Worth getting the new motherboard.?

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Ishan Upneja

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Apr 30, 2013
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Short Version -
Is it worth upgrading from a Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 (Rev 5.0) to a higher end motherboard for an average gamer to something like an Asus M5A97 R2.0, ASRock 970 Extreme 3, Extreme 4, Gigabyte 970A-DS3 (which actually has no heatsink over MOSFETS).? (Using FX 6300)

Long Story -
Building a second system in my home with an FX 4300 (already have the FX 4300)
One option is to get a cheap motherboard for it (since i don't plan to OC it a lot, maybe a little adjustment on the clock here & there, nothing more than what the stock cooler would handle anyway), for that i had picked the MSI 760GM-P23 board (a quick google search showed people getting FX 4300 getting up to 4.5 GHz with this board)
The Second option, is that i swap out my current board (the Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 Rev 5.0), use this board in my secondary build. & grab a better board for my primary system (hence the secondary system will have USB3, & my primary system will have a better board). My question is -

Is it worth upgrading from a 78LMT-USB3 to something like an Asus M5A97 R2.0, ASRock 970 Extreme 3, Extreme 4, or a Gigabyte 970A-DS3.?

Primary rig uses an FX 6300, will get a Hyper 212 X for it if i ever feel the need to overclock it. Going to keep the FX 6300 until the time games actually need more power than this to run (which i think is a pretty long way down the road), hence, the question about overclocking. Will a better board give me MUCH more overclocking headroom over my current 78LMT-USB3.? [Considering the fact that i'll never go on liquid cooling, & a Hyper 212 will be the maximum cooling i'll afford]. Will there be other benefits to buying one of the above mentioned boards that i might be overlooking.? (one i have in mind is Cross firing cards)

My GPU (currently) is an 2 gig 7850 overclocked. I upgrade GPUs once every 3 years approximately. Will crossfiring another 7850 with my current one be more viable than getting a new single GPU card a couple of years later.? Hear cross fire has some issues (since i have never actually used it myself). Oh & i have a Corsair VS 650. Not sure if i can run 2 7850s on that with a (maybe) overclocked FX 6300, so take that into consideration as well.

I am from India, so for prices of motherboards, here's the webpage (not at all organized, sorry for that) - Motherboards

Sorry for the extremely long post, but it was important.
 
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IInuyasha74
Yea Crossfire and SLI I don't think I will ever try again. I just really don't think it is worth it. Besides I max out most of everything I play and I enjoy it more when I have am really pushing the hardware to its limits and I need to modify things to make it run at its best. How things are now I don't even need my overclock on a lot of games, and it seems almost like it is done for nothing.

As for the board, sorry I cannot say for sure. I looked at both boards and they look nearly identical. Didn't bother reading the specs cause they have the same primary chipset, and the power phases and power controller which most effect overclocking on these boards never has those details given, but looking at the board they look to use the same...
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Ishan Upneja

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Apr 30, 2013
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Oh & while we're at the subject, i have another issue, the MSI 760GM P23 just went out of stock, & instead the MSI 760GM P21 is available now. Studying online revealed that the FX processors tend to throttle on the P21 but people manage to overclock then on the P23. Can anyone confirm this.? Will an FX 4300 throttle at stock clocks on a P21.?
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Just read the short version, and no I would say it isn't really worth it for you. The lower end motherboards can have lower performance if there aren't enough mofsets to handle the power requirements of the CPU in use. This board you currently have looks to have a total of 4, and boards similar to it tend to handle the 95w TDP CPUs without too much trouble. Only if you decide to overclock and raise voltage a fair bit would it really become increasingly advantageous to do so.

Of course there are other things to consider such as the audio chipset, SATA ports, etc. but unless you use a lot of drives you probably have enough SATA parts, and even if you didn't have enough both PCI-E and PCI sound cards and RAID controllers can help to extend these functions at a lower cost.

So in some situations yes, it helps, but likely for you you are fine with what you have.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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Read a bit more, you might go for a board with a little better power design since you need to buy another one anyways, but still not a big issue.

For the crossfire, I highly recommend you don't do it. I also have a Radeon 7850, and I tried crossfire before. I have a much faster i7-3770k too. I tried several games, and the one I really wanted the performance improvement in, Shogun II: Total War, got a huge performance decrease. Most games just had performance about the same, and on the rare times it gave an improvement, it was small and not worth the cost I had paid for the second GPU. I tried with about 6 or 7 high end games and the result was the same. Multi-GPU configurations are buggy at best, and only increase performance in some games that are optimized for them, the rest of the time they tend to just be a waste or cause problems.

Long story short I advise against it. If you want more performance for the time being, try an overclock. I have my Radeon 7850 running at 1175Mhz with 1375Mhz vRAM, and it beats even Radeon 7870 GPUs in benchmarks and FPS tests now.
 
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Ishan Upneja

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Apr 30, 2013
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Well, thanks for reading, i just came back to check for replies, thanks for replying so quickly. :D
Anyway, well, i guess that rules out Crossfire. Not going that route.
Also, about getting the new board, read my second post, about the MSI 760GM-P21 & P23. Can you help me with that.?
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Yea Crossfire and SLI I don't think I will ever try again. I just really don't think it is worth it. Besides I max out most of everything I play and I enjoy it more when I have am really pushing the hardware to its limits and I need to modify things to make it run at its best. How things are now I don't even need my overclock on a lot of games, and it seems almost like it is done for nothing.

As for the board, sorry I cannot say for sure. I looked at both boards and they look nearly identical. Didn't bother reading the specs cause they have the same primary chipset, and the power phases and power controller which most effect overclocking on these boards never has those details given, but looking at the board they look to use the same power design exactly. I would say they probably just changed secondary features such as the audio or ports and its basically the same board. If that is the case then they should overclock the same.

Also neither will probably overclock better than your Gigabyte board, but should be able the same there also. Chances are any throttling you are seeing people talk about is coming from using CPUs with a 100w TDP or higher, as typically they manage to handle 95w TDP CPUs alright.
 
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