GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 & G.SKILL Sniper 8GB DDR3 1600

[saint7269]

I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard and memory. I pick this combo and was looking for thoughts on it. I'll be using parts from my current build to pair with them.

AMD Propus 630.

MSI Hawk Radeon 5770 x2.

WD Caviar blue 500gd SATAII x2 in a raid.

PSU 750W Ultra

Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514

RAM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231416


The motherboard looks great as for as specs go. And I've used Gigabyte in the past and never had a problem. A 8 core Bulldozer will drop in there nicely. I want to keep this board 2+ years, and just upgrade on top of it. I know PCIe 3.0 is around the corner, but I don't see really needing for at lest 2 years. Now the memery is only ddr3 1600. I know my CPU will only see 1600 ram anyway, but should i go ddr3 1866 (for bulldozer)? I picked the 1600 to save $$$ and I see ppl saying that anything over 1600 doesn't really bump up performance to much. I mean I'm still using 8gb ddr2 800 and I play Crysis 1 at 1600x900 at almost max settings(like 85-90%) with no lag. So what do you guys and girls think?

 

[o1die]

It should work fine. My gskills works great in an old 790gx chipset.

 

[geekapproved]

I think your first upgrade should be a monitor.

I mean 1600x900 with 2-5770's? Your not even seeing the potential of your video cards. I mean maybe for Crysis...but nearly all other games would max out with 1-5770 at that resolution.

 

[saint7269]

My moniter can do 1080p. I just use 1600x900 to make sure thetes no slow down.

 

[geekapproved]

Well your probably making it slower that way. At 1080P, the graphics cards are doing most of the work. At 1600x900, that pretty slow cpu is taking most of the load and probably pegged at 100% which hurts your performance.

 

[saint7269]

Ahhhh that you for pointing that out. But back to my question. 1600 or 1866?

 

[o1die]

Depends on the price. If you want to overclock the cpu, then the 1866 should theroretically perform better. When I overclock, I drop the ram speed first, then raise the cpu speed so the overall ram speed is within spec. I still notice the difference in speed without overclocking the ram.

 

[geekapproved]

I'm not familiar with overclocking AMD cpu's.

I do know that memory speed has no relation when overclocking the new Intel processors, that's why 1333 is just fine, even if your doing heavy overclocking.

 

[saint7269]

I don't overclock anything on my pc. i'm to much of a wuss lol.

 

[saint7269]

Best answer selected by Saint7269.