Review: MSI A88X-G45 Gaming

by Tarinder Sandhu on 27 February 2014, 15:00

Tags: MSI, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacbfj

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Testing methodology

Comparison Configurations

CPU
AMD
Intel
A10-7850K
A10-6800K
Core i5-4440
Motherboard
MSI A88X-G45 Gaming
Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X
ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP
BIOS
1.0
A9
1.90
F5
Chipset Driver
AMD Catalyst 13.12
Intel Inf 9.4.0.1027 and IMEI 9
DDR3 Memory
AMD Gamer Series 16GB (2x8GB)
Memory Timings
10-11-11-28-2T @ 2,133MHz
9-10-9-27-2T @ 1,866MHz
Integrated Graphics
Radeon R7
HD 8670D
HD 4600
IGP driver
AMD Catalyst 13.30 RC3
Intel 15.33.8.64.3379
Disk Drive
Samsung 840 Pro 250GB
Power Supply
Corsair AX760i
Operating System
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit

CPU and Memory Benchmarks

HEXUS PiFast
Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places
CineBench R15 Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores
wPrime 2.1.0 Another number-crunching benchmark that stresses all available CPU cores/threads

Multimedia Benchmarks

LuxMark 2.0 An OpenCL rendering benchmark
MuseMage 1.9.6 An OpenCL image-manipulation benchmark (64-bit)
HandBrake 0.9.9.1 Free-to-use video encoder that stresses all CPU cores (64-bit)

System Benchmarks

PCMark 8 v2.0 System-wide examination that uses the Home preset, run with OpenCL acceleration
3DMark DX11, run at the Firestrike default test
SiSoft Sandra 2014 Aggregate score that takes a composite of 12 system-wide benchmarks

IO Benchmarks

AS SSD Sequential read and write speeds for SATA drive
AS SSD Sequential read and write speeds for USB 3.0

Gaming Benchmarks

BioShock Infinite DX9, 1,280x720 and 1,920x1,080 medium quality
GRID 2 DX9, 1,280x720 and 1,920x1,080 high quality
Total War: Rome II DX9, 1,280x720 and 1,920x1,080 medium quality

Miscellaneous Benchmarks

Power Consumption While idling and when running wPrime and GRID 2

Notes

We're running the also-FM2+ ASRock board with the A10-6800K Richland chip. Numbers provided by the last-generation APU show differences in APU performance. Intel's similarly-priced Core i5-4440 and Z87 combination lets you know how the base platforms compare against one another.

Overclocking

The MSI A88X-G45 Gaming is the third FM2+ board to pass through the labs. We spent a short while overclocking it by using the following parameters: CPU voltage 1.35V, GPU voltage 1.6V, DDR3 voltage 1.65V.

Overclocking Comparison

 
Max CPU
Max GPU
Max Mem
MSI A88X-G45 Gaming
4,300
1,000
2,480
Gigabyte G1.Sniper
4,250
1,020
2,440
ASRock A88X-ITX+
4,200
1,000
2,400