Suggestions for AM3+ Motherboard for FX8120

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I want to buy a Motherboard for my AMD FX8120. Budget Rs.9,000
My Current Confug:
AMD FX8120
Gigabyte 880GM-USB 3.0
3X4gb Kingston Value RAM
1+2TB WD Hard Drive(2TB is Sata 3.0)
ASUS 550ti 1gb DDR5
Cooler Master 500W PSU
all residents of NZXT Gamma

I bought the Processor and Motherboard 2 months back. I'm okay with the performance of the combo but not satisfied and the only reason for my dissatisfaction:
This Board has Sata 2.0 and not Sata 3.0, I was misguided by the seller and in my foolishness I didn't bother to confirm until I bought and installed it.
Now as I plan to upgrade, I see some interesting looking boards basically 970, 990X and 990FX.
All these boards have Sata 3.0 plus 32gb RAM support which I'd certainly appreciate to have. I can get a GIGABYTE 970-DS3 for 6K, a GIGABYTE GA-990XA-UD3 for 8.6K and a MSI 990FXA-GD65 Motherboard for 9.6K. I just mentioned these boards because they are near my budget.
Now the real question.
I don't really understand the difference between the three 9XX series boards especially 990X and 990FX. They both support SLI and Crossfire, same RAM support No onboard graphics, but where's the difference? And should those difference matter to me who just need SATA 3.0 on his new board with a bit overclocking, stable at 4ghz.
Which model should I go for?
And please suggest other Motherboards apart from the three I mentioned.

Thankyou

*Note I'm not a gamer, the only reason I've that graphic card is because it helps me in Editing and video encoding.

Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0

M5a97 evo or the ga990x ud3

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saikiasunny said:
M5a97 evo or the ga990x ud3

Will this M5a97 Evo suffice my purpose?

Great board-great features. It will perfectly suit your needs. Except 8x/8x multi gpu configuration support, it has all the features. It has 16x/4x pci-e lanes.

Man think before you buy. Why would you be needing the SATA3 port. Do you have any SATA3 HDD coz you won't see any difference if you plug SATA2 HDD in SATA3 port. Better be off with what you have. Only go for SATA3 if you have something like 6Gpbs SSD/HDD. HDDs don't even saturate SATA1 yet, so really SATA2 and SATA3 are overkill for them. There are only SSDs and some fast and expensive HDDs that need SATA3. You won't see much noticeable difference between the performance of a SATA2 and SATA3 HDD due to the limit of HDD speeds, not until you have something like the Velociraptor. Otherwise, I see no point in upgrading for such a small issue except if you wanna be future proof.

Other thing you mentioned is support for 32GB of RAM. Man, do you really need that much amount of RAM? Yeah, more is always better but if it's of no use then it's stupidity. Better save your money for something like GPU upgrade in the future.

erm....SATA 3 HDD generally have more speed

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AshutoshM said:
Man think before you buy. Why would you be needing the SATA3 port. Do you have any SATA3 HDD coz you won't see any difference if you plug SATA2 HDD in SATA3 port. Better be off with what you have. Only go for SATA3 if you have something like 6Gpbs SSD/HDD. HDDs don't even saturate SATA1 yet, so really SATA2 and SATA3 are overkill for them. There are only SSDs and some fast and expensive HDDs that need SATA3. You won't see much noticeable difference between the performance of a SATA2 and SATA3 HDD due to the limit of HDD speeds, not until you have something like the Velociraptor. Otherwise, I see no point in upgrading for such a small issue except if you wanna be future proof.

Other thing you mentioned is support for 32GB of RAM. Man, do you really need that much amount of RAM? Yeah, more is always better but if it's of no use then it's stupidity. Better save your money for something like GPU upgrade in the future.

