Hardware What's the Best AMD Bulldozer Motherboard?

Yeah, you're probably right - will probably go intel next year. Never bought intel for home before, so feel a little bit... er fan-boy-ish?

 

LOL. Give it enough time and the AMD kids start posting their love comments for what amounts to a very poor choice in computer hardware.

It's funny to me how people form emotional attachments to computer companies. I agree that competition is good for driving down prices and pushing forward development, I would not choose a processor because of any emotional attachment to AMD or Intel. My choice is based on cost and performance. If AMD took the lead by a significant margin I would drop intel. There is no place for emotional attachment with computer hardware. Performance is the deciding factor and in no way can you argue in favour of either the old phenom architecture or the new 8 slow core bull dozer. Even if I currently had an AMD system and was looking to upgrade, I would ditch the AMD parts and go with intel purely on performance. i5 2500k is the best value+performance processor at the moment.

 

We're not happy with 800 quid chips and 100 quid mobo's...we happy with Bulldozer bashing 150 quid Sandybridge chips and 100 quid mobos

 

I see a bit of patronizing going on here in some of these posts...not cool. Live and let be.

I have glanced through this article, I am not really interested in Bulldozer in its current state. I was another one who pinned his hopes on it being a good bang-for-buck processor and was planning on using it in my next, from scratch, build. It isn't just the CPU either, the Intel motherboards and chipset's have more variety to choose from and better features. If I bought into Bulldozer, I'd only be kicking myself later on down the line, knowing I could of had more performance, for less, from Intel. I think a lot of people will end up at the same conclusion.

 

Thanks for the roundup! Good to see the Crosshair V at the top, as that's the board I'm going to slap to my new setup as soon as I can be arsed to build it.

And please keep the bashing-******** to your self. It's hardly constructive, we've seen it a thousand times and it's getting so old it's just flaming at this stage. If you don't care about AMD/Bulldozer then why on earth do you have to pop into the article comments just to bash it once more? Sigh.

(now I'll just sit back and wait for someone to really make my point by calling me a fanboy)

 

I refuse to play in to your hands.

Fangirl.

 

The best Bulldozer motherboard is one traded in for credit for a Sandy Bridge motherboard. Even without a CPU in it- it's faster.

 

Can't find it at the moment, but I seem to recall AMD saying there will be one more generation on AM3+. I thought that was Piledriver, but it appears that will be on FM2...makes sense, since it will be an APU.

To Feathers I have to say: bully for you. Not all of us are so fortunate as to do a ground-up rebuild whenever we're in the mood/need to upgrade. When my old AM2/AM3 board died, I bought an AM3+ board, thinking at least I'd be ready for BD. Originally the plan was a scratch build for Bulldozer, all brand-new hardware. Then the old board died and I just about went bonkers waiting for the new board to show up. I was stuck on my tertiary 850 MHz Socket A system (running Ubuntu that had the crap first version of the Unity shell, no less.)

That is, much as I would have liked to, I couldn't afford a ground-up build then, and I sure as hell can't now. So good for you that you can drop that kind of cash when you feel. Some of us, though, are stuck with the cold comfort of having compatibility between generations so we're not forced into a $1000 build every couple years.

 

From what I recall Komodo was going to be on an FMx platform (socket FM2?).....but this has now been cancelled and replaced by Vishera...a pure cpu successor to Zambezi and it would be on AM3+.
But I don't know if this is confirmed or just rumor.

 

LOL. If only I could. My EVGA motherboard died 2.5 months ago and I got it sent to EVGA germany for repair. Since the PC was in pieces I decided to sell the mobo and CPU and get an i5 and z68. 2 months later still no new parts because I have to wait until I sold the EVGA mobo and I had a false sale on ebay. Guy didn't pay.

Because of a move to Sweden which cost close to 500 followed by a move back to the UK 2 months later costing another 240, I don't have the money to buy new i5k and z68. I got 70 back from sale of old EVGA board so that is half the cost of new z68 motherboard at 140. Need to sell my 4 sticks ram totalling 8gb to get new 1.5v memory.

I am currently using my GF's old celeron M laptop which until last night had a 5 second lag between each key press when typing. Opening a program would cause lag of several minutes. The laptop has 2 mem slots but only 1 slot is filled. Can't find the correct mem type to buy another stick because there is no record of this particular packard bell easynote ever having existed. I could take a gamble and buy a stick for a similar easynote model on ebay but it would cost 20 to 38 pounds.

The lag got so bad last night I opened the hard disk cover to see if it had Sata hard disk and sure enough, Seacrap 160gb 5400rpm. I removed it and put in my very vintage 30gb OCZ Vertex 1 SSD, installed windows 7 x64 home premium and now the performance is stunning!

No more lag!

Being a craptop it will never ever run games. It will only play HD videos using windows media center. None of the other movie players (including VLC) can play the video without jerking and grinding.

