Final Thoughts

The Foxconn A9DA-S is a surprising little board. I was quite pleased with its overall performance despite the poor showings from both of the FutureMark tests. The layout was done well despite some of the limitations of the ATX form factor (and the continued use of the ZIF socket).

IGP based gaming was something of a letdown, but we saw that with a discrete GPU we could correct that. One thing to note here is that we did not see any general performance issues when we have the HD 5870 in the system. This was present on two other boards we have tested, but did not show up on the A9DA-S. Bear in mind that this is not a "performance" board. It is a mainstream entry into the 890GX market.

Even with this market focus, the board performed amazingly well. It would be a great board for a HTPC or, when combined with a HD 5670, a fast and inexpensive gaming system that allows good performance at decent resolutions (including DX11 games) at what we hope will be an excellent price point.

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing we do not know what the retail prices will be, but we imagine that this board should come in under the $150 to $160 price we have seen from ASUS and GIGABYTE.