Tom's Socket AM2 Motherboard Summer Slam

Features
By published

Conclusion

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a benchmark is worth ten thousand. By my reckoning those benchmarks are worth a 130,000 word essay about how the AM2 motherboard market is all about the features, because performance really doesn't change - no matter what chipset you're running.

The Athlon 64's onboard memory controller takes care of the important stuff, thank you, so you can concentrate on the bells and whistles, which is really nice when you think about it. So choose your favorite flavor of icing and don't worry about the cake, AMD has got you covered.

Editor's Opinion

Eight motherboards and not a poor choice among them. What's great about this market is that you can't really lose; none of these boards are horrible at anything, but some of them have really appealing strengths. As far as which is best for you, that's a matter of personal taste. But I've got to admit, that Asus Crosshair sure set itself apart from the pack with a whole shed load of bling-bling.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • autorotation
    ive had a headache with this board =/ didnt do my homework and bought a phenom x4 9600 and then found out its not compatible with this board =/ i also bought a evga geforce gts 250 512 mb card and it wont post on this board and i get no display, im assuming its just not compatible because i posted it on another board with a psu that was weaker than mine and it had a display. if anyone can shed light on my situation with this video card not posting on this board, would be great. as far as recommending this board, im not even sure its still in production, but i would not reccomend it. spend the extra cash and get a board that can handle a quad core and a modern gfx card. also the cpu fan mounting bracket had one of the tabs break off on me, so i had to get a new psu fan mount, so that gives you an idea of what high quality this board is anyways =/ plus i think i heard that epox went out of business.....
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  • I bought two of these boards and both ended up with the same problem of a read-out of 4 red lights saying the processor is bad!Wrong!They are both fine and this is the worst board I have ever had!I will not be buying any more of MSI boards again!Still not sure what the problem is,but these are going straight to the trash!!!!
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