970 or 990 Mobo for AM3+

[gods_hammer]

Hi !

Please help me choose between two motherboards.

Gigabyte 970a-UD3P          or
Gigabyte 990XA-UD3

what do you think ?? Thanks !

[ERSCreeper]

Hi !

Please help me choose between two motherboards.

Gigabyte 970a-UD3P          or

Gigabyte 990XA-UD3

what do you think ?? Thanks !

What is the price difference?

 

List your current specs please.

[Mush Brain]

990x.

[ERSCreeper]

990x.

He might not even need 990X...

[Mush Brain]

He might not even need 990X...

990x.

[Ren]

Really depends on your CPU and CPU cooler, whether or not you have enough cooling for VRMs (way important with 8-core FX, and some boards in particular just suck ass).

The 990FX UD3 is a solid board overall, I don't think you should run into many problems until you push 4.7-4.9ghz+ on an 8-core part, depending on voltage and whatever else is going on with your ambient temps due to graphics card(s)/HDDs/case fans.

Edit: 8-core FX do work fine on the 970A, by the way. Just gotta be easy on the overclocking and perhaps use an adequate two-fan heatsink to help with airflow.

[mlbguy4life]

990

[TheEpicMap]

Not sure if there is any reason you need one of those two, but if you can get the MSI 970 gaming mobo

[gods_hammer]

What is the price difference?

 

List your current specs please.

990 is 15$ more

AMD FX6300

Kingston 8GB hyper RAM

Sapphire R9 280x vapor X

650W PSU

[ERSCreeper]

990 is 15$ more

AMD FX6300

Kingston 8GB hyper RAM

Sapphire R9 280x vapor X

650W PSU

Since the price difference is so little I would personally go with the 990x even though you would get of perfectly fine with the 970 board.

[gods_hammer]

Since the price difference is so little I would personally go with the 990x even though you would get of perfectly fine with the 970 board.

Thanks man !

[D3MON]

msi 970 gaming, all the features off 990fx except only 2way crossfire/sli not 3 way.....like it matters, oh and its £70 not £100-£170.

had the ud3p, fantastic board 8+1 vrm, but the MSI has the same features and more for £4 (what $7?) more.

[gods_hammer]

msi 970 gaming, all the features off 990fx except only 2way crossfire/sli not 3 way.....like it matters, oh and its £70 not £100-£170.

had the ud3p, fantastic board 8+1 vrm, but the MSI has the same features and more for £4 (what $7?) more.

Unfortunatlley, there is no MSI mobo where I live

[i_build_nanosuits]

H97

[Sintezza]

people should not overlook the diffrences between 970, 990X and 990FX.

But for single gpu setups, these diffrences arent realy that interessting.

 

In terms of overclocking, the chipset it self does not realy matter much.

But decent 990FX chipset boards, most of the time, have better vreg designs.

 

But there are also a few exceptions to this, the Asrock 990FX Extreme 3, and Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 are both a piece of junk.

 

My list of board recommendations:

 

1. Asus crosshair V Formula Z 8+2 powerphase digi vrm, intel lan.
2. Asrock 990FX EXtreme 9 12+2 powerphase difi vrm, intel lan
3. Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 8+2 powerphase digi vrm.
4. Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0 6+2 powerphase digi vrm
5. Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 6+2 powerphase digi vrm (only 20 pci-e lanes)
6. Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 6+2 powerphase digi vrm (only crossfire support on 4x)
7. Msi 970 Gaming.

[i_build_nanosuits]

people should not overlook the diffrences between 970, 990X and 990FX.

you mean SLI support on pcie 2.0 at 8x/8x ?

[Sintezza]

you mean SLI support on pcie 2.0 at 8x/8x ?

 

on 990X chipset yes, and crosfire on 8x.

But for single gpu setups this does not matter much.

 

990X is a bit of a pointless chipset to me to be honnest.

For a single gpu setup especialy for a FX6300, you just go with 970.

And for an FX 8 core chip that you wanne overclock the shit out, you just should grab a decent 990FX board, like i listed.

 

The Corsshair V Formula Z, Extreme 9 or the Sabertooth.

Non of the other boards can beat these fellows wenn it comes to extreme overclocking.

