Which AM3+ 990FX/990X board would you pick?

[mlcaouette]

I will be buying a AM3+ M/B in approximately one week, but I am currently undecided on which to buy. The CPU and M/B are the last two pieces I need for this build and I won't have the money for a CPU for a good two to three months anyways so bulldozer is a viable option for me. I'm not really a gamer anyways, the current build specs are below (the parts I have and have tested in my current machine)

So I would like to know which one most of the readers/posters of tom's would buy if they were planning such a purchase. Thank you in advance for all opinions and votes!!

Current spec's:
Case: NZXT gamma
HDD: 500Gb seagate sata III @ the time it was cheaper than the sata II ones, I will add one more for a raid 0 setup cause this is something I would like to try
GPU: HD 4770 bought as a refurb a while back for cheap and it works well for my uses, I will want crossfire in the future but I just can't afford it now
Ram: G skill 2x2gb 1600Mhz cas9 1.5v
Disc drive: LG muilt drive that was on sale @ time of purchase
Case fans: five 120mm fans three intake and two exhaust with one open exhaust slot which I plan on filling
PSU: PC power and cooling 750watt
Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse
system will be in the living room connected to my Panasonic 50" 1080P plasma

 

[henydiah]

why not seem other motherboard brand like Asrock , Biostar and other low end motherboard. .. ?

 

[Outlander_04]

All 990 series motherboards will have very similar performance .

You should probably be buying on price since you are not overclocking and not gaming .

 

[mlcaouette]

No Asrock or Biostar boards with the new or perhaps it is better to say re-badged chipset are currently on newegg.

I was just putting up the crossfire capable, with the new chipset, and within a price range of 150-250 since this is the amount which I have allotted for a M/B. Plus there were only two more open vote spots and no other M/B's of interest at this time

The M/B and CPU are where I wanted to dump the most money in now and the rest of the system will receive periodic upgrades whenever I have the money to spare.

I will be toying around with overclocking as it gives me something to do on my days off. CPU cooler is another thing I haven't picked for sure yet considering the xigmatek gaia.

The only game I wanna play will be mass effect 3 but it isn't coming out till 2012 and my vid card(s) will be upgraded by then. Lately just haven't seen any games of interest to me

 

[geekapproved]

I don't see why you would want to buy a motherboard for a cpu that has no release date, no performance numbers, and no price.

 

[mlcaouette]

Well it has a release window and since I won't have the money for the cpu for another couple months I figured I would give them a shot.

I've been going back and forth on AMD or intel for months now and with the release of the crosshair v it got me leaning back towards AMD.

 

[jaquith]

None now, I see no point in buying any AM3+ or any AMD MOBO until the Bulldozer is released, BIOS updated, and fully tested -- i.e. compared to the Sandy Bridge. Clearly, I'd wait until the BIOS kinks are worked-out i.e. 1~2 releases post Bulldozer.

Otherwise, the cost of the either 990FX/990X chipset makes little differences to performance for the current AM3 CPUs. Clearly, choosing 990FX chipset. The only compelling 'now' is for the added SLI Support from the 990FX chipset.

Choosing from above the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 3/4-WAY SLI/CF

 

[mlcaouette]

None now, I see no point in buying any AM3+ or any AMD MOBO until the Bulldozer is released, BIOS updated, and fully tested -- i.e. compared to the Sandy Bridge. Clearly, I'd wait until the BIOS kinks are worked-out i.e. 1~2 releases post Bulldozer.

Otherwise, the cost of the either 990FX/990X chipset makes little differences to performance for the current AM3 CPUs. Clearly, choosing 990FX chipset. The only compelling 'now' is for the added SLI Support from the 990FX chipset.

Choosing from above the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 3/4-WAY SLI/CF

Thank you for at least putting up which one you would pick (hopefully people are voting) the only thing that I don't like on that board is the old school looking bios, it has mouse support but they didn't bother going any further than that and for the price tag a nice clean UEFI bios was one of my expectations. Not really to big a deal though as I'm using old school keyboard bios now and I have no complaints.

