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Need suggestions for an AM3 Motherboard please.
I will be recieving my X3 Phenom II 720 BE next week, I'll be buying the motherboard next month. So I'm looking at the Asus M4A79T Deluxe (790 FX) and the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (790 FX). I'm leaning towards Asus but does anyone have anyother boards worth considering? Please let me know why I should consider your suggestion over the Asus, thankyou.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Comments
First off , congrats on buying the X3 Phenom II 720 BE. I just got mine and its amazingly fast! Personally I bought the Asus motherboard. I bought the M4A78T-E. Due to a set of combos I was able to get some Patriot Viper 1600+mhz DDR3 ram and a Asus 4870 521mb graphics card for less then 600 bucks. Thats including the after market cpu fans and the new case. Flipping amazing system!
MSI is also making a AM3 motherboard. Its more barebones then the Gigabyte and Asus though. Works fine though. Personally Id go for what your aiming for. I only got the M4A78T-E because its cheaper and had a ram combo I knew I could overclock on the mobo. Plus I wont be crossfiring.
Have fun with your new system!
I'll be going with the FX chipset rather than the GX as I may want to try out crossfiring in the future. I'm getting excited just waiting for this X3 720 BE, but won't have the comp ready until late May. I always went with Intel but the X3 seems to offer everything and overclocking at a bargin price, just I've never used AMD before and am a little unsure of the motherboards. I also go with Asus due to the Q connectors as one of my pet hates is fiddling about with the leads for the front of the case!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
My computers have been as such:
Intel 33mhz, 1mb ram, 200mb Harddrive
Intel 66mhz 8mb Ram, 890mb HD
Intel 333MHZ 64mb Ram, 5GB HD
AMD 800MHZ 256Ram, 10gb HD
AMD 1.2ghz 1gb Ram, 30gb HD
Intel 1.8GHZ 2gb Ram 45gb HD, gforce graphics card 64mb
AMD 1.8ghz 2GB Ram 45gb HD, ATI 9800 pro 128mb
AMD +3200 2GB Ram 60gb HD ATI x1800XL 512mb
and Finally my new one which is:
AMD Phenom2 X3 720BE, 4GB ddr3 1600mHZ, ATI 4780 512mb OCed to 850mhz.
Funny thing is I'm still using that ancient 60gb HD and plugging along happy as can be. I noticed just how much more powerful my system has become in this latest jump. My AMD +3200 was no slouch though. Nor was the x1800XL. Its hard to imagine how long this latest builds going to last because frankly each ones lasted longer and longer.
As for the motherboard, I would have gone with the one you chose if I planned to crossfire. Ill be doing that my next build in 2 years I suppose. With the price of components steadily shrinking I cant imagine what the next build will be. Im guessing a 8core cpu, 16gbRam, 2 TB HD and a 4gb Graphics card. Not sure whats to come but its going to rock!
Like someone else suggested there is also the MSI FX board. All 3 have Q Connectors. Here are the benefits and drawbacks I have found of each
MSI 790FX-GD70
Advantages
- Seperate RAID Controller with 8 total SATA 2 ports
- Dedicated Mosfet cooling
- Higher overclock potential and more overclocking features
- Can support 4 full sized video cards in CrossfireX
DisadvantagesGigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P
Advantages
- Seperate RAID controller with 8 total SATA2 ports and easily configured RAID.
- 8+2 Phase Power
- 2 BIOS chips for BIOS Stability
DisadvantagesASUS M4A79T
Advantages
- 8+2 phase power
- ASUS Anti-surge protection (Quality I/O plate)
DisadvantagesAll 3 support the following:
The Gigabyte board and MSI board are really similiar in the parts they have onboard. They both use the same RAID controllers, 1 controlled by the south bridge and the other from the JMicron controller. All of them have overclocking features and some type of way to reduce power by 90%. I would say the MSI board has more interesting overclocking features with the overclocking dial, and better cooling of the board. Any of them should be a good pick as a board.
My biggest words of advice are to buy what you can use. Generally in the game of computer building your always going to have more expensive components. If you order the most expensive you end up with features you may not have planned to use. If your on a budget however this all changes. Take for instance if your limited to 550 bucks. If you buy the Gigabyte you mite end up with a cooler system but the latent effect wouldnt replicate a better case or cpu fan.
In my case I picked the M4A78T-E because I have no plans to have more then one Harddrive, nor a crossfire configuration. Not to mention the overall memory performance and the energy management are more then comparable to a gigabyte mobo. I ended up saving almost 40 dollars. Enough for me to get a new case with proper cool instead of my old 2 fan box.
Oh and the asus motherboards also tend to be fully HDMI compliant which a plus since I hook my monitor into a 45 inch PC plasma screen. The express gate feature is a blast as well. Since I can login in about 3 seconds in my case and be talking to my hun before work. Overall though its a even tie between Gigabyte and Asus as far as balancing qualities:-)
Well Asus is meant to be better for over clocking, I'm probably going to overclock the CPU now as it seems an X3 over clocks easily to 3.5ghz which is a safe level to leave it at with air cooling long term. Also I need a board I can over clock, as the BIOS isn't perfect and if you want to run 1600MHZ RAM you need to over clock the board until a Bios update arrives. More than one DIMM slot of 1333 mhz requires the board to be over clocked too, I say it was Intel attempting to sabotage AMD!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
How about this board for OCing: www.dfi.com.tw/portal/CM/cmproduct/XX_cmproddetail/XX_WbProdsWindow
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I was just going to suggest a DFI Lan Party. I recently switched to DFI and its the best board I have ever owned.
while asus is good these days i think gigabyte has the advantage with the solid japanese caps. also you cant go wrong with the msi platinum boards.
remember there is a chance you can actually unlock the 4th core of that cpu...