Sabertooth 990 FX

bendy711 · 4 Sep 2013 at 15:02

Hi guys

Curious for you opinion, I will as soon as BF4 comes out be upgrading my CPU to

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 9370 Black Edition 4.40GHz (4.70GHz Turbo) (Socket AM3+) Processor - OEM

and GPU to 780 probably (due to prize won at work

)

Question is will my current sabertooth 990 fx be ok still ? Could somebody please explain how a new mobo might be of benefit if any at all ???

Also would you say that that cpu Oc'ed will be plenty ?

Thanks Spencer

DaleTheWhale · 5 Sep 2013 at 11:40

Do you have adequate cooling to keep that chip stable?
Those chips are able to reach 5ghz, and will need to be put under water to keep them cool.

I'd recommend looking at the 8320's instead, you don't need it overclocked that much at all, also wait for AMD's new GPU's are released as BF4 will be 'optimised' for AMD GPU's.

teppic · 5 Sep 2013 at 13:20

The board is fine. BF4 will run fine on an 8320/8350 as well. As above, you'd be best off getting the new GPU, which is likely to be less than the cost of the 780 at the moment. The 9370 doesn't need water cooling, but will need a good air cooler.

Avenged7Fold · 5 Sep 2013 at 20:12

I would also agree with the two points made above:

Wait for the new AMD GPUs, they are just round the corner and will definitely worth the wait.

Also, upgrade your phenom to a 8320 or 8350 rather than a 9370. I have had the pleasure of overclocking 4 fx eight cores and have had every one get to 4.8GHz at least with adequate cooling and keeping voltage below 1.5V. The stock clock these new AMD CPUs are okay but i always felt that the stock voltage is always a bit high and the clock is very achievable with the 8320/8350 CPUs anyway.

Your motherboard would be my second board of choice behind the Formula-z and will easily be okay with any of the fx range. The only benefits available to changing board, would be to get a new revision of your current board, which has PCIe 3.0 or switch to ROG Formula-Z which has a few features aimed at extreme overclockers. In terms of practicality of switching to another board, there isn't any since you wont gain advantages with PCIe 3.0 and you probably wont use any of the extra features from the Formula Z. I switched to a formula-Z about 9 months ago because waterblocks for the VRMs were available by EK but if it wasn't for that, i would have kept the board that you are currently using.

teppic · 5 Sep 2013 at 20:20

Good advice here. PCI-E 2.0 isn't so bad, for one card it's the equivalent of running at 8x PCI-E 3.0, which isn't much of a loss, while with two cards you run at the equivalent of PCI-E 3.0 8x/8x on 990FX, which is the maximum you can do on Haswell too.

Since AMD hasn't yet confirmed any Steamroller CPUs for AM3+ I'd be reluctant to upgrade a board that is already very good.

The 8320 is very tempting (I mean, it's the same price as an i3!), but the 8350 might possibly reduce the risks of a bad clocker (just as it might not, who knows?).

FatRakoon · 7 Sep 2013 at 02:37

That board is fantastic. You cant go wrong with it.
I got both the 8320 and the 8350 and they are both lovely chips although I hated them at first, its really cos Imk a miserable git and expected them to play like my Intels.

I must also add however, that I got a couple of HEX Cores and the 1090T is a 3.2Ghz darling that I have run at 4Ghz just fine ( Rock solid @ 1.375v ) and is a seriously quick CPU giving the 8 Core 8350 a real hard time ( at stock ) and even beating it at some tasks.

So, if you can find one of those for a silly price, grab it.