[rentaspoon]

msi 970 gaming, all the features off 990fx except only 2way crossfire/sli not 3 way.....like it matters, oh and its £70 not £100-£170.

had the ud3p, fantastic board 8+1 vrm, but the MSI has the same features and more for £4 (what $7?) more.

This or an ASUS 990FX board

H97

NNOOOOOOOO!!!! WWWWWHHHHYYYY!!!!

Things were going so well

[i_build_nanosuits]

NNOOOOOOOO!!!! WWWWWHHHHYYYY!!!!

Things were going so well

?!? because it's better, faster, more energy efficient, newer, more features and would cost less if you consider the whole platform cost...

[rentaspoon]

?!? because it's better, faster, more energy efficient, newer, more features and would cost less if you consider the whole platform cost...

Not if you are trying to fit an AMD chip to it

[i_build_nanosuits]

Not if you are trying to fit an AMD chip to it

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($168.99 @ NCIX US)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($27.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $196.98

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-24 11:15 EST-0500

 

VS

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor  ($149.99 @ Amazon)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($74.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $224.98

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-24 11:18 EST-0500

 

...and you still need to add the cost of a proper CPU cooler for the AMD platform.

[rentaspoon]

...and you still need to add the cost of a proper CPU cooler for the AMD platform.

Why did I bite? Yes we've seen the lists before, no you don't need a "proper" cooler, the fan curve needs adjusting.

That's all I'm saying.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Why did I bite? Yes we've seen the lists before, no you don't need a "proper" cooler, the fan curve needs adjusting. That's all I'm saying.

still as you can see you would be dumping more money into a dead socket with lacking modern features...you still don't have pcie 3.0 support, sata express, m.2...only to name a few,

and you get a CPU with abysmal single-threaded performance even when highly overclocked (not even getting into the heat and power consumption argument) that bottleneck mid-range and higher end GPU's when playing games.

I can see something like this being a good value as a budget workstation...certainly not from a gaming rig stand point.

 

This is the foundation for a good gaming rig that won't bottleneck high end GPU's:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($193.98 @ OutletPC)

Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($67.98 @ Newegg)

Total: $261.96

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-24 11:29 EST-0500

[D3MON]

Unfortunatlley, there is no MSI mobo where I live

Amazon? there are people on mars ordering from amazon.

also

msi 970 gaming + 8320=£174

i3 4350+msi 787 gaming=£192 (and could of been more for an equal board) still no sli/crossfire

in multi threaded apps the amd will destroy the i3, in multi threaded games they should be equal if its really well threaed, if its really cpu heavy the i3 might fall behind a little if its single threaded an overclocked 8320 should perform equal, sure there's graphs of an i3 destroying a 4.8 fx8 but noone points out that in those single threaded games you love a g3258 will keep up with any other intel chip....but dual cores lose npc teamates in bf3 etc if they can open the game at all (farcrap4).

anyone can win an arguement if they focus on only 1 aspect (price, tdp, etc) but people with a brain will use it and buy what fits all their purposes best. id happily have a pentium k rig for those few single threaded apps but if i really wanted to throw money at an all round rig id be getting a 5820k and not an i5/i7.

[D3MON]

This or an ASUS 990FX board

depends, I love the asus ROG boards but they're £170 (£100 more) just so you could run 3 way crossfire, the software/bios isnt really any different. some people like the sabourtooth, which i think is just gaudy, a black "tuf" pc would be cool though.

all around the msi and ud3p boards are great with the msi at one point costing the same, now its like £4 more, but i just sold my ud3p in my spare rig to buy the msi 970, if anyone took the time to read a review on it rather than just goign with companies they've gone before they'd be the better for it. i went from asus m5a78l-m/usb3 (great cheap board, especially with a source 210 elite and fx6300) to ud3p with my fx8 then switched to them so ive had the big 3 and my conclusion...they're all good, just go with one with the features and looks you like at the price point you like. there's usually a trade off though.

id love the gigabyte 990fx ud7 layout (4 pcie x16 slots), made by msi with the dragon theme, with the asus ai suite.

they could quite easily make more am3+ boards because plenty of people still buy them obviously. most people dont care about m.2 etc, what we want is 2x pcie x16 slots, maybe a pci slot, in an matx form factor with the 8+2 vrm, 4 ram slots and some sata3 ports, bit like the maximus gene vi asus make for intel.