So I am saving money and selling off old parts so I can buy an i5 2500k, z68 and some new ram.

Fortunately I have all the other parts, case, liquid cooling, graphics, monitor but still the parts I need are not cheap!

I would never go for an AMD system (as AMD are at the moment). I'd rather continue on craptop and save the money for the intel parts.

 

Let's put it this way. I would rather use an old crappy laptop for a year and save money to buy the best performing parts than go with something inferior just to avoid waiting.

Once you have a half decent PC then it's not so hard to update it. My EVGA Cheesecake 657 was almost 3 years old, sold it for £70. A while back I sold my Giga GTX 240 for £70. Sold my i7 860 for £112. That's money towards new PC parts and since I overclock, I can quite easily go more than 3 years without upgrading mobo or CPU!

 

Ubuntu Cheesecake on old hardware - my old A8N-SLI motherboard can run crossfire under ubuntu so long live socket 939 dual cores...

 

Well it was a good and informative roundup even though I must agree that the Intel 2500 seems to be the best bet at the moment for price/performance. Like a number of people I too had high hopes on the bulldozer architecture and I desperately want to upgrade from my aging AMD 3Ghz dual core cpu to something more modern.

The cost of motherboards and cpu's at the moment is prohibitive and it seems like forever when you could buy a motherboard, memory and cpu all for under £100 and still get decent performing hardware for the money.

I guess I will have to see what 2012... or the following years bring to the table.

 

I don't ever remember getting a mobo, cpu and mem for under 100. Nothing worth having performance wise anyway. I still remember buying one of the first DVD burners for 200 pounds.

 

I've still got a usb external cd-rw drive, in a box which cost over £100

 

apparently you have no idea...

I don't know if you pay attention, but AMD was never king. They are the Bang for the Buck king. Overclocking? have you read? lets see a sandybridge anything hit 8ghz (Bulldozer world record of around 8.7Ghz). Or lets see them hit an easy 5ghz on air?!?(not gonna happen) ooh look your i5 can get to 4ghz (whoopdy do) how much you wanna pay for that chip? 220? and overclocking on the weak side for amd? my last CPU was a Phenom II 940 stock 3.0 oc to 4.5 ghz (50%) which by the way, until bulldozer was the fastest cpu in the world. I currently own an AMD FX 8150 (3.6ghz 8 core) overclocked to 5.4ghz (lets see i5 hit that spot at $220usd)

Yes, although I am an AMD fan i do have to admit, Intel do make better high end CPU's, but bang for the buck AMD. Lets just see here 2.5x the price for 15% better performance? (not much of a comparison if you ask me) Before you start making uneducated accusations, do a bit of research before someone like me has to point out the foot in your mouth. 8 core cpu over rated? what about windows 8?

Why are you trying to intel promote on an amd motherboard post? Your input was useless and invalid, go on an intel fanboy forum if you want to get off topic.

Back on topic, I own the Sabertooth 990fx motherboard and couldn't be happier. People complain about it only having 6 sata 3 ports, how many people have more than 6hdds? I have 4 and that is nearing ridiculous. I really enjoy the features and layout of the motherboard, well designed all around, and MemOK feature (awesome)

And an extra fan header!! awesome little feature that is hard to find. Been an Asus fan for awhile, and not just for motherboards, but graphics cards and monitors as well. I personally give this motherboard a 10/10, except seeing that i could have squeezed a bit more performance out of the Crosshair, maybe should have gone that route... Oh btw intel fanboy, beat 2x the graphics performance when i am using my 2x graphics cards at 16x/16x and you are stuck at 8x/8x

 

DONT CARE IF YOU DONT WANT AN AMD, GO TO AN INTEL FORUM AND LEARN TO READ!!!!

To be honest, this is a forum thread called "what is the best bulldozer motherboard" NOT what intel chip or chipset do you want, please stay on topic. And about your craptop, STAY ON TOPIC JEEZ you posted NOTHING related to the topic AT ALL WHATSOEVER. if you want to talk about your intel I5 build, go on an intel I5 forum, not a what is the best bulldozer motherboard forum, jeez.

My brother recently purchased the asus Sabertooth 990fx motherboard and it is performing beautifully, the MemOK feature is fantastic. In my opinion, the Crosshair might be a bit extreme, even for me (who overclocks alot) The crosshair offers a few more features, but using the older crosshair forumla and finding its extra features to be buggy and/or defective, i think i will go with the sabertooth.

 

go post on an intel forum, your opinion is useless and unfounded, the title says best bulldozer motherboard, not INTEL INTEL INTEL

go away and shut the hell up

 

thanks for staying on topic oh wait, you are an intel fanboy, go to intel and tell them how much you love them and how you are showing the rest of the world how foolish intel fanboys are.

 

I was only looking sort off knew the ROG would land up on top, its a nice board, as is the chipset...to bad the CPU designed for it isnt...

nothing wrong with the chipset and pairing off with a nice PII hex core through