The A6-3650 APU is a quad core CPU with decent performance integrated graphics supporting DX11 which exceeds by far the current IGP performance from Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs. The Lynx platform as a whole can be recommended for people that will not perform hardware stressful activities like playing the latest games at high resolutions, video editing or 3D rendering on a daily basis.

The A75F-A FM1 motherboard from ECS comes with a nice UEFI interface, featuring a both EZ Mode and an Advanced Mode.

Through the M.I.B. III UEFI interface, we can modify the memory divider to the setting of our choice; however, if we want to run the RAM at 1866MHz, even if we set the CPU Overclocking Function to “Disabled”, the Bus will still overclock itself to 116Mhz. This behavior is not OK, because we may have a weak CPU sample which does not permit clocking the Bus this far.

The platform also comes with the latest generation USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 (6Gpbs) and eSATA 3.0 (6Gbps); 3 types of video output are offered: VGA, DVI and HDMI.

When overclocking the A6-3650 APU, we will get a noticeable performance increase; while increasing the Bus clock, not only the CPU frequency will raise, but also the one of the IGP.

For getting a decent guaranteed performance boost in 3D applications, that cannot be matched only by overclocking the APU, we can pair it with a RADEON HD 6400, 6500 or 6600 Series graphics card (AMD Dual Graphics). After the installation of the graphics card is complete, we have to enable the Crossfire setting through the UEFI interface, set the primary graphics adapter to IGP and then check to see if the Crossfire option has been enabled in CCC, after Windows has been loaded.

What also needs to be kept in mind is that a 3D performance boost can be also obtained by running the memory at higher frequencies (see test results in the charts, 1333MHz vs 1600Mhz memory, with the same timings).

If we feel that the performances obtained with a paired RADEON HD 6670 are not enough for us, we can always disable the IGP and buy a more powerful video card from either AMD or Nvidia.

The A6-3650 APUs can be found in stores for an affordable price of about 85 Euros and the ECS A75F-A can be bought for about 70 Euros.

The AMD Lynx Platform is Recommended For:

I would like to thank again to both AMD and ECS for supplying the necessary components and making this review possible!