Motherboards Are there any mATX AM3+ boards worth buying?

the 800 series was released in 2009 - whilst the 700 was late 2007


so in those year> 18 months the 700 series served all segments , with the 790FX being the high end 770 mid range and 740 low end

 

Even FM2+ mATX boards are only going to give you 4+1. How many FPS are you going to get from an FX versus the advantage of having a modern chipset and PCIe 3.0 from A88X, for example? Can you still find a B75+i5-3470 - that's 'last gen' but a high clock frequency i5 and a cheap board that'll see good results.

How much is your mATX case?

 

mATX case isn't expensive, its just he prefers the size because he only has a tiny room and also moves it around the house quite a bit.

I'm thinking either Intel or ATX is the way forward.

 

Sadly that may be the best option.
I recently went mitx, and wanted to go AMD partially because I wanted a change, and partially due to budget (spent too much on the case etc ). The APU chips are the best you can get for mitx really, and soon will probably be the best you can get for matx as well.

It's a shame they don't have a better range of matx/mitx boards really.

You could look at getting an AMD quad, I went with a 760k which didn't seem so bad for £60ish, although I remember being linked some graphs showing that actually depending on the application it was beaten by the older style APUs due to the architecture.
Nice and cheap though

 

Oh I'm not saying that they don't suck. They were obviously made long before BD came along. However, 4+1 isn't the end of the world for Piledriver so long as you keep the VRMs cool. If you do they deliver stable power and can support a half decent overclock.



^ clicky. That's a 4+1 board (Asrock 990FX Extreme 3). When I got it it throttled on two counts. One because of the VRMs and then because of the CPU temps. Slapped on a H100 (H80 can be had cheap now) and put an 80mm fan blowing across the VRM sinks - no throttle at the clocks above.

So whilst I agree that AMD MATX boards for AM3+ generally tend to be rather pants, they could be rescued with a tenner's worth of parts (few heatsinks and a fan blowing over them).

This is really making me want to try one of those Asus' now

 

Just get a Crosshair 5 and clock your 8320 until it screams. I have a Crosshair 4 and 1100T on server duty which used to be my gaming rig 3 years ago. Absolutely bomb proof boards.

Back on topic though, has your mate already got a 8320? If he wants AMD + mATX, FM2+ is probably the best way to go. Otherwise, he either has to go ATX and a new case, or go Intel.

I wish Asus RoG would give AMD some love; they're way overdue.

 

I do believe Andy has a Crosshair V... My Crosshair II is still going strong too.

 

No, its for an upgrade next year (for Star Citizen so Q4 probably). Only thing is, he's just bought the GA-78LMT-USB3 (for £40) because in the heat of the summer the VRMs on his old board went bang, so it'll be hard for me to convince him to buy a new ATX board and case to fit it (He's only on £12k a year as a teachers assistant). Maybe I'll look out for something on the marketplace and treat him.

 

Oh good, he already knows how good they are then

Hmm, in that case, I don't blame him for wanting to stick with it. I suppose a gpu upgrade (as that will net the best fps gain) is out too?

 

5.3ghz with an 8320 good

 

Actually, what is his current CPU? Would a second hand 1055t or other hex core phenom be a viable upgrade. They must be pretty cheap now?

 

If he'll be persuaded with a new case, some ATX ones are really quite small, like the Corsair 200R.

http://www.corsair.com/us/carbide-series-200r-compact-atx-case.html

 

Yeah, that's actually what he is saving for, but obviously don't want to massively bottleneck it with his....

X3 440 (unlocked to x4)

An X6 might be a good shout, what are they like compared to the 6xxx or 8xxx series? Will of course still have the problem with over clocking (what about throttling?). They also don't come up often which has kept their price artificially high.

It's possible. I might try and get him a second hand Atx case for his birthday in April, budget will be about £40.

 

X6 have a higher IPC than Bulldozer. However, in a world where IPC is becoming less important as the months pass the X6 will be hurt by the clock speeds. They're only good for 4.2ghz as an absolute maximum where as the PDs can hit 5ghz quite easily (6300 and 8320).

It's definitely going to help out in the core race IMO so wouldn't be a terrible idea.