14 DAY TRIAL // Since AMD's Trinity desktop APUs will need some good motherboards to show their mettle, Elitegroup Computer Systems elected to launch one platform that doesn't worry about expenses.
One might call the feature set of the A85F2-A GOLDEN somewhat overkill, especially for processors that make it a point of being as cheap as possible (within reason).
Nevertheless, a high-end product is always good for the reputation, especially if its “decorations” are also practical.
Gold happens to be a good conductor of heat and electricity. Thus, ECS made plating out of this material and used it on critical contacts.
Together with solid capacitors and Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection for VGA, USB, LAN and HDMI ports, this gold plating technology turns the A85F2-A GOLDEN into one of the most stable AMD platforms of our times.
That said, the mainboard features the FM2 socket and, since it is based on the A85F2-A Deluxe, most likely the A75 chipset.
The number of memory slots (4 DIMM, 64 GB dual-channel DDR3 RAM max) can be easily enough seen at a cursory glance. What may not be as obvious is the AMP Technology support. AMP is short for AMD Memory Profile and, like Intel's XMP, leads to a better performance when AMD AMP-certified memory is installed.
Moving on, the motherboard lacks PCI Express 3.0 support, but the two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots should be good enough for high-end graphics setup, even CrossFireX. Joining them are three PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots.
As for storage, the A85F2-A GOLDEN offers no less than seven SATA 6 Gbps connectors for HDDs, SSDs or SSHDs.
ECS did not give a price, but we imagine all that gold, as well as the Turbo Core 3 dynamic CPU/APU overclocking technology, the multitude of video ports (HDMI, DVI, D-Sub and Display Port) and the 8-channel audio will leave a mark.