Brother I already have SATA3 drive, been using it for almost 6 months and its a shame that I can't fully exploit its potential. I'm a professional Editor my main Editing system is Mac pro Quad core but I even love working with my Windows Desktop as there are certain things its more capable of doing better than Mac machine. I edit usually HD videos and sometimes video with 4K resolution and these videos have a high bit rate, high bit rate means requirement of faster data transfers and SATA 3 drives and motherboard are the things for the job because SSDs and SAS drives are too expensive to be used as storage devices.
And SATA 3 drives of normal price point do perform great, 7200rpm is good enough for getting read/write speed of near around 180MB/s. So that answers your question regarding my SATA 3 requirement.
Now why 32 gigs RAM?
I'm using 12 gigs as of now, I wouldn't go for 32gigs cuz my CPU would be a bottleneck when rendering videos but I'd definitely go for 24 gigs, which is not possible with my current motherboard.
So I do need to upgrade.

topgear said:
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0

Totally second that. Although I think Rev2 boards are not available in India atm. You need to wait for some more time.

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d6bmg said:
Totally second that. Although I think Rev2 boards are not available in India atm. You need to wait for some more time.

Thankyou everyone for your clear and precise suggestions. I'll look for the board in market next weekend, else I'll order it. If anyone of you find better price on the board online or locally(Delhi) then do post it here. Thanks again everyone.

sumonpathak said:
erm....SATA 3 HDD generally have more speed

Not noticeable until you get some high end SATA3 HDD as I've already mentioned.

@ OP: Bro believe me you won't see much difference with the current SATA3 HDD. But, if you still wanna buy then your choice. Regarding the RAM, I think since your current limit is 16GB, you would definitely need an upgrade but if you are planning adding 24Gb RAM not now but in the future, then better back off now.

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AshutoshM said:
Not noticeable until you get some high end SATA3 HDD as I've already mentioned.

@ OP: Bro believe me you won't see much difference with the current SATA3 HDD. But, if you still wanna buy then your choice. Regarding the RAM, I think since your current limit is 16GB, you would definitely need an upgrade but if you are planning adding 24Gb RAM not now but in the future, then better back off now.

Brother I've used Sata 3, normal SATA 3 drives nothing that you can call high end, normal 2TB 7200rpm drive bought for Rs.6.2K installed on the Mac pro and there is a considerable amount of performance jump(upwards), it was 70-80MB/s before now its 170-180MB/s. As far as adding RAM is concerned, may be in the next 1-2 months I'll get 3X8gb RAMs. And I plan to keep this machine maximum for 2 years more so no future plans with this machine.

Asus M5A97 EVO
GIGABYTE GA-990XA-UD3
ASRock 990FX Extreme4 ( A lot of Mobo for the money)

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Guys what about ASRock 970 Extreme 4 Motherboard ?
I've never used ASRock components so no idea how trustworthy is the brand. Please tell me if it stands near Asus M5A97 EVO/EVO2?

^^stay away from them...with the latest inclusion of digicare as service partners asus is not as bad as people tend to show em...

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sumonpathak said:
^^stay away from them...with the latest inclusion of digicare as service partners asus is not as bad as people tend to show em...

Thanks alot for the warning. Asus all the way then.

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I also found this Gigabyte motherboard GA 970-A UD3 while surfing online. I read quite good reviews about this motherboard. Now my final choice is in a limbo between Gigabyte 970-A UD3 and ASUS M5A97 EVO. None of these motherboards are available in Delhi(Nehru Place), online they're priced almost the same.
So tell me which one is better for my purpose (SATA 3, bit overclocking and 32gigs RAM support)?
Please suggest asap. I'll place the order today or latest by tomorrow as I've sold my GA 889GM USB 3 MB today so my PC is in a vegetative states as of now. It is an urgency now.

EDIT: Also what's the difference between Pro and EVO versions of ASUS M5A97? They're also priced closely.

Simply go for the asus. The features are almos same but the asus has nice features like the uefi bios. Its much more mature than the gb bios. And its one of the fastest 970 boards.
Afaik the evo usb3 header onboard.

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saikiasunny said:
Simply go for the asus. The features are almos same but the asus has nice features like the uefi bios. Its much more mature than the gb bios. And its one of the fastest 970 boards.
Afaik the evo usb3 header onboard.

