world performance.

Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark Vantage & 3DMark 11

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is the industry standard performance benchmark for DirectX 10 gaming PCs. It includes two graphics tests, two CPU tests and six feature tests. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark Vantage is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 10 under game-like loads.

3DMark 11

Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

Synthetic Benchmarks: PCMark 7 & UNIGINE Heaven 2.5

UNIGINE Heaven 2.5

Unigine’s benchmark is to showcase the benefits of DX 11 and the use of tessellation as opposed to normal rendering techniques. The demo has impressive visuals that give an insight into what we can expect from gaming in the future.

PCMark 7

PCMark 7 is a tool provided by FutureMark that tests the PCs ability in general office and everyday use. It produces a number that reflects the all-round performance of the PC and is useful to compare between differing setups. For more information, visit the FutureMark website.

Game Benchmarks: AVP, Deus Ex:HR, Shogun 2

Alien Vs. Predator

Spawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.

The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

You play Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT specialist who’s been handpicked to oversee the defensive needs of one of America’s most experimental biotechnology firms. Your job is to safeguard company secrets, but when a black ops team breaks in and kills the very scientists you were hired to protect, everything you thought you knew about your job changes.

Shogun 2

In the darkest age of Japan, endless war leaves a country divided. It is the middle of the 16th Century in Feudal Japan. The country, once ruled by a unified government, is now split into many warring clans. Ten legendary warlords strive for supremacy as conspiracies and conflicts wither the empire. Only one will rise above all to win the heart of a nation as the new shogun…The others will die by his sword.

Conclusion

There are many short comings of this motherboard, firstly, because of the Hudson D2 (A55) chipset and secondly because of the lack of USB ports. In total the A55 FCH supplies 16 ports, 14x USB 2.0 and 2x USB 1.1 (which could be forgiven for leaving out) and this board only natively supplies 4 ports on the backplate and an extra 4 via headers. Should anyone wish for further USB goodness they will need to buy an adapter for the PCI or PCIe x1 slots, they may be cheap, it is a fair bit of hassle. Having the EZCharger feature too, that supplies 3x standard USB 2.0 current, it seems a little bit of a waste on just 4x USB ports. Other than that and maybe throwing in some nice white SATA cables for a neat looking build out the box, there is really little else to fault this board on. If I was to really nit pick, then maybe it would have been good to see right angled SATA ports too?

I regret not being able to test out any high performance memory with this board as it could have shed some light as to the limits of the A8-3850s HD 6550D integrated graphics port, still, from the tested 1333MHz speed to 1866MHz, one could expect between 10-20% extra FPS in games. Overall ECS have delivered and the A55F-A2 has performed admirably, it may not be the best motherboard for overclocking, it still has that feature. It may not have the prettiest looking GUI UEFI BIOS, it still has that feature. The prices of A75 motherboards may fall fairly low and may compete with the A55 motherboards but that is no reason to overlook such a thing. I would be happy and confident with this motherboard inside my setup as it performs just as well as any FM1 based motherboard within margin of error. The knowledge that this board has been through (a 50°C) hell and back and will likely deliver performance that can sustain the needs of a mainstream user for a long while. I really feel that the lack of USB ports has let this motherboard down a little, maybe just that extra two more on the I/O replacing the old PS2 ports and keeping a single universal PS2 port could really have helped a lot.

Pros.
+ All solid capacitors
+ UEFI BIOS
+ Power efficient
+ Good value
+ Competitive performance
+ Pleasing aesthetics
+ Easy dual graphics setup

Cons.
– Not enough USB Ports
– Not enough USB Ports!