Which am3 board?

[Sindri]

I would be using one of these boards with a phenom 955 BE, and just wondered if the more expensive one had any glaring advantages that I may have overlooked.

The £75 board:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-355-AS

The £89 board:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-366-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481

Would appreciate it if anyone could outline the benefits of the more expensive board in relation to overclocking/general performance.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The more expensive motherboard has the Crossfire capable 790X chipset with the SB750 southbridge whereas the cheaper motherboard has the 785G chipset with integrated graphics and the SB710 southbridge.

The 790X chipset in theory should be better for overclocking and the SB750 southbridge has more RAID options than the SB710.

 

[gurusan]

The more expensive board allows full 16x/16x crossfire basically and that's about it.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some of the newer 770,790X and the newly released 890GX motherboards can also offer USB3 and SATA3.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hi Sindri,

I think this is a very "compelling" AM3 board . . . Depends if your an IGP or GPU user I guess!

Asus M4A785TD-M Evo

£69.99 inc

@ gurusan: Neither of the boards in Sindri's O.P do Crossfire X16/x16 . . . the second one is x8/x8

 

[Troezar]

Personally I'd go for a mobo with USB3.0 and SATAIII particularly if you intend to keep it for some time, they're more of a pain to upgrade than other components

 

[gurusan]

woops my bad. it's just the 790fx that does full 16/16x

 

[liamcrane]

"gurusan" would there be a vast performance difference running both lanes in crossfire at 16x compared to both lanes running at 8x?

 

[Marvin]

No not really, Tom's Hardware did a performance comparison between the two, and the difference isn't that great - I think it was between 2 and 5% - and that's only if you actually go crossfire anyway, otherwise it is x16.

 

[PermaBanned]

Yeah, i remember seeing a 5870 get 95% performance when running at x4, 98% at x8 and obviously 100% at x16. It was 75% at x1 which is still quite impressive. That doesn't immediately scale to crossfire but most of the data is over the bridge anyway.

790X does x8 x8.

770/78* does x16 x4 ( think).

If you're using dedicated graphics then i recommend something without an IGP, like the 770 boards.

 

[Sindri]

lol kind of mixed opinions, i doubt i will be using crossfire tbh. Typically i prefer to just buy a mid to high end card and then stick with it until it needs replacing.

I guess the cheaper board will suit my needs for the moment.

Thanks for your help guys its much appreciated.