Even Gigabyte has some Touch Bios thing and even if it didn't, it won't matter to me. And also the Gigabyte board has 2 USB 3.0 headers.
Plus Gigabyte has 8+2 Phase design whereas ASUS has 6+2, personally I don't understand whats all this but, it is said 8+2 is better than 6+2 for overclocking. Though one plus point for ASUS board(s) in this case is that it has an Esata port which is missing in the Gigabyte board but my cabinet(NZXT Gamma) has a Esata port upfront so I think it can be ignored. With all these stats Gigabyte looks to be a better option but still if there's any point I missed please let me know.

Err....the GB bios is a pos

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sumonpathak said:
Err....the GB bios is a pos

Possibly yes but as I said it won't matter to me.

Another deviation from my simple confusion of ASUS or Gigabyte.
There's a guy who's selling me his used Crosshair iv formula motherboard for Rs.7K, call it my ignorance. I've no idea how good is this motherboard with Bulldozer!
He also says ki after the BIOS update it not even support AM3+ CPU but also 32GB RAM. Please help.

ritwiksondhi said:
Possibly yes but as I said it won't matter to me.

Another deviation from my simple confusion of ASUS or Gigabyte.
There's a guy who's selling me his used Crosshair iv formula motherboard for Rs.7K, call it my ignorance. I've no idea how good is this motherboard with Bulldozer!
He also says ki after the BIOS update it not even support AM3+ CPU but also 32GB RAM. Please help.

Are you getting warranty? If yes, then 7K is a good price IMO.

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The warranty left 10 months, my only concern is that is this really gonna work well with Bulldozer? I mean allover the internet I can see Crosshair V with AMD FX series but with Croshair IV, its very rare.

Yes, as 890 is AM3+ cheipset, the board will work with Any FX series processor just fine.

If its an am3+ socket board, it should support fx cpus with a bios update.
And regarding the vrm phase confusion, read the thread on my link.

VRM iwon't be an issue with Corshair 4.

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It supports AM3+ CPUs with a Beta Bios update provided by Asus. So my final question, will it be worth it buying an old board when I can get a new Asus M5A97 Evo or Gigabyte 970A UD3 for Rs.500 more. And these boards are made to support AM3+ and not by any BIOS update. So please help me decide.

stay with 900 series chipsets...890 had sever issues like turbo not working BSODs' etc...

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sumonpathak said:
stay with 900 series chipsets...890 had sever issues like turbo not working BSODs' etc...

Thanks alot man, no 890 then. Will order the Gigabyte 970A UD3 then.

Or Asus M5A97/Pro/EVO depending on your budget.

sumonpathak said:
stay with 900 series chipsets...890 had sever issues like turbo not working BSODs' etc...

Sorry, didn't know that before.

pps:

just get the Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0 - this one has very good VRM heatsink.

topgear said:
just get the Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0 - this one has very good VRM heatsink.

Same question from me: is these rev2.0 boards are available in India yet? :unsure:

not yet AFAIK...

They are available with some online retailers like bitfang. I've seem them online. You just need to search them.

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Gigabyte 970A UD3 OUT OF STOCK
ASUS M5A97 EVO OUT OF STOCK
ASUS M5A97 EVO R2.0 OUT OF STOCK

All the options I had are out of stock, and I'm now out of options.

Note: They are nowhere, not Nehru Place not any online story not even on Bitfang.
Damn

^^ Then wait for new batch of shipment.

d6bmg said:
Same question from me: is these rev2.0 boards are available in India yet?

just got one for my self ( look at siggy ) ;-)

and yes they are available.

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topgear said:
just got one for my self ( look at siggy ) and yes they are available.

where did u get it from?

A

@topgear, pump up the RAMs as well dood, how is 4GB RAM working for you.

topgear said:
just got one for my self ( look at siggy ) and yes they are available.

When? And is it new or RMAed board?

^^ just thrown away the RMAed mobo.

acewin said:
@topgear, pump up the RAMs as well dood, how is 4GB RAM working for you.

faced lagging, stuttering only in Crysis 2 with 2GB ram .. but with 4GB ram everything ( at-least all the games ) is running smooth and once I start playing with VMs again I will add another 4GB stick.

ritwiksondhi said:
where did u get it from?

got it from Starcomp .. but ask around - it's available in most shops - at-least sellers will bring it for you if you order one ;-)