Test System Specs & Memory Performance

FM1 Test System Specs
- AMD A8-3850 (2.90GHz)
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asrock A75 Extreme6 (A75)
- Asus F1A7-V Pro (A75)
- Gigabyte A75-UD4H (A75)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
- OCZ ZX Series 850w
- Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
- AMD Catalyst 11.9
- Nvidia Forceware 280.26

AM3 Test System Specs
- AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.30GHz)
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asus Crosshair IV Extreme (AMD 890FX)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
- OCZ ZX Series 850w
- Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 280.26

The Asus F1A75-V ranked highest in our memory bandwidth test with a throughput of 10.4GB/s, a notch ahead of Gigabyte's 10.1GB/s and Asrock's 9.8GB/s. In the latter example, Asus' board was actually 5% faster than the competition.

When examining the L2 cache results, you'll notice that despite providing a lower memory bandwidth, the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T's L2 cache performance is much greater than the A8-3850's, allowing the 890FX board to steal the lead. The A8-3850's L2 cache bandwidth is limited to around 23GB/s as displayed by the Asus F1A75-V, which outpaced the A75-UD4H and Extreme6.