With the release of AMD's Trinity APU, we are starting to see more and more manufacturers releasing this new FM2 Socket series of motherboards. If you are not familiar with AMD's APU systems, it's a processor that has an on-die graphics processing unit embedded into the CPU. AMD started its APU line just over a year ago with the Zacate series processors which carried the FM1 Socket. AMD released this as their "Fusion" technology, which is designed to combine the CPU with the raw processing power of on-die graphics at an affordable price-point. AMD recently took this "Fusion" technology a little further with its recent release of Trinity, and incorporated its new processing architecture of Piledriver to the new FM2 Socket series chips. In fact, today we will be using the AMD Trinity A10-5800k that offers this new architecture, and takes its graphics processing power to the next level with the on-die 7660D graphics. When it comes to using this new processing power, it's also important to choose the right motherboard that fits the bill. The APU line of motherboards were designed to be affordable, but also offer high performance standards. Today we are going to be looking at a new motherboard from ECS: the A85F2-A Golden Motherboard. This motherboard will follow its A85X (hudson D4) chipset. ECS doesn't call this board the "Golden" board for no reason, and, as we take a closer look, you will see why.

AMD has just released their Trinity APU's. For those not familiar with an "APU", it is a processor that has an on-die graphics processing unit. AMD developed the world's first APU just over a year ago and they call it "Fusion" technology. AMD's first Fusion APU was codenamed Zecate and featured x86 technology with a dual core processor coupled with the first on die GPU. Zacate went over well in the budget notebook market with prices as low as $299. The kicker was above average graphics for a low priced lap-top. Next came Llano which shifted to a higher level. AMD used the same x86 four star cores but added an on-die 6550D graphics processing unit with even better graphics than its predecessor Zecate. Llano went over very well in the mainstream market and is a shining star for AMD. Trinity takes Fusion to the next level and incorporates AMD's new processor technology called Piledriver. This is entirely different engineering from the previous x86 four star cores. AMD put 2 x86 cores onto one module and the entire architecture changes. Piledriver spawns from AMD's Bulldozer introduced about one year ago, but it uses an entirely new instruction set. In our A10-5800K review, we saw some dramatic improvements in processing power as well as better graphics with the built-in Radeon 7660D. Gigabyte is all prepped and ready for these AMD changes and today we have their GA-F2A85X-UP4 ready to roll. The GA-F2A85X-UP4 introduces a new chipset from AMD called the A85 and it look...

It has been sometime since we have seen any big changes from the AMD Camp. Intel successfully released IvyBridge months ago, and AMD seemingly gave up the chase for the performance crown after Bulldozer didn't live up to expectations. These factors, plus industry conditions over the last few years, changed AMD's business strategy. Now they are instead focusing on their successful APU's (Accelerated Processing Units) as well as the mobile sector. For those not familiar with AMD's APU's, they developed the world's first processor that was coupled with an on-die graphics processing unit. They called it Fusion technology. Fusion started in 2011 with AMD's "E" series processors codenamed Zacate, which did not offer very high performance; however, it was AMD's first round with their new Fusion technology. Zacate did not make a huge impact in the desktop market, but it offered a low price in primarily the laptop market. It also offered a much better integrated graphics package than its rival Intel. Although Zacate was AMD's entry level product, it offered a better all around package than Intel's Atom processors at a lower price point. Next came the long awaited Llano platform that was based on the same Fusion technology. It included the same x86 cores as Zacate, and it had up to four cores using a 32nm die coupled with a Radeon 6550D on-die GPU (400 Radeon cores). We saw up to 90% of the performance of AMD's retired Phenom II series, and the icing on the cake was that this...