Board Software

When it comes to software, the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 does have a fair bit, first of which is ATXU, a tool for clocking from within the OS and adjusting several other board features from inside Windows. It is fairly comprehensive and holds far more monitoring information than is contained in the BIOS, which makes the lack of such monitoring options in the BIOS stand out that much more. There's also a tool called "Instant Boot": it adds sleep options similar to those available with Intel's Z77 Express chipset. AXTU also contains the controls for XFastRam, a tool to create a ramdisk, which is something I like a lot. There are two other XFast tools: XFastUSB and XFastLAN.


The three tools form the base for ASRock's "555" technology, which helps you get a bit more performance out of your system. All work really well, are simple to use, and have tangible performance benefits. XFastLAN manages all data by type, and I noticed a bit of a boost in upload and download speeds after installing the app. It wasn't a lot, but something for nothing is still to be appreciated!


Bringing a similar feature that WIndows8 supports into other Operating Systems is ASRock's InstantBoot: an app that can help reduce both shutdown and boot-up times, which effectively saves power since you don't have to let your computer idle or sleep.