The only reason I am looking to purchase now is I have the money and if I don't use it now, it will likely be wasted somewhere else I'm not a good saver. I did see that a pci-e 3.0 spec M/B for z68 was just released and is now turning my head back in that direction (even though currently there is no uses for the 3.0 revision).

 

[jaquith]

My plan - LGA 2011, SB-E 8-core {assuming it gets listed again}, 4-Channel 4x4GB, 3-WAY SLI, and hopefully yep the PCIe 3.x.

The PCIe 3.x IMO won't add many FPS at least with the current GPUs, even with a PCIe 3.x GPU I have my doubts with how much added benefit they'll be. Currently the x8 lanes are barely saturated and the x16 adds little. The gains will be in 3/4-WAY SLI/CF configurations with large or multi-displays.

BTW - the BIOS vs EFI wouldn't sway me one way or the other. An 'Interface' means zip to the BIOS or how the MOBO performs.

 

[mlcaouette]

LGA 2011 sounds pretty awesome but I have a feeling it will be outside of my budget cap that I set for around $250

 

[jaquith]

Everything about LGA 2011 is going to be expensive

 

[asantesoul]

Everything about LGA 2011 is going to be expensive

It will be obscenely expensive, but obscenely powerful as well... 22nm video cards will start trickling in around the same time...and then, and only then, will we actually have enough power to do anything we want in the entire universe

 

[Avro Arrow]

Due to some rather tragic circumstances (my beloved MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard just died), I`ve gotten started on a Zambezi-based system. I`ve ordered 16GB of DDR3 and I`ve been looking at motherboards. So far, the ones I seem to like best are the ECS Black Edition A990FXM-A and the ASRock 990FX Extreme4 for the silliest of reasons really but.. hear me out. Unlike the Gigabyte and ASUS offerings, ECS and ASRock have put a lovely little thing on their motherboards that I know I will use. They both have, of all things, an IDE header. Now, this is not a replacement for something else, this is something they added IN ADDITION to all the nice USB2, USB3, FireWire, eSATA and SATA-6 goodies. The boards are just as loaded with features as the Gigabyte and ASUS boards but they have that lovely little thing that tells me that I won`t have to spend $40 to replace my 2 DVD-RW drives. Let`s face it, $40 is a good chunk of change when looking at motherboard prices and it can mean the difference for many people between 4 and 8GB of RAM or an extra Terabyte of HDD space. To me, being able to budget that $40 elsewhere is GOLDEN. In addition to that, ECS and ASRock have impressed me with their motherboard durability. My file server in the basement still uses an old ECS PM800-M2 socket 478 motherboard with an old Celeron D CPU on it. It has NEVER stopped working, even when the thing sat in my storage room for awhile, unboxed. As far as ASRock is concerned, when I was stepping up to a Core2Duo (Conroe) 1.8GHz from my Pentium-4 (Prescott) 2.4GHz, I purchased an ASRock 4Core Dual-VSTA so that I could still use DDR and AGP. I gave that board to my cousin 2 years ago and he STILL uses it every single day! Now THAT is what I call durability. As for MSI, I'll never buy one of their motherboards again because my warranty lapsed in April and my K9A2 Plat died about a week ago. A motherboard that costs $200 should not die 3 months after the warranty period ends and if it does, the manufacturer should do something to help the consumer. MSI refused to help, stating that my warranty had expired. I'd never had a motherboard fail on me before so I bought a cheap ECS IC780M-A to replace it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an AM2+ crossfire board and my Phenom II X4 940 isn't AM3-compatible so I'm stuck putting together a bulldozer configuration because I have 2 XFX Radeon HD 4870's and I don't like throwing money out the window. The other lovely little gem about ECS and ASRock? They're usually dirt-cheap even though they've proven to be reliable as hell!