AM3+ chipsets, your opinion

[TechFan@ic]

no it still has 4+2 VRM's.

 

I'd personally go for that above board

ga-970a-ud3

it has a heatsink (small as it is) and 8+2 phases.

 

I do'y think there is anything aside from a 990FX that has both a beefy VRM heatsink and more than 8 phases.

So the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P is supposed to be a tier above the board you mentioned even though it has a 4+1 power phase design, I really think just going by the number of phases to determine overclock-ability is very short-sighted.

http://il.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4591#ov

[mvitkun]

So the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P is supposed to be a tier above the board you mentioned even though it has a 4+1 power phase design, I really think just going by the number of phases to determine overclock-ability is very short-sighted.

http://il.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4591#ov

I'm not going purely by the number of phases,I'm going based on what kind of quality they can provide on that price while still making a large profit margin.

 

and the way I see it,based on that,as well as the number of complaints about 970 and 990FX chipset, that quality is not great.

 

I've heard that even on the 990FX chipset VRMs often overheat,and they have much, much beefier heatsinks.

 

so going for a 970 chipset,with a ram heatsink to cool the VRM's and going to 1.5v, seems stupid to me.

[TechFan@ic]

I'm not going purely by the number of phases,I'm going based on what kind of quality they can provide on that price while still making a large profit margin.

 

and the way I see it,based on that,as well as the number of complaints about 970 and 990FX chipset, that quality is not great.

 

I've heard that even on the 990FX chipset VRMs often overheat,and they have much, much beefier heatsinks.

 

so going for a 970 chipset,with a ram heatsink to cool the VRM's and going to 1.5v, seems stupid to me.

A few 990fx boards do indeed have VRM cooling issues, one being the GIgabyte 990FX UD3, and if that board has throttling issues I can't see myself recommending any 970 based gigabyte board.

A new revision from gigabyte for the UD3 is coming out though, & it has significantly beefed up VRM & north-bridge cooling.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gigabyte-Revises-990FXA-UD3-AMD-Ready-Motherboard-For-the-Fifth-Time-367413.shtml

As for profit margins & so on, the way Asus implements their power phase design (controlled digitally) allows them to spend much less on building extra phases but get as good or better results.

Gigabyte has recently moved to this methodoligy as well, which is going with digitally controlled phases.

 

[samuel]

pretty sure I wouldn't recommend 1.5v on any 970 chipset,because as I said in the top half of the available ones have 4 (+2) phases.

one has 6 (+2).

and one has 8(+2).

 

and the only 8+2 has weak a heatsink that looks like it belongs on a graphics card ram chip, cooling 3 ram chips. 

 

the 6 (+2) has decent cooling,so maybe you could get it to 1.5v,but I wouldn't push it that far.

 

it's like trying for 1.5v on an FX 8350 with a hyper 212......it just isn't smart.

I own a GA990XA-UD3 wich has identical features to 970-UD3 (no CF/SLI). I did some crazy stuff with it and, trust me, it can handle anything. The VRM heatsysnc is good enough (It's warm, wich is a good thing = good thermal transfer) and the NB heatsynck burns LOL. But that's a feature of Gigabyte mobos that even the -UD7 gets. However, I found my own fix: undervolt the motherboard NB (0.825V)and now...well It's almost cold and i'm not afraid to keep all my case fans@ 5v. How ever, the NB situation is not such an issue, it shouldn't affect stability. (It's really designed to work @ 105 °C for 5+ years.) All I say, be smart and don't buy what you don't need. (20+ phases, 8+ USB3s, empty heatpiped heatsinks and shit)

[Darell3]

3.9ghz is stock for the FX 6100 (turbo core),so that's only a 100mhz overclock....thats not even really an overclock.

 

if anything you're probably using less voltage than the board would have on it's own to feed the 3.9ghz on auto-volts

 

also what motherboard is it?

I use to have my fx-6100 running at 4.4ghz for a few months then i decided to OC it to 4.0ghz instead due to i do more school work instead of gaming now. My Specs are in my signature. ALSO at 3.9ghz it turns 3 cores off leaving the REAL true 3 cores running at 3.9ghz. At 4.0ghz for me im running all 6 cores at 4.0ghz.

[auraofjason]

 

but you agree that going 1.5v on either 4+2 phases,or 8+2 with a tiny ram heatsink to cool the vrms is a bit suicidal right?

My fx-8350 is running 1.5v on my ga-970a-ud3 "8+2 with tiny heatsink". It's been running like this since I got it 10 months ago.

[leipero]

It can handle small OC, depends more from motherboard then chipset.